While I'm also bullish WRT Swift-on-the-server, reference counting has absolutely been done in server-side languages before. At least Python and PHP use refere

While I'm also bullish WRT Swift-on-the-server, reference counting has absolutely been done in server-side languages before. At least Python and PHP use reference counting, though they both also have runtime cycle breakers. Those examples are both interpreted languages, and they have a higher runtime cost for memory management because they're actively breaking reference cycles, so it's not apples-to-apples, but it's still reference counting.