GC code runs differently depending on the code running around it. It causes the code to be non deterministic, and introduces a side effect. I've written code

GC code runs differently depending on the code running around it. It causes the code to be non deterministic, and introduces a side effect. I've written code in a reference counted language(python) which processes about a gigabyte of data per second from the network, with hard real time requirements - all on one machine with multiple cpus/cores. The code is fully unit tested, doc tested, and functionally tested. It's also short, runs on multiple platforms and has been maintained by other people than myself. My personal experience is that you can write highly efficient maintainable code with reference counting. Reference counting manages memory automatically for you, but it also lets to manage memory manually when needed too. For many situations, it's the best of both worlds.