3 ms·

> Obviously, just from Java occupying the top 2 or 3 spots for popularity over the last 15 years -- Java's approach must be doing something right. I'm not sure

> Obviously, just from Java occupying the top 2 or 3 spots for popularity over the last 15 years -- Java's approach must be doing something right. I'm not sure if this argument holds. Java's high memory usage is frequently cited as a downside of Java. GUI applications written in Java have a reputation of being memory-hungry, and I know plenty of people struggling with memory usage of server application (e.g. ElasticSearch). You will also find C/C++ on the same popularity lists… That said, I do agree that a tracing GC is a better solution (for most programs) than reference counting these days. The improvements in the pause times by the Java GCs are really impressive, and the throughput is great. One example would be ESBuild: The author created a prototype in both Rust and Go, and found that the Go version was faster allegedly because Rust ended up spending a lot of time deallocating [source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336284].

cb321 6y ago
The default tracing Nim GC is capable of quarter-millisecond pause times while the new ARC/ORC stuff is more like single-digit microseconds: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/5734 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/5734
- DannyB2 6y ago
  That is interesting.
DannyB2 6y ago
> Java's high memory usage I would rather optimize for performance and energy use at the cost of higher memory use. See recent SN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24642134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24642134 https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sleFinal.pdf https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle... Memory is a one time capital cost and gets cheaper over time.
- imtringued 6y ago
  High memory usage forces you to only run one JVM process. If you need to do something that doesn't require a significant amount of memory you can't use Java at all.
- darthrupert 6y ago
  > Memory is a one time capital cost and gets cheaper over time. Except if you're operating in the cloud.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    True, yet not everyone is trying to be the next FAANG. Besides, plenty of GC enabled languages support value types and ways to do deterministic deallocation, use the tools Luke.

cb321 6y ago

The default tracing Nim GC is capable of quarter-millisecond pause times while the new ARC/ORC stuff is more like single-digit microseconds: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/5734 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/5734

DannyB2 6y ago
That is interesting.

DannyB2 6y ago

> Java's high memory usage I would rather optimize for performance and energy use at the cost of higher memory use. See recent SN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24642134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24642134 https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sleFinal.pdf https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle... Memory is a one time capital cost and gets cheaper over time.

imtringued 6y ago
High memory usage forces you to only run one JVM process. If you need to do something that doesn't require a significant amount of memory you can't use Java at all.
darthrupert 6y ago
> Memory is a one time capital cost and gets cheaper over time. Except if you're operating in the cloud.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  True, yet not everyone is trying to be the next FAANG. Besides, plenty of GC enabled languages support value types and ways to do deterministic deallocation, use the tools Luke.