4 ms·

Isn’t reference counting a type of garbage collection? I feel like you can’t put Swift in the world of Rust/Ada/C/C++

• q-big 4y ago
  > Isn’t reference counting a type of garbage collection? Reference counting leads to memory leaks if cycles occur. Garbage collection algorithms don't have this problem.
  • 3a2d29 4y ago
    I checked and you are not correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)#Reference_counting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer... Reference counting is a type of garbage collection.
    • q-big 4y ago
      On the other hand: "Garbage collection vs. ARC" https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#gc https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#gc (Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31139610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31139610) This (sub)headline only makes sense if garbage collection and ARC are different concepts.
      • 3a2d29 4y ago
        Hmm I think they are referring to GC as “traditional” GC, but I will concede that they don’t seem to say that.
• mark_l_watson 4y ago
  True enough. I probably should not have inserted Swift into an Ada conversation. BTW, I am a Lisp developer, but some reason I find Swift palatable.
• pjmlp 4y ago
  It is, and for Apple, it is the successor of their system languages, explicitly stated on Swift documentation. Here enjoy a full graphical workstation OS developed at Xerox PARC, Mesa/Cedar uses reference counting with a cycle collector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4