> and their use is optional It is not, if you have objects with dynamic lifetimes, and allocating them for the whole duration of the program is not an option.

> and their use is optional It is not, if you have objects with dynamic lifetimes, and allocating them for the whole duration of the program is not an option. Sure, their use can be much less than a managed language that can only do automatic memory management, but RC is objectively a worse from most perspective than tracing GC, except for the fact that they don’t need runtime support, and a slightly lower memory overhead.