I'm not sure of your definition of objective here. If you mean a specific implementation and exact version of a specific language does one objective thing that

I'm not sure of your definition of objective here. If you mean a specific implementation and exact version of a specific language does one objective thing that might be true. But, different implementations of the same language and different versions of those implementations can all do different things. GC rarely says exactly when something will be collected. Only that it will eventually. Example: https://jsfiddle.net/8cej4tpk/2/ https://jsfiddle.net/8cej4tpk/2/ Firefox GCs after about 8 seconds, Safari GCs immmediately, Chrome never (probably not until there's pressure). And, you'll find different behavior if you go check different versions of those browsers.