3 ms·
Honestly, this article is really bad and probably harmful to new programmers. I recommend against taking anything in it to be accurate, much less complete. The
by electrograv 14y ago
Honestly, this article is really bad and probably harmful to new programmers. I recommend against taking anything in it to be accurate, much less complete.
The author misses vitally key issues (like the inherent dangers of circular references in reference counting "GC"). I wouldn't even call myself slightly knowledgeable in GC, yet blatant holes in the clumsy analogies of this article are obvious to me. As someone who is not even slightly knowledgable in GC, it scares me that people are learning from someone who has massive information holes in the explanation -- holes in topics that every programmer on earth should know.
On top of all that, the only "Cons" that are mentioned of RC are absurd: "It's annoying if you forget to release your references." Wow. Profound stuff there - bugs and incorrect code is annoying. This isn't even a problem if your language supports RAII, in which it's impossible to "forget" in the first place.
- Groxx 14y agoI sincerely doubt people are going to read this, and then immediately write and ship a garbage collector. For a square-zero general-idea overview to someone who has zero concept of what a GC does, it's more than accurate enough. It could probably be about 1/2 the size, as it shoots off in weirdly-complex directions for such an introductory text. And it could probably introduce e.g. reference cycles, because they're a real problem with reference counting. But it's a clearer and simpler text by far than I generally see on this topic.