There's actually always a duality between: - Reference counting/mark and sweep - Throughput/latency - RAII/GC A good read: https://www.cs.virginia.ed

There's actually always a duality between: - Reference counting/mark and sweep - Throughput/latency - RAII/GC A good read: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.pdf We present a formulation of the two algorithms that shows that they are in fact duals of each other. Intuitively, the difference is that tracing operates on live objects, or “matter”, while reference counting operates on dead objects, or “anti-matter”.