Why “GC” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
Can you elaborate on how cascaded deletions "stop the world" with reference counting? I understand how GC could lead to arbitrarily large latencies for whatever task triggers th…
by entrope · Oct 5, 2026
Places that were doing C++, but found out that the right GC, and JIT compiler, can achieve good enough performance for their business case. There is nothing "special GC" about i…
by pjmlp · Oct 5, 2026
People use words in a way that is useful. Really this just shows that the pedantic academic definition of GC is not the most useful one.
by IshKebab · Oct 5, 2026
> The problem with GC in the strict sense is that you cannot predict when it will happen. It’s the same with ARC. You also don’t know when the counter will reach zero.
by pebal · Oct 5, 2026
I define the academic view of GC algorithms in Computer Science, not what random developers decide to call GC. Which in an industry where some folks call themselves Software Eng…
by pjmlp · Oct 5, 2026
> Whether reference counting is a GC algorithm depends on how you define what GC is. Pretty much all the high-performance GC/refcounting algorithms are hybrids in one form…
by Sesse__ · Oct 5, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "gc" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "gc" over time.
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