Isn’t reference counting a type of garbage collection? I feel like you can’t put...

pjmlp · on Nov 8, 2022

It is, and for Apple, it is the successor of their system languages, explicitly stated on Swift documentation.

Here enjoy a full graphical workstation OS developed at Xerox PARC, Mesa/Cedar uses reference counting with a cycle collector.

q-big · on Nov 7, 2022

> Isn’t reference counting a type of garbage collection?

Reference counting leads to memory leaks if cycles occur. Garbage collection algorithms don't have this problem.

3a2d29 · on Nov 7, 2022

I checked and you are not correct.

Reference counting is a type of garbage collection.

q-big · on Nov 7, 2022

On the other hand:

"Garbage collection vs. ARC"

This (sub)headline only makes sense if garbage collection and ARC are different concepts.

3a2d29 · on Nov 7, 2022

Hmm I think they are referring to GC as “traditional” GC, but I will concede that they don’t seem to say that.

mark_l_watson · on Nov 7, 2022

True enough. I probably should not have inserted Swift into an Ada conversation. BTW, I am a Lisp developer, but some reason I find Swift palatable.