Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation sequencing tool

Re:Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation s... by pizlonator on Thursday April 23, 2020 @11:34PM (#22964369)

Great point. Here’s the issue: there are tons of ways of doing reference counting in C++. Some go all-in with implied borrowing. Some make great use of C++’s various references. Some use the reference counting only for a subset of objects and rely on unique_ptr for hot things.

So, there is no universal answer to how C++ reference counting compares to GC.

There is a well known answer, that you’re probably referring to, if you reference count every object and you do it soundly by conservatively having every pointer be a smart pointer. But it just isn’t how everyone who does reference counting in C++ does it, and I was surprised because I’m used to folks going in the other direction: being unsound as fuck but hella fast.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation s... by kllrnohj on Friday April 24, 2020 @02:21PM (#22971342)

> there are tons of ways of doing reference counting in C++

There are but critically there are also a lot of ways to not do ref counting at all. C++ isn't a refcounted language, it's a language where you can use refcounting (shared_ptr), but you don't have to (unique_ptr, value types). It's not even recommended to be primarily refcounted.

They chose a really odd subset of C++ to use here (shared_ptr exclusively), very unorthodox and not something I've ever seen elsewhere or recommended.

[ Parent | on HN ]