Re:Verso – web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
by ec109685 on Sunday August 11, 2024 @08:06PM
(#41220138)
I don’t think Apple would want to sacrifice the determinism that refcounting provides for garbage collection. iOS apps are still more buttery smooth than Android in many cases.
Re:Verso – web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
by consteval on Monday August 12, 2024 @09:25AM
(#41224109)
Reference counted objects have deterministic lifetimes, like Rust or C++. Garbage collected languages don't have that. Essentially a reference counter automates some* of the ideas of the borrow checker, with a runtime cost as opposed to a compile time one.
The great thing about automatic reference counting is you can elide the incrementing and decrementing a lot of the time. Stronger guarantees, such as saying "this object is single-threaded" lead to even more optimizations.
I agree. People's perspectives differ. It abhor `async/await` in Rust. It has poisoned the well IMO for asynchronous Rust programming. (I adore asynchronous programming - I do not need to pretend my code is synchronous)
But that is taste, not a comment on poor engineering!
The lack of the borrow checker in Swift is what makes it approachable for newcomers, as opposed to Rust which is a harsh mistress.
But reference counting is such a silly idea. Swift really should have a garbage collector with a mechanism or subset to do that very small part of programming that cannot be done with a garbage collector. That would have been design!
I fear that Swift is going to get a borrow checker bolted on - and have the worst of both worlds....