Garbage collection

What Hacker News says

1. _a_a_a_Apr 2023
   Not an expert but bear in mind that there can't really be one single thing called a 'good' garbage collector, because the behaviour of the programs that produce the garbage can be hugely varied, and the garbage so produced can likewise be hugely varied, and how you want to recover it can depend on the platform you're running on (if embedded, you probably want reference counting the tight memory, in other circumstances you might be very happy just to leak everything and let the OS clean up at the end. Edit: yes, it's sometimes ok to leak).

   As somebody says elsewhere, it's multidimensional issue and a single dimensional garbage collector can't be a brilliant match for everything.

   The book "Garbage Collection" by Richard Jones, recently discussed on HN, is something I'd highly recommend you buy and read.

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2. michaelfeathersMay 2016
   There is a lot of data on this topic.

   This is a good starting place: http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automati...

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3. WalterBrightApr 2014
   "Garbage Collection" by Richard Jones

   I'd recommend the Dragon Book, but it's a bit dated these days.

   Anything by Agner Fogg is good for optimization.

   There's always the D forum, where we're always going hammer and tong over every detail of how things work.

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4. cjensenJun 2012
   "Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management" by Richard Jones and Rafael D Lins.

   Very readable and approachable. I read the entire book, which I almost never do with technical books.

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5. silentbicycleJul 2010
   A simple mark & sweep or stop & copy GC. Collectors which are incremental (work in small steps, not one full pass at a time) and/or generational (using several smaller generations, which are collected individually) break up GC pauses into something less disruptive.

   For a good overview, read "Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques" by Paul Wilson (check google scholar). Richard Jones's _Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management_ is more in depth.

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6. hgaJan 2010
   Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael L. Scott: The explanations of many things I'd read in other sources are no less than fantastic, I now understand a bunch of things I had only superficially "got" previously. http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics-Third-..., check out the overview and reviews.

   Coders at Work by Peter Seibel: By far the best of this type of book (well, not counting the '80s classic Programmers at Work which I haven't read since then), one of the best Lisp authors interviews in depth a lot of really interesting and/or important people, from James Zawinski to Donald Knuth, with Javascript, static FP and PARC people, Guy Steele, Peter Norvig, Ken Thompson, Fran Allen (really important interview which points out how C/C++ to the exclusion of truly high level languages have been a disaster when used beyond their proper niches), etc. All are masters who've gotten their hands dirty, many are theory people as well. http://www.amazon.com/Coders-at-Work-Peter-Seibel/dp/1430219...

   Garbage Collection by Jones Lins: Pretty much the only book in the field (except for the forthcoming Advanced Garbage Collection sequel in the middle of this year), covers the territory as of the mid-90s. Much more fun than trying to track down 100 individual papers and trying to make sense of it all. Exposition is clear and you get a real feeling for the subtleties of the field (especially when you try fun things like generational and/or concurrent GC). http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automati...

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