Rust Memory Management: Ownership vs. Reference Counting

(slicker.me)

19 points by vinhnx2 days ago

3 comments

  • baranul14 minutes ago
    Rust is becoming less special in this area. Languages such as Dlang, Vlang, and Julia have added optional ownership and borrowing. As these offerings are optional, many can see this as greater programmer freedom to decide what to use for their projects, with languages that are easier to use or read.
  • ellie_kim982 days ago
    [dead]
  • jonathanstrange1 hour ago
    [flagged]
    • conradludgate31 minutes ago
      I miss the clear distinction between exclusive access and shared access when I work in GC languages. Knowing clearly when you are allowed/expected to modify a value, and when you are expected to only read the value ends up being very useful and it has poisoned my brain when working in Python/JS/Go where some values are internally pointers and there's no standard to learn once for when a mutation is safe or if you should always make a copy
      • quietbritishjim15 minutes ago
        One way to deal with this in GC languages is to have a separate read-only view on a mutable object. The example that comes to mind, though it's a bit more complex than a view on a simple data structure is CancellationToken (read only) vs CancellationTokenSource (writable in the sense of having "cancel()" method) in C#. I'm not saying it's better than proper mutability support but it does work well enough sometimes.
    • zigzag3121 hour ago
      Reference counting is a form of garbage collection.