Memory management is a distraction: Actually, no. I don’t use that many lexical lifetimes and use instead smart pointers. So yes, I have to understand the differences between a Box, an Rc and an Arc, but my productivity is not impacted compared to Node.JS or Go.
then you are simply using reference-counted pointers right? like C++. with the built-in problem that cycles in reference-counted pointers will leak memory, so you have to manually break cycles with weak-references.
Rc/Arc make their content immutable, so if you don’t add interior mutability yourself (via Mutex, etc.) then they are free of cycles too! They’re not always used for shared-mutable state. In async code you often just need to make data safely sendable to a thread that may outlive your scope.
Content of Rc/Arc can be safely borrowed, so even if you need them in some places, you can still write a decent chunk of code without touching these types directly. This reduces refcounting overhead and the amount of code that needs to be mindful about cycles.
then you are simply using reference-counted pointers right? like C++. with the built-in problem that cycles in reference-counted pointers will leak memory, so you have to manually break cycles with weak-references.
On the surface it’s similar, but:
You can’t have cycles with
Box.Rc/Arcmake their content immutable, so if you don’t add interior mutability yourself (viaMutex, etc.) then they are free of cycles too! They’re not always used for shared-mutable state. In async code you often just need to make data safely sendable to a thread that may outlive your scope.Content of
Rc/Arccan be safely borrowed, so even if you need them in some places, you can still write a decent chunk of code without touching these types directly. This reduces refcounting overhead and the amount of code that needs to be mindful about cycles.