Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!border-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!border-3.nntp.ord.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-3.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:18:37 +0000 From: steve g Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Resources to learn common lisp? References: <874inbqdz7.fsf@mariorosell.es> <110guci$26cjr$1@dont-email.me> <110i789$2iqm8$7@dont-email.me> <110j4qk$2q1p4$1@dont-email.me> <110l0v9$3av52$1@dont-email.me> <110nf0q$3vra6$3@dont-email.me> <87y0gg62cx.fsf@nightsong.com> <110rfqf$142ot$1@dont-email.me> <111ne5o$vsm3$3@dont-email.me> <111pbk6$36pi7$1@dont-email.me> <111sb7u$3ua8h$7@dont-email.me> <111t73h$6a1k$1@dont-email.me> <1126vrf$31p54$4@dont-email.me> <87wludtv85.fsf@gmail.com> <114e3qf$18m2n$12@dont-email.me> <877bm5ux0t.fsf@gmail.com> <1150bqc$3blde$8@dont-email.me> <87zeyuvru2.fsf@gmail.com> <115bam0$2p9mf$3@dont-email.me> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:18:36 -0400 Message-ID: <87fr0la1zn.fsf@gmail.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Iity6BAJZ5AkOIVD65taZJSYo74= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 36 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-GV5QROYStanJGwj9HMUvDhVwOoNBLglZGu/Iz4+EXzMJ7nRODd+5QTHsWscG2gQv1ghlWNhmbweOcWW!h7+SIcGYb5nydqyxm8jK7D7awReGlhy9QVOA0stFqy/+EZY= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.lisp:61373 Lawrence D’Oliveiro writes: > On Sun, 09 Aug 2026 18:42:29 -0400, steve g wrote: > >> On Wed, 5 Aug 2026 22:00:45 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote: >> >>> If garbage collection is so good, why don’t high-performance >>> operating system kernels use it? Why do they prefer >>> reference-counting instead? >> >> to be a high performance kernel you should not need to do garbage >> collection. > > But isn’t that supposed to be better than reference-counting? Offering > higher performance or something? you must be kidding me. GC is always been considered slow. >> GC is for user space, not kernel space. Kernel developers are >> usually very good programmers. > > Do different laws of physics apply in kernel space or something? Yes they do. It is like radio circuits; Take ohms law and throw it out. > And/or is that an admission that garbage collection is not for “very > good programmers”? Most programmers that are talented enough to write a kernel can probably handle malloc and free. That is why they don't use them. People who are not interested in maximum speed would probably have no problem with using a GC. Reference counting is not unholy - it is like using a goto statement.