GoKawiilBaby’s Second Garbage Collector
how is garbbage collected
how langauge get memory A very confused programming neophyte
Thirteen years ago, in two thousand thirteen, Baby’s First Garbage Collector was born. Now he's grown up. He's outgrown his shallow kiddie pool and his paddles. He's entering puberty. Soon he'll be in college. They grow up so fast.
Bob Nystrom wasn't kidding about Baby's First Garbage Collector. It absolutely does collect garbage, and a version of it absolutely did ship with my dynamic language, lone lisp. In fact, if I remember correctly, lone actually still ships with it, believe it or not. He wasn't kidding about communion with the Elder Gods either. I can feel my magic level increasing. Wizardry is within reach.
Baby's First Garbage Collector is a starting point though. It's not meant to stop there. It's meant to grow into something better and more complex as it morphs around the actual language it supports. It's meant to reach its final form. Perfectly Ultimate Great Garbage Collector.
It'll be quite a few turns before that happens but chronicling its evolution is still going to be awesome. It's coming along nicely.
Trouble in the primitive lands
Baby's First Garbage Collector is what is called a precise garbage collector. It knows where all the objects are at all times. It knows where they live. It engages in Orwellian surveillance of those objects. It is always ready to stop the world and reap those objects the second they step out of the stack. It oppresses the objects with such precision and automation, it is impossible for even a single one of those objects to escape this fate. Thus it rules the objects with a silicon fist, quite literally deciding which objects live or die, and even when they die. Such is the life of an object in the dynamic lands...
It was only a matter of time before a resistance formed. The poor objects wanted freedom from the tyranny of the garbage collector. They needed to find a way to escape. But how? Where could they go? They didn't know. They just knew they had to escape the stack.
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