[jesserayadkins2]

My language (Lily) handles the problem by trying to avoid the gc where it can.

Lily is statically-typed, built-in classes can't be inherited from, and there's no C-like casting.

With those rules in mind, most objects can't become cyclical. It's impossible for a list of strings to loop back onto itself, for example. It helps that the value classes backing enums (like Option and Either) are immutable, which I so far suspect prevents a cycle.

That at least allows you to group classes into three groups:

These never cycle (Integer)

These may cycle (List)

These always cycle (Dynamic, linked lists?)

[ori_b]

One of the goals I have is to keep the required runtime absolutely minimal, as well -- I'm ok with the compiler inserting some user-defined code in the appropriate places to initialize or release values, but I'd like to avoid growing the required code in https://github.com/oridb/mc/tree/master/rt unless it's absolutely necessary.

And yes, that ~60 lines per platform is really all that's needed. (And actually, I should be able to merge more of it for SysV platforms.)

So, I've thought about a GC, but I'd really prefer not to have it.

[girvo]

Can I just say that Lily is amazingly neat, and is exactly the language I was working on myself! Seems we have a shared delusion ;)