[bcantrill]

Java GC is -- in my experience -- every bit of the nightmare of node.js, if not more so. Even for those for whom this is their domain of expertise, "GC tuning" boils down to superstition, voodoo and witchcraft -- which are euphemisms for simply changing the GC algorithm until things seem to improve. These changes (in my experience) often move the problem around without solving it, and when deep in a nightmare Cassandra tuning exercise, one exasperated domain expert said to me: "Why would one ever write a database in a garbage collected language?!"

I think the question was profound (if accidentally so), and I agree with him: when performance and footprint matter, it is reasonable to expect software engineers to manage their resources in a predictable manner -- which excludes garbage collected environments.

Rust is a very interesting candidate for such environments, and I think the experience described here is quite helpful for those of us seriously contemplating the language.

[thanatropism]

> "GC tuning" boils down to superstition, voodoo and witchcraft -- which are euphemisms for simply changing the GC algorithm until things seem to improve

Then, that is what "tuning" usually means in engineering. See also "PID loop tuning".