[pjmlp]

Reference counting is the slowest way of doing automatic memory management, the only thing about it is being the easiest to implement.

And it shows, Swift gets slammed on the ixy paper by all tracing GC languages, spending an huge amount handling counters.

It makes sense for Swift though, because it is the easiest way to integrate with Objective-C, given the failure of its GC experience , having to deal with C semantics and non-GC enabled frameworks, that lead to constant crashes.