[dathinab]

I agree refcounting is fine in state in a GUI, i.e. for using the GUI framework. But IMHO it's not fine for in state in many games.

It might also be less fine so for writing a GUI framework/library.

But it doesn't need to be IMHO as for writing the framework/library you can put your hand in the box of fancy data structures and use what's best suited even if it's implementation involves unsafe code as long as it's contained, well tested and fuzzed.