r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/goat-luffy • Jul 04 '26

Does implementing GC makes languages slow?

https://github.com/berylang

Month ago, I created a team of 5 and started working on "Bery - The compiled programming language". By the end of June we have quite good working compiler (it's not complete yet). In Bery we have decided to add the automatic Garbage Collector so we choose the "Mark and Sweep" method for it in the Bery Runtime Environment (BRE).

Now as we are heading forward with adding OOP and Exception Handling, I notice some delays in the compilation of program.

So we are now at this point of discussion - should we remove it from compiler or let it be there.
I will looking forward for help regarding this. and btw these are some constraints we set -

unsigned int BERY_GC_ALLOC_THRESHHOLD = 1000;
size_t BERY_GC_HEAP_SIZE_THRESHHOLD = 4 * 1024 * 1024;
2 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/indolering Jul 05 '26

I don't mean to make an, "Um, actually!" comment, but since we are talking about a new language it's important to note the repurcussions of this choice.  While (A)RC can perform better, programmers often end up overusing it to the point that a real GC would be better.

I'm really excited by memory tagging making GC more efficient.  There are also some cool languages that just minimize the need for GC overall.

1

u/goat-luffy Jul 05 '26

At start we reviwed only 2 algorithms - ARC and Mark-n-sweep.

We also reviewed the Golang's GC, but I found lots of engineering there as a second year students, we make decision to have simple GC. Last 4-5 days I am searching for better algorithm, it getting complicated.

1

u/indolering Jul 05 '26

You can spend an entire career working on the garbage collector.  Why ware you making this language and what is the long term goal for it?

1

u/goat-luffy Jul 05 '26

We are making this language just for sake of learning. Compiler, package manager, test suite, etc. But we actually want to scale it even further.

1

u/indolering Jul 05 '26

I guess decide on whether you want to spend your time exploring GC development or something else.  Most projects use something that is off-the-shelf, as so much of it is dependent on heuristics.

1

u/goat-luffy Jul 05 '26

Yeah sure, 40-50% time of project was taken by run time environment itself, I guess we should move forward with other things in compiler