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Comment by WildUtah | Hacker News Reader

Anyone can define a bat as a bird because it's an animal with wings that flies. But you'll soon find that isn't a useful conceptual distinction.

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Well, you are free to disagree with the computer science experts in the field of language design, but it won't make it less true.

More like, you're free to ignore the common-sense suggestion to examine the algorithms used as they pertain to your use case, just because someone once said "In theory these two things are equivalent". But it won't help you once you hit the inevitable edge case.

Terminology is useful right up until it isn't. Resting on definitions rather than seeking proper descriptions is a great way to fail spectacularly.

I agree with you, when people start trying to make these sorts of arguments I like to link the following video from Richard Feynman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45trtAfWhYg

Not someone, the main language researchers in the field of memory management.

Not a random dude on Internet.

You're doing exactly what I'm talking about, you're trying to show how the authority you consider authoritative is right, not trying to understand how in a very real sense, reference counting also is not garbage collection because it lacks some critical feature from someone else's point of view.

If you're right, you're just some guy referencing an authority. Yay you. If you're wrong, you're totally ... all over the point of what someone else is saying. Instead of trying to force us to see how you're right, why not try to see how someone else isn't wrong?

It is not me that is right or wrong, it is the top researchers in the field of programming languages.

The papers of computer science, written since the field exists, speak for themselves. One just has to read them.

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