It's generally true to be fair, reference counting could be used for every garbage collected language (and be much simpler). The only reason they switched to more complex schemes is they're faster on average. Even smart schemes that try to remove unnecessary ref count changes will tend to underperform compared to a (well built) tracing GC. As for a reference, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracing_garbage_collection#Per...

The point about predictability is totally valid though (and combined with simplicity is the reason many languages still pick ref counting).