[Python-Dev] Linus on garbage collection

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    Antoine> Since we're sharing links, here's Matt Mackall's take:
    Antoine> http://www.selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial-devel/2011-May/031055.html

>From that note:

    1: You can't have meaningful destructors, because when destruction
    happens is undefined. And going-out-of-scope destructors are extremely
    useful. Python is already a rather broken in this regard, so feel free
    to ignore this point.

Given the presence of cyclic data I don't see how reference counting or
garbage collection win.  Ignoring the fact that in a pure reference counted
system you won't even consider cycles for reclmation, would both RC and GC
have to punt because they can't tell which object's destructor to call
first?

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