Reference counting and Garbage Collection have very clear difference: when the referenced objects are destroyed (not deallocated). In RC it happens when the count reaches zero. In GC it happens some time later. That difference is crucial for having or not having deterministic performance in your program.
Is the Pony language's GC a GC then? It runs at determinate times, namely when a behaviour (an actors' receive function, basically) finishes running... and because actors cannot share mutable state, and immutable values with more than one owner can be handled easily by a simple common parent actor, each actor's GC is completely independent of each other.
Things are rarely as clear cut as we would want to believe.
> Is the Pony language's GC a GC then? It runs at determinate times, namely when a behaviour (an actors' receive function, basically) finishes running...
It is. It might run when a behaviour finishes running, according to their docs.
Reference counting and Garbage Collection have very clear difference: when the referenced objects are destroyed (not deallocated). In RC it happens when the count reaches zero. In GC it happens some time later. That difference is crucial for having or not having deterministic performance in your program.