Comments on: .NET garbage collector making me batty http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/posts/2009/06/11/net-garbage-collector-making-me-batty/ WARNING: This blog contains writings known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:31:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: piper http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/posts/2009/06/11/net-garbage-collector-making-me-batty/comment-page-1/#comment-137982 piper Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:10:41 +0000 http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/?p=471#comment-137982 The common wisdom seems to be that calling GC.Collect() often does more harm than good. For one thing, it messes up the aging. Every time GC.Collect() is called, live objects advance another generation, so in the end even your temporary short-lifetime objects will end up being treated as if they're long-term. From what I've heard, if you think you need to GC.Collect() often, you're probably doing something wrong. But I'm still too new at this C# thing to know the difference. Personally, I think it was easier when I just used new and delete in C++. I understand new/delete, and never had any problems with memory leaks. I knew what I was doing. I don't know what the .NET garbage collector is doing 90% of the time. The common wisdom seems to be that calling GC.Collect() often does more harm than good. For one thing, it messes up the aging. Every time GC.Collect() is called, live objects advance another generation, so in the end even your temporary short-lifetime objects will end up being treated as if they’re long-term.

From what I’ve heard, if you think you need to GC.Collect() often, you’re probably doing something wrong. But I’m still too new at this C# thing to know the difference.

Personally, I think it was easier when I just used new and delete in C++. I understand new/delete, and never had any problems with memory leaks. I knew what I was doing. I don’t know what the .NET garbage collector is doing 90% of the time.

]]> By: Bruce Pierson http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/posts/2009/06/11/net-garbage-collector-making-me-batty/comment-page-1/#comment-137979 Bruce Pierson Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:49:04 +0000 http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/?p=471#comment-137979 Wow, thanks for this. I've been having bleeding eyeballs lately too from just this issue. I'm actually looking for an article or something that might be titled "how to make your classes easy to garbage collect" or something like that, because this issue is just chewing up an enormous amount of my time. I also have sprinkled "x = null" throughout my code (after doing everything possible to "x" to make sure it had nothing pointing to it), and it does seem to make a difference, but it's sure hard to understand why. Also, I'm beginning to think that the first rule of GC.Collect() should be "call early and often", especially with the GC.Collect(int generation) version. Wow, thanks for this. I’ve been having bleeding eyeballs lately too from just this issue. I’m actually looking for an article or something that might be titled “how to make your classes easy to garbage collect” or something like that, because this issue is just chewing up an enormous amount of my time.

I also have sprinkled “x = null” throughout my code (after doing everything possible to “x” to make sure it had nothing pointing to it), and it does seem to make a difference, but it’s sure hard to understand why.

Also, I’m beginning to think that the first rule of GC.Collect() should be “call early and often”, especially with the GC.Collect(int generation) version.

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