Notes on A New Age of JVM Garbage Collectors, and The Human Factor

Yet again, another helpful keynote from a smart individual. Indeed, it is quite important for us computer scientists to understand the intricacies of our tool components to better understand what we are doing, and hopefully consider better, more elegant, ways to imagine solutions to our problems

As is expected from a JVM-language conference, I noticed a variety of these garbage collectors that at some point are included, or will be, under this virtual machine. Still, most importantly, Yakushev takes his time at explaining all these mechanisms to arrive at this conclusion: no garbage collector is strictly better than the other. I appreciate this thought a lot for it shows great humility, and, in that, great opportunities for growth and insight. The inclusion of this conclusion’s expression at the conference goes to show the mindset that the Clojure community wants to achieve: that of a welcoming place of ideas.

However, reading beyond intentions and implications, this conclusion does seem natural to arrive to. Indeed, we may get dogmatic, say, preachers of the greatness of automation. Nonetheless, automation may breed a culture of inexperience and naivety, which in turn makes problems ever so great and uncontrollable, as is clearly argued by William Langewiesche in The Human Factor, to its most utmost critical and lethal consequences. But, as is shown in such article, automation has greatly reduced mortality rates from the air-travelling industry. So, returning back to the guru, most of the time toxic and individualistic, culture of expertise could not be an ideal solution, though it may provide greater volition and, thus, greater leverage to take control of critical situations.

Ultimately, as Yakushev concludes, we must not fear any solution approach, but rather understand them so as to not lose our heads in utter nightmarish confusion, know what to do, what to use, and what to tune to solve the problems to be faced.

ClojureTV. (2019, November 22). A New Age of JVM Garbage Collectors - Alexander Yakushev. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vkd0ahWjQ

Langewiesche, W. (2014, September 17). The Human Factor. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash