What do you think?
Rate this book
The Garbage Collection Handbook: The Art of Automatic Memory Management
Published in 1996, Richard Jones’s Garbage Collection was a milestone book in the field. Since the field has changed considerably, there is a need for an updated look at where garbage collection and memory management research stands today. This book explores new challenges, such as concurrency and parallelism, while following the successful format of the previous book. It provides comprehensive, accessible coverage of important algorithms and places these algorithms within a common framework using consistent terminology. This approach facilitates comparisons between various designs. The book also examines the research literature and effective practical techniques and includes numerous case studies.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 2010
26 people are currently reading
575 people want to read
About the author
Richard Jones
4Ìýbooks1ÌýfollowerRichard is Professor of Computer Systems in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Oxford University in 1976. He spent a few years teaching at school and college before returning to higher education at the University of Kent, where he has remained ever since, receiving an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1989. In 1998 Richard co-founded the ACM/SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management, of which he was the inaugural Programme Chair. He has published numerous papers on garbage collection, heap visualisation and electronic publishing, and he regularly sits on the programme committees of leading international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Software Practice and Experience (Wiley). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Glasgow in 2005 in recognition of his research and scholarship in dynamic memory management, and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM in 2006.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 10, 2016
This book will give you excellent pointers to add to your remembered set!
February 21, 2017
Absolutely brilliant book on the subject of automatic memory management. Kudos to the authors for such a complex and thourough gathering of so huge material on the subject. Well-thought-out structure of the book makes it easy to learn even it so comprehensive. You will learn here probably every possible variant of the garbage collector, from basic concepts to some implementation details (in pseudo-doce). It puts a lot emphasis on theory, only mentioning specific implementations (i.e. JVM).
Definitely a must read for all interested in the subject. But beware - this is a book with academic-like nature. It requires a lot of attention and concentration from the reader. Very, very useful for people implementing the GC. Or people who want to understand the subject very thoroughly. The only drawback? Too little of references to outside world different than GC JVM - especially CLR. But still, this is mostly academic book so commercial implementation details are a little out of scope.
Definitely a must read for all interested in the subject. But beware - this is a book with academic-like nature. It requires a lot of attention and concentration from the reader. Very, very useful for people implementing the GC. Or people who want to understand the subject very thoroughly. The only drawback? Too little of references to outside world different than GC JVM - especially CLR. But still, this is mostly academic book so commercial implementation details are a little out of scope.
January 23, 2022
A really great overview of various GC algorithms.
Note that the second edition isn't just a revision of the first edition. It dropped some of the more basic information in favor of including new content, and explicitly says to look at the first edition for the details of some of the more basic algorithms. So you might want to get both editions.
Note that the second edition isn't just a revision of the first edition. It dropped some of the more basic information in favor of including new content, and explicitly says to look at the first edition for the details of some of the more basic algorithms. So you might want to get both editions.
Want to read
April 17, 2011eagerly waiting for this one to come out...soon, soon my pretties
July 21, 2021
Given the complexity of the topic, the book is well structured and written. As such it does help to understand the approaches and their impact. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in knowing more about what is under the hood of languages such as Java.
January 4, 2016
The best overview of garbage collection.
This book provides the best broad overview of garbage collection, while also providing enough detail that readers will be able follow and analyse more detailed literature on specific GC algorithms. Jones also provides many references, along with those on his website for further reading.
Definitely worth-while if you're planning to implement a garbage collector.
This book provides the best broad overview of garbage collection, while also providing enough detail that readers will be able follow and analyse more detailed literature on specific GC algorithms. Jones also provides many references, along with those on his website for further reading.
Definitely worth-while if you're planning to implement a garbage collector.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.