Well I've honestly been pretty happy with the GC in general, but I've always felt it was underpowered, and needed improving. Weak references and the ability to retrieve a reference count are basic features of most managed-memory environments. Now we seem to be going backwards instead of forwards. Either the GC is broken or the reference count hack is broken. I don't much care which it is at this point, although the latter is obviously infinitely preferable in a wider sense, but either way, it makes the GC even less use than it was in the past, and it wasn't good enough in the first place, so it certainly can't afford to be getting worse.