P.S. "I need real-time responses when playing chess across the internet"
Since this is a chess _client_ that displays moves received via the internet, it's hard to see how you "need" such a thing, since the user won't be able to discern whether a delay is caused by the GC or by network traffic (assuming that GC delays in a chess client are discernible at all, which I doubt). And in any case, if you force garbage collection immediately after a received move is displayed, then all the time collecting will occur while the user's brain is detecting and processing the freshly displayed move, which takes much much longer than the garbage collection. "and on another project I need the same response for robotics work" Well, Araq might have responded differently if you had said you're building a robot, rather than an internet chess client. (And again you said "during development", and that may be what he found bizarre.) Finally, you may want to watch this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUJcYTnPWCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUJcYTnPWCg)
