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Believe it or not - many folks coding out there don't even understand the meaning "real time" in this designation. I recall asking some colleagues in a conversation, "So when you say 'real time' do you mean hard or soft?" To which they replied, "Just, real time, like in real time." I gave up pressing the point when I realized they simply meant "interactive" and didn't know such a designation existed.

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Hard real time is really only applicable when designing critical systems. Unless your anecdotal conversation was about one of those systems, it's pedantic to not simply infer soft/firm real time.

I agree. And yes though that is inferrable from my anecdote, in fact I wasn't being pedantic. I actually probably used the terminology wrong myself, but all I really meant was, "what are your latency requirements in this system? How real time?" It was a conversational confusion because they kept using the term and I thought they were using it technically. When I realized they weren't, I didn't bother trying to correct them...

[edit] I'll add this conversation stuck out in my mind simply because I was a bit surprised that no one knew what I was talking about, that's all.

Python uses reference counting. The garbage collector is only required for cyclic references and can be disabled.

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