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"In language garbage collection just makes implementing a compiler that much harder to do"

A simple copying or mark-and-sweep collector is far easier to write than even basic dataflow-analysis optimizations. Implementor effort is hardly an argument against garbage collection; implementing efficient garbage collection is no worse than implementing a good optimizer or efficient code generation.

"Basic c++ shared pointers take up pretty much 90+% of what people need in GC"

They do so in a way that is right in the programmers face, adding needless effort to writing software, and can actually wind up being slower than a modern garbage collector. Shared pointers are a mistake, not quite as bad as auto_ptr but pretty bad nonetheless; the committee should have just introduced a garbage-collected smart pointer class and kept things simple (I guess that would not be the C++ way, though).



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