Why many programmers don't like GC?

[Arafel]

On 18/1/21 13:41, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> Yes, it is natural that the current D population don't mind the current 
> GC. Otherwise they would be gone... but then you have to factor in all 
> the people that go through the revolving door and does not stay. If they 
> stayed the eco system would be better. So the fact that they don't... is 
> effecting everyone in a negative way (also those that har happy with the 
> runtime).

I must be in the minority here because one of the reasons why I started 
using D was precisely because it HAS a GC with full support. I wouldn't 
even have considered it if it hadn't.

For what I usually do (non-critical server-side unattended processing) 
latency is most obviously not an issue, and I for me not having to worry 
about memory management and being able to focus on the task at hand is a 
requirement.

So I think that several key people (in the community) have different, 
sometimes even contradicting issues they feel very strongly about, and 
think these are the most important ones, or the ones that move most people.

This is quite OT (perhaps I should have split the topic), but I think 
that instead of focusing on what people dislike about D, it would help 
to ask people as well why they DID choose D.

In my case, I'm coming from a mostly Java (with a touch of C/C++) and 
was looking for:

* C/C++/Java-like syntax
* OOP support (sorry, I'm too used to that ;-) )
* Proper meta-programing / templates (without Java's generics / type 
erasure)
* Compiled language
* GC (IOW, no worries about memory management)
* Full linux support