On Friday, 8 July 2016 at 12:46:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
As for GC, it's hard to tell. When D was actually (not hypothetically) created, GC was _the_ big thing. Java had just taken off, people were pissed off with C/C++, programming and coding was becoming more and more common.
Errr... Garbage collection was common since the 60s. One problem with GC in the late 80s and early 90s is that it requires twice as much memory and memory was scarce so reference counting was/is the better option. You could make the same argument about templates, memory...
I also don't recall anyone being in awe of Java having GC. The big selling point was portability and the very hyped up idea that Java would run well in the browser, which did not materialize. Another selling point was that it wasn't Microsoft...
