On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 09:15:19 UTC, Chris wrote:
Yes, of course the "write-once-run-everywhere" fairy tale helped to spread Java, but while it was gaining traction GC became a feature everybody wanted. Sorry, but there is not a single book or introduction to Java that doesn't go on about how great GC is.
Just like there is no C++ book that does not rant about how great RAII is... What do you expect from a language evangelic? The first Java implementation Hotspot inherited its technology from StrongTalk, a Smalltalk successor. It was not a Java phenomenon, and FWIW both Lisp, Simula and Algol68 were garbage collected.
What was "new" with Java was compile-once-run-everywhere. Although, that wasn't new either, but it was at least marketable as new.
Java was the main catalyst for GC - or at least for people demanding it. Practically everybody who had gone through IT courses, college etc. with Java (and there were loads) wanted GC. It was a given for many people.
Well, yes, of course Java being used in universities created a demand for Java and similar languages. But GC languages were extensively used in universities before Java.
Yes, it didn't last long. But the fact that they bothered to introduce it, shows you how big GC was/is.
No, it shows how demanding manual reference counting was in Objective-C on regular programmers. GC is the first go to solution for easy memory management, and has been so since the 60s. Most high level languages use garbage collection.
