"To me, garbage collection is a hack," Garbage collection trades the problems gc brings with less program complexity and programmer time. It's a degree of free

"To me, garbage collection is a hack," Garbage collection trades the problems gc brings with less program complexity and programmer time. It's a degree of freedom that one can choose (if one can choose the language one uses). "Reserve memory for this entity when I declare it and release it when I don't seem to be using anymore" is huge leap in getting computers to assist us in our tasks. But sure, there are lot of problems domains where this is not a good thing.