It's still automatic. You don't need to call free. The only difference is that you need to deal with whether or not things go on the heap, are refcounted, etc

It's still automatic. You don't need to call free. The only difference is that you need to deal with whether or not things go on the heap, are refcounted, etc (but this decision is in the types, so you make it once and are done). Whether or not that's "manual" depends on your point of view. I consider it to be more along the lines of choosing guarantees.