A bit of both, IMO. RAII is a design pattern, not a language feature. However, it’s a pattern made possible by the semantics of destructors and object lifetimes

A bit of both, IMO. RAII is a design pattern, not a language feature. However, it’s a pattern made possible by the semantics of destructors and object lifetimes in C++. The creator of C++ (Stroustrup) developed RAII within the first few years of the language’s existence.