Real life shows, ref-counting, when done manually, is more error-prone then GC. Programmers make errors. As single missing release keeps your object locked in m

Real life shows, ref-counting, when done manually, is more error-prone then GC. Programmers make errors. As single missing release keeps your object locked in memory. One missing add-ref crashes your program. Microsoft soon learned this lesson after the introduction of COM and quickly added smart pointers. Still not a good solution. For their followup technology (.Net) they used GC. Lession learned.