On the other hand, I've seen a few Java applications that leaked memory (and one case of leaking file descriptors) because developers had mostly gotten away wit

On the other hand, I've seen a few Java applications that leaked memory (and one case of leaking file descriptors) because developers had mostly gotten away with not thinking about resource ownership. Removing data races isn't the only advantage of refusing to generate binaries when the programmer appears to need to think a bit more about ownership.