I think that being garbage collected is exactly the control problem in question. I'm no a systems programmer unless you count hobby microcontroller projects, b

I think that being garbage collected is exactly the control problem in question. I'm no a systems programmer unless you count hobby microcontroller projects, but my understanding is that, when a systems programmer is talking about control, they tend to be talking first and foremost about keeping tight limits on memory usage. Pointers and suchlike just happen to be key tools that help you do that.