> For instance, if a language's garbage collector goes from annoyingly slow to basically invisible, it wouldn't be surprising for the preferred paradigm to chan

> For instance, if a language's garbage collector goes from annoyingly slow to basically invisible, it wouldn't be surprising for the preferred paradigm to change. Funny you give that as an example - I recall attending a talk round the turn of the century about using Java in real-time systems, and a big stickler at the time was the GC. I haven't kept up with Java (or real-time systems), but given the inroads the JDK VM has made in the embedded space, I wouldn't be surprised at all if something changed enough to make the GC not an issue for (some) real-time systems any more.