I try to not think about it. GC'd languages have their own weird performance advantages. GC is not pure downside in performance terms (at least for .NET). It a

I try to not think about it. GC'd languages have their own weird performance advantages. GC is not pure downside in performance terms (at least for .NET). It actually brings some upside to the table. Deferring memory management to a batched, asynchronous background process can scale better in some applications. Your physical hardware likes to work in batches of contiguous things wherever possible. The only case where GC burns me is by introducing latency to the application. In situations where I cannot tolerate long GC pauses, my solution is to go straight through hell - invoke GC on purpose every time my hot path iterates. This ensures that at any given moment, the amount of trash to be collected is minimal and should incur the smallest delay. This works especially well in things like game loops where you have a very obvious, well-compensated edge upon which to collect garbage.