Indeed, it isn’t caused by it at all. struct S { int s; }; int *i; { struct S s; i = &s.s; } *i = 7; // and in C++ you can even write in

Indeed, it isn’t caused by it at all. struct S { int s; }; int *i; { struct S s; i = &s.s; } *i = 7; // and in C++ you can even write int& j = *i; No GC or finalizers involved here. Hope you have ubsan. The point being that GC is sort of a red herring in the entire discussion. Easily subverted lifetime and ownership semantics are going to be error prone irrespective.