Re performance: It's not a question of raw speed, it's a question of predictability. GCs introduce unpredictable hiccups and require significantly more RAM (GCs

Re performance: It's not a question of raw speed, it's a question of predictability. GCs introduce unpredictable hiccups and require significantly more RAM (GCs are happiest when the working set is very small but the heap is very large - basically, the greater the percentage of RAM used is garbage, the happier the GC will be) Whether or not you can afford this very much is an upfront thing. You cannot push something like this off until later. For things like a web browser or game engine or other highly-interactive, highly-latency-sensitive, high-ram-using thing it's known far in advance that the GC will be a curse. This is why C++ continues to be the language of choice for those sorts of systems. Control over memory is crucial for them.