I think the primary reason is an accident of history. There was a time where Java programmers were encouraged to not even think about allocation deallocation: "

I think the primary reason is an accident of history. There was a time where Java programmers were encouraged to not even think about allocation deallocation: "dont worry about it, we have it all covered, use it as freely as free love". The result of all that was a lot of bloated poorly performing software that paid no attention to how much allocations they were making. I still see the effects of that propaganda on many junior programmers. GC makes it safe, not free, and that message was never stressed as much it should have been. The other reason is that languages that make you allocate explicitly with some burdensome syntax, that allocation is in your face, you cannot be unaware of it. Whereas in other languages someone may be blissfully unaware and still churn out pieces of usable software. The bite comes much later. On languages that were not designed around garbage collection, it is usually a whole lot harder to avoid allocation.