[dilap]

Java: But you're still chasing pointers for an array of objects right? Vs being able to just say, "I want this array to be X objects, all laid out in in a row in memory." I'm not a java programmer, but I'm pretty sure I've seen code that used primitive types rather than classes to get around this.

Actually, even Go isn't helping as much as it could here -- sometimes you want to have an array of objects that lays out each column (field) of memory contiguously, which Go gives you no easy way to do. But then neither does C or C++.

Isn't allocation just a couple instructions for basically GC languages?

[pcwalton]

> Isn't allocation just a couple instructions for basically GC languages?

If those GC'd languages have a precise generational GC with bump allocation in the nursery. Go doesn't (and the proposed GC design doesn't allow for this, unfortunately).