[vmarsy]

I think the reason the C++ community has a strong bias against garbage collection as you say is because it has a bias against all sort of unpredictable/unwanted behavior. That's the essence of c++: pay only for what you need/want/use. Garbage collection wouldn't be appropriate in some situations.

So re-implementing your own GC algorithm in the special case where you need it is seen as acceptable. That deffered pointer could be part of the standard library as long as those who don't need to use it don't pay any performance overhead