[mgottein]

I personally believe one of the biggest reasons for the popularity of managed code is GC. Manual memory management is pretty hard to get right, even the C++ stl offers reference counted pointers as a form of automatic memory management

[dbaupp]

I think that is a rather common belief... "Managed" is exactly referring to automatic memory management meaning the defining feature of the category is literally GC.

[jstimpfle]

Wikipedia disagrees. "Managed code is computer program source code that requires and will execute only under the management of a Common Language Runtime virtual machine, typically the .NET Framework, or Mono. The term was coined by Microsoft."

[dbaupp]

Huh. By that definition Java isn't managed, which seems to be missing the point and not as nearly useful as a broad category like everyone outside the Microsoft ecosystem uses it. That said, even if "CLR" is sensibly replaced with "CLR, JVM or similar", it does seem like I have the etymology/definition wrong, thanks.

[jstimpfle]

Yes, I also think of Java as "managed". But the common idea of "managed" seems to be more than only "garbage collected".