[flavio81]

>Why do people keep thinking they can use a garbage-collected language for “systems programming”?

Why do you think it can't be done?

It was already used for systems-programming in the early 80s; whole machines were programmed in Lisp in low level: TI Explorer, Xerox workstations and others.

[rfreytag]

I distinctly remember waiting quite a long while with my Symbolics locked up while it completed a GC.

[cat199]

I distinctly remember waiting quite a long while with my PC locked up while it completed a Win32 load.

[flavio81]

Can't help but recall this quote:

"Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer -- it gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. "

-- from "Real Programmers Don't use Pascal"

http://web.mit.edu/humor/Computers/real.programmers

[TeMPOraL]

GCs are better these days. And you're much more likely to wait on IO anyway, at every granularity level in the system.