[atilaneves]

> Are there any downsides beyond the niggle the author mentioned?

For me, using a GC is just a lot easier than making the borrow checker happy. Given that in practice it's rare that the GC is the bottleneck (and when it is I write around it after profiling), the trade-off just isn't worth it for me.

> Are compilation speeds an issue for anyone?

Yes, it's pretty slow to compile.

[imtringued]

You can't "write around" the GC in Java. The JVM will reach the max heap size quickly unless you avoid all allocations.

[pjmlp]

There are plenty of GC enabled systems programming languages that offer all C++ set of features for memory allocations, besides the GC.

Java isn't one of them, at least until Valhalla comes along.

Still there are Java APIs for off GC heap allocation, which bypass that limitation.