[spacechild1]

> My honest opinion is that it is 2021 and it's about time we let computers manage memory already.

In the field where I am working (realtime audio), that is just not possible. I don't want to have a garbage collector pause in the audio thread. In fact, I can't do any dynamic memory allocations at all (without a special realtime memory allocator). Other fields, like medical devices, flight control, embedded systems, etc. have even tighter constraints.

Manual memory management is not only about performance, but also about predictability. This kind of low level control is one of the main reasons why people use C/C++ in the first place.