[edoloughlin]

Garbage collection was seen as garbage by C/C++ programmers ("What's the big deal with adding a free() call? Stupid lazy people.")

As a former C++ programmer working on a large code base when/before Java was introduced, garbage collection was seen as expensive and slow, but definitely not a waste of time. I would have given my right arm to be free (pun intended) from the need to manually manage my heap across threads. Adding a free() call was never not a big deal.

[froh]

exactly, it was never about attitude, it's about deterministic real-time. C/C++ are low level systems languages for real-time control applications. In that case garbage collection, a non-deterministic unpredictable stop-the world pause, simply is out. so you have to have a base language without GC. you can use garbage collection via libraries in c/c++ if you don't need deterministic real time. It never was about "not liking" GC or "thinking it's garbage".