[pizlonator]

I think I agree with all of that.

My point is that if in the course of discovering common patterns you find that the optimizer must do a heroic optimization with a 10x upside when it hits and weird flakiness about when it hits, then that’s a good indication that maybe a language feature that lets you skip the optimization and let the programmer sort of dictate the outcome is a good idea.

By the way, avoiding GC is not the same thing as having value types. Avoiding GC altogether is super hard. But value types aren’t that hard and aren’t about entirely avoiding GC - just avoiding it in specific cases.