[kevingadd]

That post you linked to is actually full of some fundamental misunderstandings about GC and JS VMs :) But yes, it is the case that GC isn't a free lunch - it comes with costs and you have to design your applications to avoid the weaknesses of a given GC. It's rough.

I agree that not having to rely on the JIT to figure out how to optimize your code with 'magic' is preferable. I tend to lean towards that where possible in most of the JIT/GC-based environments I use (C#, JavaScript, etc), and it tends to pay off.