Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression the JVM has a stop the world GC and uses this by default (although it does have other GCs available). I'm also under the impression that V8 and the Erlang VM, as well as the stock VMs for Ruby and Python, etc at least stop execution during the mark phase! Go has a fairly basic GC and stops execution to do its housekeeping.
Yes, it's easier to write safe applications in a managed language, but it comes at a performance price due to the GC.
It's far easier to write an app in C++ that performs well. There's no overhead of a virtual machine (there goes the safety...) and manual memory management tends to also yield better results in terms of footprint and CPU time when done properly. C++ gives you the tools to implement a fast process with a small memory footprint; managed languages do not unless they're using a null GC! C++ also gives you the tools tools to write a sloppy heap of shit, but then again, Java affords such a facility too!!
Garbage collection simply isn't free. Maintaining the lie that a system has infinite memory comes with a price.
I'm not making the point that GC is evil, and I write code in managed languages frequently, but I am making the point that it's really only appropriate for situations in which you're paying for the hardware, and using a managed language makes good business sense.
I agree with you, but I do want to point out one thing: there exists a happy medium between unsafe, no-overhead manual memory management (C++) and safe, GC'd managed memory (Java). For example, unique pointers in Rust enforce compile-time memory safety, without imposing any runtime overhead whatsoever and without forcing the programmer to manually allocate and free. In other words, there does exist such a thing as safe, no-overhead, automatic memory management, if you're willing to accept the single-ownership restriction of linear types (which in practice doesn't seem very onerous at all).
Yes, it's easier to write safe applications in a managed language, but it comes at a performance price due to the GC.
It's far easier to write an app in C++ that performs well. There's no overhead of a virtual machine (there goes the safety...) and manual memory management tends to also yield better results in terms of footprint and CPU time when done properly. C++ gives you the tools to implement a fast process with a small memory footprint; managed languages do not unless they're using a null GC! C++ also gives you the tools tools to write a sloppy heap of shit, but then again, Java affords such a facility too!!
Garbage collection simply isn't free. Maintaining the lie that a system has infinite memory comes with a price.
I'm not making the point that GC is evil, and I write code in managed languages frequently, but I am making the point that it's really only appropriate for situations in which you're paying for the hardware, and using a managed language makes good business sense.