Garbage collection

It sure looks like I'm geeking out at the moment.....

I've just read an article recommended by Y-combinator by Joel Spolsky entitled "How Microsoft lost the API War". The article was written the best part of three years ago and is all the more interesting for that. (Roger: But Joel, Longhorn did ship in 2006; Joel: Vista shipped, but Vista's not Longhorn). The range of topics covered by the article is wide and to my mind the most interesting part is the section "Why Automatic Tranmisions Win the Day". This strongly advocates the use of programming systems with automatic garbage collection. I know from way back in my past, that the INMOS CAD system made huge strides when the developers added garbage collection into the programming system. Certainly unloading programmers from having to manage memory manually frees off their brains to do something more useful.