> Because the GC is infectious. As soon as your dependency needs it (and IIRC even parts of the standard library did/do), it becomes painful if not impossible for you to avoid it.
Isn't this the same for Nim? The standard library doesn't provide pure functions for parsing strings, it provides functions which generate exceptions. Exceptions use the heap, it's hard to get programs to compile with the garbage collector turned off, so everyone just recommends using ARC.
I don't know Nim, maybe it's the same? If it is I guess that would probably also explain why Nim hasn't replaced C or C++ either.
Though do note that (academic discussions notwithstanding) refcounting is not what people usually mean by GC in these contexts. Having to put up with refcounting is one thing (people already do it manually anyway), but having to put up with a generational or other complex GC is quite something else.
Isn't this the same for Nim? The standard library doesn't provide pure functions for parsing strings, it provides functions which generate exceptions. Exceptions use the heap, it's hard to get programs to compile with the garbage collector turned off, so everyone just recommends using ARC.