And judging by the fact that this is currently the top comment, I guess this is what other people come to HN (now) to read in the comments. Color me confused.
Did you read it? It's about GC in C++ being a relative obscure feature that is now going to be removed.
>some pedantic argument you made 4 years ago
I just shared an anecdote related to it and I thought it'd be appropriate bc. this is/was quite likely the only chance I'd have in life to talk about this very very very specific situation with people that would understand it. And yes, it's getting a few upvotes, weird thing to be mad at that but to each its own.
GC isn't the first one to victim of such lack of implementations, only EDG implemented C++98 external templates, for example.
What these features do, which are being removed, is make it easier to implement a GC allocator in a standard conforming and portable fashion. Current GCs in C++, such as Boehm's GC, depend on platform specific hacks that are incredibly brittle.
As it turns out, these features do not make it easier to actually implement a GC allocator in C++, so they are being removed.
I think most people can differentiate between a language providing a feature as a first class native property, and a library or feature built on top of that language. Most people would not argue against the position that C++ does not contain a web browser as a feature, even though it's possible to build a web browser using C++.
Similarly, C++ does not and has never had garbage collection, but for a time the standard did provide facilities that was supposed to make it easier to implement a garbage collection library.
Reading comments (loosely-related, tangential, meta, whatever) that generate potentially interesting discussion? That's pretty much the only reason I've visited HN for years and years. What do you mean "now"?