As well as before Python got cyclic GC, while we're at it.

I've been thinking that Perl, Python, Ruby, and GNU Smalltalk have really hurt the case of Garbage Collection by being so Open and visible, and yet having such low expectations for so much of their early life. In the meantime, Java has really helped it by putting some great GC technology in front of a large audience. (Basically lagging the commercial Smalltalk engines by a few years for the past 10. They've since caught up and surpassed.) The new Javascript engines are also doing this.

(At one job, I wrote an infinite loop background process that did nothing but allocate memory, and ran it in the test environment of the Smalltalk trading application I was maintaining. Unless you did certain intensive operations, you couldn't tell the difference. The GC handled it without a hiccup. I could've put that into production, and almost no one would've had any idea it was there.)