So far as I can see, this was in the C++ spec but not implemented by any major compiler, though. So I guess the technical answer to “who’s right?” would depend on the verbiage of the discussion. :shrug:
(But regardless, that sounds like a toxic environment and I’m glad you’re out of there. To think that because someone has a degree in biology, that automatically precludes them from knowing anything about computers or programming that you don’t is just the epitome of arrogance and hubris.)
If it came to that it's time to whip out the technically right big dick and remind them that C++ has had smart pointers since forever and that TRACING garbage collection is far from the only automatic garbage collection technique known to man. ;)
I'm kind of surprised they didn't try to get rid of/adapt the standard for C++/CLI on Windows since it actually uses GC for a lot of things. However, I guess the standard wasn't all that useful, especially since it mandated a lot of overhead for pointer arithmetic. My theory is that it is very difficult to come up with a general API for interacting with GC'd memory in C++ because making the API efficient depends heavily on how it is implemented.
Yeah that is the thing, Unreal C++, C++/CLI, and COM/WinRT frameworks, are the main users of automatic memory management in C++ dialects, and none of them was taken into consideration.
Some of the best programmers I've worked with have backgrounds in sciences, and it's been a delight just being around them as they apply some of that knowledge in in a different field.
(But regardless, that sounds like a toxic environment and I’m glad you’re out of there. To think that because someone has a degree in biology, that automatically precludes them from knowing anything about computers or programming that you don’t is just the epitome of arrogance and hubris.)