I keep thinking that the Next Big Language will be a thing of re-evolution, e.g. someone going back to C and retracing steps of C++ but in a more sensible way.
Also, on a tangential note -- the garbage collection is a huge deal if an adoption of the NBL among C/++ programmers is considered. The only way is to have the garbage collection optional. Similarly to how D has it, but much much simpler. Something like adding new_gc operator (or a malloc_gc function) and to have two kinds of memory blocks - manually managed and garbage collected...
Anyway, it's just a thought from an old fart camp :)
That sounds like Objective-C. One of the reasons I first liked working with Objective-C (before the iPhone made it trendy) was that it seemed like a much better-executed version of what C++ was aiming to be. It has optional garbage collection now, but only on the Mac. Its type system is even close to what Steve described in this article.
malloc'ed item could be the same as malloc_gc'd, but with its reference count artificially bumped up by 1. free() would decrement the count and the item will be picked up by the GC later on. If there's a provision for an immediate disposal of unreferenced items, then we are back to the standard malloc/free behaviour in case when malloc and malloc_gc items are not mixed.
Also, on a tangential note -- the garbage collection is a huge deal if an adoption of the NBL among C/++ programmers is considered. The only way is to have the garbage collection optional. Similarly to how D has it, but much much simpler. Something like adding new_gc operator (or a malloc_gc function) and to have two kinds of memory blocks - manually managed and garbage collected...
Anyway, it's just a thought from an old fart camp :)