Despite being pioneered by Lisp systems in the 1950s, garbage collection has taken a remarkably long time to reach the mainstream; Java was the first C-family language to sport it. Scripting languages like Perl, Python and Ruby by and large lack it completely or else use rudimentary reference-counting or primitive mark-and-sweep garbage collection. C++ programmers are left out almost entirely.
This is a pity, because garbage collection is critically important to the construction of reliable code when working with the complex datastructures characteristic of modern programming — and because the last half a century has seen tremendous progress in the design and implementation of high-performance garbage collection subsystems.
Use of a state of the art multigeneration garbage collector was integral to the SML/NJ design and implementation effort from its 1990 inception; it has gone through repeated re-implementations since then as theory and practice advanced.
Mythryl, happily, inherits the fruits of that effort, allowing the Mythryl programmer to dispense with memory management issues and woes in favor of more interesting design and implementation issues.