There are plenty of people who criticize C++ for not having a standard
garbage collector. Herb Sutter explains why C++ doesn’t
support automatic mark-compact garbage collection but does have a
formal ABI for mark-sweep style collectors and supports reference
counting through the new unique_ptr, shared_ptr, and weak_ptr
types. The article’s comments help shed some light on a very
important C++ viewpoint: deterministic destructors are super helpful.
The C++11 FAQ maintained by Bjarne Stroustrup contains more information about the new automatic pointer types.