Yes for example many Python users switched to Go, a native code GC language, and are satisfied with the performance.
There’s also the middle ground of Swift’s memory management which uses compiler-elided refcounting - i.e. the compiler detects when a count goes up then down again and removes those operations.
> There’s also the middle ground of Swift’s memory management which uses compiler-elided refcounting - i.e. the compiler detects when a count goes up then down again and removes those operations.
In the face of threading that's not a safe optimisation; if another thread decrements the refcount inbetween those two removed operations, boom. The compiler will have to track every variable that crosses threads or something.
There’s also the middle ground of Swift’s memory management which uses compiler-elided refcounting - i.e. the compiler detects when a count goes up then down again and removes those operations.