Comment by WalterBright

Personally, I frankly do not need the borrow checker. I have been writing manual memory management code for so long I have simply internalized how to avoid having problems with it. I've been called arrogant for saying this, but it's true.

But I still like the borrow checker style of programming because it makes the code easier to understand.

I find it convenient in the D compiler implementation to use the GC for the AST memory management, as the algorithms that manipulate it are easier if they needn't concern themselves with memory management. A borrow checker approach doesn't fit it comfortably, either.

Many of the data structures persist to the end of the program, as a compiler is a batch program. No memory management strategy is even necessary for those.