It would suffice to say I don't always agree with even some of the best in the field, and they don't always agree with each other, either. Anders Hejlsberg isn't exactly a random n00b when it comes to programming language design and still called the C# equivalent a "destructor", though it is now known as a finalizer in line with other programming languages. They are things that clean up resources at the end of the life of an object; the difference between GC'd languages and RAII languages is that in a GC'd runtime the lifespan of an object is non-deterministic. That may very well change the programming model, as it does in many other ways, but it doesn't make the two concepts "fundamentally different" by any means. They're certainly related concepts...