72
Bjarne Stroustrup: How do I deal with memory leaks? By writing code that doesn't have any.
(www.stroustrup.com)
this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
72 points (91.9% liked)
Programming
26909 readers
242 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No, this is kinda right. Memory leaks =/= memory safety. Memory leaks are just when you keep allocating more and more memory, and can be done in any language. If I make accidentally make a list that infinitely grows in python, that's a memory leak.
There are techniques to write code that is mostly free of leaks, which is what he is referring to.
Memory safety, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be mentioned on that page...
A "true" memory leak isn't just memory that is never freed, it's memory that CAN'T be freed. Usually because the handle / pointer to it was thrown away.
The distinction isn't really all the important though, it all looks the same as far as how the program functions.