This tip article is edited and republished from the original source.
by Michael Juntao Yuan and Clebert Suconic
Memory leaks are one of the most common bugs in software engineering. A memory leak is created when a developer allocates memory space for an object but forgets to free the memory when the object is no longer in use. Memory leaks are hard to find. But they can cause application crashes, poor performance, or even open security holes if they are not fixed.
Compared with native programming languages such as C and C++, one of the major advantages of the Java platform is that Java has a built-in defense mechanism against memory leaks. The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) runs a Garbage Collector (GC) service periodically to free up memory for objects no long used by the application. So, the developer does not have to remember to the free the objects manually. Automatic memory management in Java is a great feature for improving developer productivity and application quality.
