deciding who owns the ram before it becomes everyone's problem at once.
means the system, manual or automatic, that allocates memory to programs and reclaims it when they're done, ideally before you run out.
from born in the 1950s when computers had kilobytes to spare and programmers hand-tracked every byte like rationed sugar; grew formal with virtual memory in the 1960s atlas computer, then split into two philosophies: make the programmer do it, or build a garbage collector to clean up after them.
c malloc free — 1972, gives you the rope, lets you hang yourself
java garbage collector — 1995, automates cleanup, occasionally freezes the world doing it
rust ownership model — 2015, compiler refuses to build memory bugs at all
heartbleed bug — 2014, a missed bounds check leaked openssl memory globally