Programming in a modern, high-level language means that you don’t have to worry about memory allocation; the language takes care of it for you. But this doesn’t mean that you can ignore the computer’s memory, or the garbage collector, completely: Knowing how memory allocation works, and how you can monitor your memory use, can improve the efficiency of your programs, and the quality of your code in general. In this talk, John Crepezzi describes how Ruby uses memory, including the garbage collector — how Ruby’s built-in objects and APIs allow you to inspect your current state, and where you might end up causing trouble for yourself if you aren’t careful.