In older programming languages like C, manual memory management was crucial to prevent memory leaks and unpredictable behaviors.
Modern languages have automatic memory management systems like garbage collection to track and free memory, reducing bugs and simplifying code.
Garbage collection is a robust form of memory management used in languages like Java, Python, and JavaScript, based on algorithms like the Mark and Sweep.
Despite the efficiency of garbage collection, memory leaks can still occur if unintended references are kept alive, impacting performance.