Boost the Efficiency of Your Code with Garbage Collection in Python

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Garbage Collection in Python: Speed Up Your Code

Garbage Collection in Python: Speed Up Your Code

Garbage collection is a process in Python that helps manage memory allocation and deallocation. It automatically cleans up objects that are no longer in use, preventing memory leaks and improving the overall performance of your code.

How Garbage Collection Works in Python

Python uses a reference counting mechanism to keep track of how many references there are to an object. When the reference count drops to zero, the object is no longer in use and can be safely deallocated. This process is known as garbage collection.

Speed Up Your Code with Garbage Collection

Garbage collection can help speed up your code by reducing the amount of memory that is being used and freeing up resources for other tasks. By properly managing memory allocation and deallocation, you can avoid memory leaks and optimize the performance of your code.

Tips for Optimizing Garbage Collection in Python

  • Avoid creating unnecessary objects: Be mindful of the objects you create and only allocate memory when it is absolutely necessary.
  • Use context managers: Context managers are a great way to automatically clean up resources when they are no longer needed.
  • Profile your code: Use profiling tools to identify any memory bottlenecks in your code and optimize them for better performance.

Conclusion

Garbage collection is an important aspect of memory management in Python that can help speed up your code and improve its overall performance. By following these tips and best practices, you can optimize your code and make it more efficient.

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@charliegnu
5 months ago

Funny in my own repl the ref count for `a` gives me 4294967295 (max unsigned int) instead of 2. On a script it gives me 4.

@gsm7490
5 months ago

Do context managers help to avoid unnecessary garbage in memory?

@PhoebusG
5 months ago

great topic and review, as always, keep it up pybro 🙂

@malakarakesh3139
5 months ago

at 3:53 a reference to L1 from L3 doesn't seem to matter right?

@anton-r
5 months ago

very interesting thanks a lot. Now I am curious how it's gonna file in a real system with `celery workers` etc.

@cyborgcodes
5 months ago

Interesting video

@skf957
5 months ago

Great video, thank you for making it. Probably not a use-case for me but nonetheless I found the whole topic fascinating, and really well explained. Please consider covering more of these "under the hood" topics.
For about a year I struggled to learn C++ (I'm only a hobbyist) thinking all the while that Python was a bit "mickey mouse". Then I came back to it when I realised that pretty much everything I would want to do was more than catered for in Python. OK, so the trade-off is speed – but that's fine for me, and easily outweighs the fairly complex tool chains that are required for C++.

@oliverli9630
5 months ago

wow!! wtf! awesome

@TomKnudsen
5 months ago

Who’s code did you rip of this time? Who’s comment did you delete?

@pietraderdetective8953
5 months ago

great topic to touch on!
other than the speedup benefits, there are consequences as well if we disable garbage collection: memory leaks, manual management is hard.

I also agree with some comments pointing out using gc.collect() manually in a running function makes it slower.

@voiderashish272
5 months ago

which video editor you use in pop os, i am getting problem in installing Davinci resolve. Can you help?

@MichielJ71
5 months ago

Thanks for the interesting video's. Have a nice 2024!

@albertwayadav
5 months ago

Thank you for the video man. Cleared a lot of my querries in just 15 minutes.

@lizandro_mendoza
5 months ago

Thanks

@ShreyamDev
5 months ago

Awesome explanation. I've a question. When do you suggest to manually turn off GC and what will be the benefits? Say I'm processing a huge set of data and creating a new structure. The size of set is 80K. Now turning of GC will speed up the process but will increase the memory usage. So when should we consider the manual approach?

@lowkeygaming4716
5 months ago

Great video. You always give me new knowledge to improve my Python code and don't just settle in the "if it works, don't touch it" mindset.

@ventsiR
5 months ago

Please keep doing these, you explain things really well and thoroughly!

@dangalimov7435
5 months ago

Really interesting topic. Do you have a video about how memory in python implemented? (about heaps, stacks, references to objects etc.)

@FOXFHEX1
5 months ago

Best py developer in the world ❤