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is it the assignment of RAM memory to a process
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In the context of this discussion, no. If you ever do any substantial C or C++ programming, you'll see that the programmer is responsible for memory management. With Java and C#, their respective runtime environments manage the memory for you. For instance, when you create a new object in Java, you don't have to worry about keeping track of a pointer and freeing the memory when you are finished. The JVM handles that (garbage collection). In a C++ program, on the other hand, you'll need to manually free the memory you allocated with each "new" statement by using the "delete" (or "free") key word. Because the JVM is in charge of the memory management, Java has no concept of pointers as far as the Java developer is concerned.