Everyone is doing memory management wrong. feat. Ryan Fleury | S2 E02

This week on Backend Banter, we’re joined by Ryan Fleury, a talented game developer currently working with Epic Games on their Rad Debugger project. Ryan shares his journey from building games to creating powerful developer tools, offering insights into arenas, memory management, and the fascinating world of programming from the ground up. In this episode, we dive deep into memory management, exploring the differences between stack, heap, and arenas, and how they shape modern development. We discuss the trade-offs of various allocation strategies, the magic of pointer stability, and how arenas simplify managing lifetimes in both games and other applications. Along the way, Ryan shares his approach to developing tools, insights into game development workflows, and practical tips for clean and efficient programming. Learn back-end development: https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Ryan's Socials: Rad Debugger: https://github.com/EpicGamesExt/raddebugger Website: https://www.rfleury.com/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanjfleury Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:54 - Ryan Fleury's Path to Game Development 02:49 - From Engines to Debugging Tools 06:51 - Arenas Explained: Memory Management Basics 16:51 - Arenas vs. Garbage Collectors 27:40 - Real-World Applications of Arenas 31:39 - Why Pointer Stability Matters 42:57 - Dynamic Allocation Made Simple 48:48 - How Arenas Streamline Development 01:01:38 - Debugging Tools and the Rad Debugger 01:09:43 - Where to find Ryan