Where do objects go when they aren't used anymore (and how to know that they are no longer useful to the executing code that created them)? Might seem like a silly question to most developers, but that's what Technical Fellow Patrick Dussud has been dealing with for most of his career. His special area of focus is implementing garbage collection (GC) in various programming languages and systems (from JScript to the CLR). In this episode, we discuss with Patrick how GC concepts and implementations have evolved over the years, how the GC in the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) might be different from others, and how GC improvements in the future may need to change to deal with advancements in both software and hardware systems. Patrick also has some interesting things to say about clowns. This episode of Behind the Code is hosted by Robert Hess, Director in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group. Although new to hosting Behind the Code, Robert is no stranger to hosting technical shows. For more than seven years, he hosted The .NET Show, a popular on-demand webcast that focused on providing architectural and programming information to developers around the world. Low res download file for bandwidth challenged. Listen to the podcast(MP3) Listen to the podcast(WMA) Download the Video Watch the Video