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

01/20/25 • 71 min

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

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

Previous Episode

Is Elixir the Future? feat. José Valim | S2 E01

We're back for Backend Banter Season 2, and we bring a very special guest, José Valim, the creator of the Elixir Programming Language, one of the most popular and loved functional programming languages of today. (Fun fact: it's used in production at Discord).

We cover the nitty-gritty of the language, ranging from simple topics such as the decision behind not making Elixir be statically typed, into the more complex cross-machine communication. We go over how Elixir's features compare with those of other languages, work habits of today's developers, José's own day-to-day development, and a lot more!

Today's talk encompasses a great variety of themes, so grab your coffee and tune in!

Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Livebook & Elixir Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pas9WdWIBHs

Elixir Programming Language: https://elixir-lang.org/

Livebook: https://livebook.dev/

Elixir In Action Book: https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-third-edition

José's Socials:

X/Twitter: https://x.com/josevalim

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josevalim

GitHub: https://github.com/josevalim

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro

01:06 - Embarrassing Stories with Foreign Languages

02:58 - Who is José Valim? (and Elixir's Popularity)

06:51 - Does José Use Phoenix a Lot?

08:28 - Why Isn't Elixir Statically Typed?

16:51 - External Input vs. Internal Code Logic

28:16 - Quick Overview of BEAM languages

31:23 - Elixir’s Equivalent to Golang’s Goroutines & Channels

42:43 - Cross-Machine Communication in Standard Libraries

49:15 - Do You Need RabbitMQ When Writing Elixir?

54:53 - Built-In Features in the Standard Library

01:01:52 - Why People Are Too Used To Work The Hard Way

01:04:22 - José and DHH

01:08:01 - Favorite Elixir Features & Immutability

01:17:49 - Purity in Functional Programming

01:21:35 - Where to find José

Next Episode

Why You Need To Stop Worrying About AI feat. Danny Thompson | S2 E03

We’re joined by Danny Thompson, currently Director of Technology at This Dot Labs and technical leader and organizer of the Dallas Software Developers Group, where he fosters vibrant local tech ecosystem through workshops, cohorts, and meetups.

With a passion to help others learn and find jobs, Danny shares his stories and insights that he gained throughout his extensive and fascinating career! From working as a cashier to now giving talks and organizing meetups for which people fly out to attend, Danny talks about how he got into coding in the first place and his progression, his advice to new developers, how does AI impact jobs now and his perspective on how it will change in the future and a lot more!

Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player - https://www.backendbanter.fm

Danny's X/Twitter: https://x.com/DThompsonDev

Danny's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dthompsondev/

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro

02:14 - How Danny Got Into Coding

05:08 - Meetups and Affordable Conferences

23:37 - Overview of This Dot Labs

29:28 - Building Apps on Top of Stripe

30:30 - Businesses Focus on Functionality Over Aesthetics

33:00 - Danny's Career Progression