C++ and Memory Allocation - for People in a Hurry

17 high-quality infographics on how C++ and Memory Allocations work together

Hi there! 👋

If you’re an old subscriber, you likely know that I’ve published 17 infographics on C++ and Memory Management. This actually took me some 40+ (or maybe even 50+) hours to complete but I really had tremendous fun while doing it :)

If you are a newcomer, well, I created bunch of infographics and they look similar to this one:

What I want to do now is create one mega-article that will link all the articles (and infographics) that I’ve published in this series. Each one contains a high-quality image and an extended description. You can also find a print-quality PDF here.

As far as I'm concerned, you are free to use them in any way you want - download, print, copy, distribute, … do whatever you like as long as you keep my credentials on the bottom :)

Table of contents:

(Note: I suggest bookmarking this page)

• C++ and Data Types

• Where are my program’s bits?

• Stacks, Heaps and other funny places

• What is a Stack, really?

• Why is Stack (much) faster than the heap?

• Stack attack

• The magic of keyword “new”

• Heaps and Stacks - explained like you're five

• Why does Memory Leak?

• Pointers & References - our school day boogeymans

• How Windows allocates memory

• Memory allocation through Heap API

• Virtual Adressing and Why every process sees the same memory space

• Virtual Memory API and all the cool stuff you can do with it

• Memory Allocation Functions - a primer

• RAII and Smart Pointers - smarter way to work with your memory

P.S. Check out other series that I’ve covered:

• (Windows) Containers, for People in a Hurry

• SQL Server’s Storage Engine Internals

• Deep-dive into DB Indexes

• Deep-dive into CLR (in progress)