Memory leaks sometimes don't matter

[nilamo]

https://twitter.com/pomeranian99/status/...4438094848

This sparked and interesting memory for me.  I was once working with a
customer who was producing on-board software for a missile.  In my analysis
of the code, I pointed out that they had a number of problems with storage
leaks.  Imagine my surprise when the customers chief software engineer said
"Of course it leaks".  He went on to point out that they had calculated the
amount of memory the application would leak in the total possible flight time
for the missile and then doubled that number.  They added this much
additional memory to the hardware to "support" the leaks.  Since the missile
will explode when it hits it's target or at the end of it's flight, the
ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention.

If the leak will take longer to eat all the memory than the hardware will exist... is it really a problem?