This might be apocryphal, as software for this class of embedded system almost certainly doesn't dynamically allocate anything; probably doesn't even use pools.
I have a friend who works on missile software at a big defense contractor, and they do actually clean up their memory.
I found a source, quoting the quote, so provenance is what it is
> This sparked an 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 its target or at the end of its flight, the
ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention.
This might be apocryphal, as software for this class of embedded system almost certainly doesn't dynamically allocate anything; probably doesn't even use pools.
I have a friend who works on missile software at a big defense contractor, and they do actually clean up their memory.