

@okasion If it helps explain, C itself doesn't actually have a garbage collector, so any memory problems tend to get blamed on the programmer.
But GObject does have a garbage collector, which implements the reference counting. And the problems with that are well-known, which is why any language which does intagrate a GC tends not to use reference counting (O.K., Python does but they augment it with a real GC).
https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/
I can't believe they just now found this problem with the C garbage collector. Even me, an average programmer, understand th problem and can think of several ways to fix it.
The thing is, hope they don't use this as an excuse to make people use Gnome 3 because it this bug fixed, while others don't. Specially Cinnamon. @linuxmint if you need help just ask, but's lets fix this ok?