Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia! Join nearly 200,000 subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia. A value type in computer programming is a coded object that involves memory allocation directly where it is created. Value types are commonly contrasted to reference types that instead act as pointers to a value that is stored elsewhere. Another way to talk about value types is that they are 'stored where they are defined,’ with specific types of memory allocation. In many modern programming languages, floating point numbers and integers, as well as boolean variables or constants, are value types. One element of value types that is commonly questioned by developers is how and where value types are stored in different programming languages. For example, in a language like C#, programmers often discuss the storage of value types on a 'stack’ or in a 'managed heap,’ which takes on the issues of memory allocation around this type of item. Another example would be where programmers discuss the use of specific memory allocations for value types in the data cleanup utilities of various software applications.