&gt; You don&#x27;t know<p>Exactly. Which is the core of &quot;not worrying about it&quot;. When it becomes a problem (Such as an out of memory exception) you worry about it. There is no illusion. The time you don&#x27;t worry about it is when you <i>write it</i>. I&#x27;d write it exactly like you did above (except I probably wouldn&#x27;t null it), and wouldn&#x27;t think of it again until it became a concrete problem.<p>You are absolutely right that a GC didn&#x27;t magically make all memory issues disappear. It just hides them.