The Stack vs The Heap

• Stack: Continuous area of memory for local variables.

  • Values have fixed sizes known at compile time.
  • Extremely fast: just move a stack pointer.
  • Easy to manage: follows function calls.
  • Great memory locality.

• Heap: Storage of values outside of function calls.

  • Values have dynamic sizes determined at runtime.
  • Slightly slower than the stack: some book-keeping needed.
  • No guarantee of memory locality.