Smart Garbage Collection?

Question

You can garbage collect in Java simply by calling System.gc() but sometimes this \"stalls\" the application. Is it a bad idea to garbage collect like this and a

Answer 1

I can't beat @haylem answer's clarity and force, sorry. But let me add that there are a lot of (better) ways to manage memory in Java. There is, for example, WeakReference and collections which handle these, like WeakHashMap. These are deterministic ways to handle memory, though explicit calls to GC are not, as per the javadoc

Calling the gc method suggests that the Java Virtual Machine expend effort toward 
recycling unused objects in order to make the memory they currently occupy available 
for quick reuse. When control returns from the method call, the Java Virtual Machine 
has made a best effort to reclaim space from all discarded objects.