I think I see where you are coming from and I disagree. I don't think that whether or not the memory is "reclaimable" is an important detail. When going to fix

I think I see where you are coming from and I disagree. I don't think that whether or not the memory is "reclaimable" is an important detail. When going to fix a performance issue or otherwise reduce memory usage the process to fix it is largely the same. Some programmer needs to understand the code in question at least well enough to mentally model its use of resources. Then that programmer needs to find a flaw and either prevent the allocation or clean up after the allocation. Whether or not it is "reclaimable" doesn't play a major role in the problem solving process. Both can be hard to find and both with bring an application down if left unchecked. Both need cleanup or prevention. There are tools to find both kinds of issues. Which tool is one of the first differences a programmer might see, but I think it is hard to argue that choosing between valgrind and a memory profiler is a deeply interesting issue that warrants separating these kinds of issues.