All 18 Memory & Garbage Collection questions
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What is the difference between the stack and the heap in .NET memory management? What are .NET's garbage collection 'generations,' and what's the core assumption behind this design? How does garbage collection in .NET work, and what three phases does a collection cycle go through? What is the IDisposable pattern and why implement it? How does the IDisposable pattern and the 'using' statement help manage UNMANAGED resources that the garbage collector doesn't automatically clean up? What is a memory leak in a garbage-collected language like C#, given that the GC handles cleanup automatically? What is boxing and unboxing, and why does it have a real performance cost? What is the difference between Dispose and Finalize in C#, and when should each actually be used? What causes managed memory leaks despite the GC? How do Span<T> and ArrayPool reduce GC pressure?
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C# › Memory & Garbage Collection

What is the difference between a finalizer and Dispose?

Intermediate

Answer

Dispose is deterministic cleanup you call; a finalizer runs non-deterministically during GC as a safety net. Finalizers delay collection, so prefer Dispose and suppress finalization.
~Handle() { ReleaseNative(); } // last resort
public void Dispose() { ReleaseNative(); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); }
Real-world example A wrapper around native memory uses a finalizer only as a backstop if Dispose was missed.
All 18 Memory & Garbage Collection questions