Garbage Collection In many languages such as C++ and Delphi for Win32, it is the pro-grammer’s responsibility to destroy any object that has been created when it is no longer required. In other words, objects are given de-structors as well as constructors. In Ruby, you don’t have to do this since Ruby has a built-in ‘garbage collector’ which automatically de-stroys objects and reclaims the memory they used when they are no longer referenced in your program.