Why is it important to release resources after their use is completed in software applications?

Releasing resources after their use is important to prevent memory leaks and other system resource issues (such as file descriptors, network connections). If resources are not released, the application may exhaust available resources, leading to decreased performance, crashes, or even program failure. In Java, for example, despite garbage collection, resources associated with external systems (files, sockets, streams) need to be explicitly closed using try-with-resources statements or by calling the close() method.

Example of using try-with-resources:

try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("file.txt"))) {
    String line = reader.readLine();
    System.out.println(line);
} // reader is automatically closed here