What are some ways to reduce memory consumption in an application or system?

To reduce memory consumption in a Java application, the following approaches can be used:

• Optimize data structures: choose more compact collections, for example, use ArrayList instead of LinkedList if possible.
• Avoid creating unnecessary objects, reuse objects, use primitives instead of wrappers.
• Use weak references (WeakReference) for caching so that the garbage collector can free memory.
• Enable and configure the garbage collector for efficient memory management.
• Profile the application using tools (VisualVM, YourKit) to identify memory leaks and "heavy" objects.

Example of optimization:

// Instead of creating a new string in a loop, it's better to use StringBuilder
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    sb.append(i).append(",");
}
String result = sb.toString();