What is JavaScript garbage collection?

Good quote taken from a blog

The DOM component is "garbage collected", as is the JScript component, which means that if you create an object within either component, and then lose track of that object, it will eventually be cleaned up.

For example:

function makeABigObject() {
var bigArray = new Array(20000);
}

When you call that function, the JScript component creates an object (named bigArray) that is accessible within the function. As soon as the function returns, though, you "lose track" of bigArray because there's no way to refer to it anymore. Well, the JScript component realizes that you've lost track of it, and so bigArray is cleaned up--its memory is reclaimed. The same sort of thing works in the DOM component. If you say document.createElement('div'), or something similar, then the DOM component creates an object for you. Once you lose track of that object somehow, the DOM component will clean up the related.

"In computer science, garbage collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory used by objects that will never be accessed or mutated again by the application."

All JavaScript engines have their own garbage collectors, and they may differ. Most time you do not have to deal with them because they just do what they supposed to do.

Writing better code mostly depends of how good do you know programming principles, language and particular implementation.