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h1d | 6 years ago

Why do you even need that much? Seems a niche demand when 8GB should just do fine for most.

I've been developing on 8GB Mac for years with no problem. Doubt Linux needs more to do the same.

discuss

8GB isn't really enough when you're running a few docker containers like Elastic Search and the like.

I have 8GB on my Mac and I'm constantly slowed down by lack of RAM. Built a Hackintosh with 32GB and it's a world of difference. I don't know how people survive with such little RAM.

saagarjha|6 years ago

I do all my development on a Mac with 8 GB of RAM. It’s fine for my needs; I’m just very picky about keeping Chromium from running in the background on my Mac.

sliken|6 years ago

As a developer sometimes I end up running an IDE, sometimes not even of my choosing. IDEs like eclipse are famously resource intensive.

Sometimes for testing a VM or container (or three) are needed for testing.

Sometimes something heavy needs to run local for testing, maybe even one that specifically requires an OS you aren't currently running.

Given how dirt cheap ram is, I think it's really silly for all laptops/desktops to not support at least 32GB ram.

Seems like a selfish short term perspective to limit ram to 16GB, although I do expect that it significantly shortens the useful life of a laptop.

dylanowen|6 years ago

My 16GB of ram starts running out after a few instances of IntelliJ + docker.

Also I can't compile servo and run IntelliJ at the same time which really slows down turn around.

That's not even accounting for Firefox + other programs.

AnIdiotOnTheNet|6 years ago

You're just not over-engineering your software hard enough.

notzuck|6 years ago

Spoken like someone that just uses a text editor to write JS. I used to spend a long time in massive Java codebases where the IDE would need some serious horsepower to index the code. Then I'd be running an application server for testing (inside a VM) and running another VM to for the SOLR index and another VM for the very heavy SAP ERP system. Then I've got Chrome and other apps asking for memory and processor power.

This setup is pretty common for people working on large integration projects.

h1d|6 years ago

Yeah, I use IntelliJ, Chrome, Photoshop and a few other smaller apps and sometimes even run Win10 on Vmware but I never see any noticeable slowdowns. I do tend to quit apps that I don't use as I hate cluttering my alt-tab list.

Call me old, but these days everything including people are so ram hungry I cannot believe the days when things were being done with less than a GB ram.

People talk like having more ram feels like a champ but as developers you might as well want to think about how things can be achieved using less ram.