[favflam]

btw, is it me or is there any justification for anyone including a developer to run more than 8GB of RAM for a laptop? I don't see functionality as having changed in the last 15 years.

For me, only Rust compilation necessitates more RAM. But, I assume devs just do RAM heavy dev work on a server over ssh.

[pdpi]

There's all the usual "$APPLICATION is a memory hog" complaints, for one.

In the SWE world, dev servers are a luxury that you don't get in most companies, and most people use their laptops as workstations. Depending on your workflow, you might well have a bunch of VMs/containers running.

Even outside of SWE world, people have plenty of use for more than 8GiB of RAM. Large Photoshop documents with loads of layers, a DAW with a bazillion plugins and samples, anything involving 4k video are all workloads that would struggle running on such a small RAM allowance.

[gizmo686]

This depends on industry. Around here, working locally on laptop is a luxury, and most devs are required to treat their laptop like a thin client.

Of course, being developer laptops, they all come with 16 gigs of RAM. In contrast, the remote VMs where we do all of the actual work are limited to 4GiB unless we get manager and IT approval for more.

[afiori]

Browser + 2 vscode + 4 docker container + MS Teams + postman + MongoDB Compass

Sure it is bloated, but it is the stack we have for local development

[umanwizard]

> But, I assume devs just do RAM heavy dev work on a server over ssh.

This assumption is wrong. I compile stuff directly on my laptop, and so do a lot of other people.

Also, even if nobody ran compilers locally, there is still stuff like rustc, clangd, etc. which take lots of RAM.

[tynorf]

Chrome on my work laptop sits around 20-30GB all day every day.

[typeofhuman]

I wonder if having less RAM would compel you to read, commit to long term memory, and then close those 80 tabs you have open.

[viraptor]

~10 projects in Cursor is 25GB on it's own.

[gizmo686]

How much would it take up if there was less RAM available. A web browser with a bunch of tabs open but not active seems like the type of system that can increase RAM usage by caching, and decrease it by swapping (either logically at the application level, or letting the OS actually swap)

[favflam]

I do work off of a Chromebook with 8GB of RAM total, but I do keep an eye on how many tabs I have open.

[nkrisc]

You asked if there is a justification and then in the same post justified why you need it.

[favflam]

My post was about laptop RAM. I counted server-side RAM as a separate thing.

[fastasucan]

>But, I assume devs just do RAM heavy dev work on a server over ssh.

Why do you assume that? Its nice to do things locally sometimes. Maybe even while having a browser open. It doesn't take much to go over 8gb.

[stackghost]

With 32 GB I can run two whole Electron applications! Discord and Slack!

It's a life of luxury, I tell you.

[samus]

Browsers can get quite bloated, especially if one is not in the habit of closing tabs or restarting it from time to time. IDEs, other development tools, and most Electron abominations are also not shy about guzzling memory.