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All this waste of memory turns my stomach. It's sad that it takes one of the most powerful personal computers made with a ton of RAM to make modern software, e

All this waste of memory turns my stomach. It's sad that it takes one of the most powerful personal computers made with a ton of RAM to make modern software, effectively locking out those who can't afford this. What value is gained by such a large memory footprint for all this stuff which isn't really an innovation from capability we had in 2007?

Slaul 9y ago
It's just different tools for the same job. I could build a shed with a hammer, nails, and a handsaw but with a little extra money I could go get more specialized tools that may make me more effective.
richardknop 9y ago
Modern software is very complex unfortunately. Especially with proliferation of PaaS like kubernetes and container technology. You often need to have local version of entire PaaS running to be able to effectively debug problems or test new features. Plus all different services like sql/nosql databases, key value stores, message queues, web servers etc. Of course, some people will say why are you using IDE? I hear this often from hardcore vim users. "Just use vim". But that realistically doesn't save much memory and Chrome is another memory hog. And what if you do some mobile work and need to open Android Studio or XCode, another several GBs of memory needed just for that. Also don't forget about the whole suite of collaboration tools used at work which we didn't really have before like Slack, Dropbox, JIRA, Google Docs, Github, JIRA. You will have all of these opened either in browser or as standalone apps to be more productive. People with powerful computers will be more effective. You can do almost everything on older less advanced computer but you will be less productive than somebody with newest tech. I remember in 2011 working for a company in London where every developer workstation had 64GB RAM. That was 7 years ago so I am surprised 16GB is considered as too much in 2017.
freehunter 9y ago
It's often a choice. Plenty of people develop great software on less hardware. Your life gets easier the more RAM you have, but you don't absolutely need it unless you're doing something specialized where your toolkit is larger than normal.

Slaul 9y ago

It's just different tools for the same job. I could build a shed with a hammer, nails, and a handsaw but with a little extra money I could go get more specialized tools that may make me more effective.

richardknop 9y ago

Modern software is very complex unfortunately. Especially with proliferation of PaaS like kubernetes and container technology. You often need to have local version of entire PaaS running to be able to effectively debug problems or test new features. Plus all different services like sql/nosql databases, key value stores, message queues, web servers etc. Of course, some people will say why are you using IDE? I hear this often from hardcore vim users. "Just use vim". But that realistically doesn't save much memory and Chrome is another memory hog. And what if you do some mobile work and need to open Android Studio or XCode, another several GBs of memory needed just for that. Also don't forget about the whole suite of collaboration tools used at work which we didn't really have before like Slack, Dropbox, JIRA, Google Docs, Github, JIRA. You will have all of these opened either in browser or as standalone apps to be more productive. People with powerful computers will be more effective. You can do almost everything on older less advanced computer but you will be less productive than somebody with newest tech. I remember in 2011 working for a company in London where every developer workstation had 64GB RAM. That was 7 years ago so I am surprised 16GB is considered as too much in 2017.

freehunter 9y ago

It's often a choice. Plenty of people develop great software on less hardware. Your life gets easier the more RAM you have, but you don't absolutely need it unless you're doing something specialized where your toolkit is larger than normal.