I used to do programming assignments on an Eee PC with 2GB of RAM, running Xubuntu and using Emacs as my editor. While modern netbooks generally have 4GB, and c

I used to do programming assignments on an Eee PC with 2GB of RAM, running Xubuntu and using Emacs as my editor. While modern netbooks generally have 4GB, and cheap laptops 8GB, it's not guaranteed that a student will be using a modern computer. Dev environments that waste RAM keep people from learning how to program, and disproportionately affect anyone using cheap hand-me-down hardware.