8 ms·

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

cowtools 4y ago
why does web development require so much memory and computing power?
- monocasa 4y ago
  Running a more or less complete stack of the backend can be a lot of containers.
- dylan604 4y ago
  I want to make fun of javascript here
- BoumTAC 4y ago
  Docker
  - axlee 4y ago
    Not Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size web app without swapping.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      My webpack config for a fairly large app run under a single GB, and performance on my m1 pro machine is so good that I have it permanently running the background. Maybe you need to optimise your config?
    - postalrat 4y ago
      How about the rest of the app? Database servers, other servers, more servers, other services, etc all running in docker.
      - axlee 4y ago
        Whether they run in docker or not has very little impact on the memory usage, especially on Linux where the overhead is tiny. In VMs, YMMV.
  - znpy 4y ago
    not docker, but the linux virtual machine that docker on mac has to use because mac os has no other way to run containers (which would mean running linux binaries anyway). on linux you would have pretty much no overhead from running software in containers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hugi 4y ago
  You need 8GB just to run "modern" web applications, let alone develop them.
  - HatchedLake721 4y ago
    Tell me you haven’t used an M1 device without telling me. People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the early days were saying the memory management and performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel MacBooks.
    - M4v3R 4y ago
      I made a mistake of purchasing a 8GB M1 MacBook Pro. It was painful to work with. For casual stuff it worked just fine, but as soon as I ran a Docker image (with 2GB memory limit), had Slack and few other light apps open, some tabs in Safari it started to become slow. Painfully slow. The spinning beach ball was a very frequent sight to me. My RAM usage was often in the red zone and I had to kill applications constantly. When I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM all of these issues went away.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        Docker on Mac is a pretty terrible experience in general in my experience. Better to run things natively if you can.
        vetinari 4y ago
        Docker on Mac (and Windows) is a full-blown VM. The containers assume Linux, so they are getting it -- inside that VM. That also brings issue with networking. Sure, if you are using the bridged (in Docker's parlance) networks, you won't notice. If you need to use host/ipvlan/macvlan, you will.
      - astrange 4y ago
        VMs are much more memory intensive than other workloads because they wire a lot of memory and/or just access it constantly, which defeats pretty much every optimization you could conceivably do to hide it.
- nabaraz 4y ago
  I have M1 with 8GB, it can't handle basic node.js/react app. I have to force kill node and start again every few hours. This with just browsers and apple music playing.
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    You must have some kind of memory leak in that app. Node uses ~200MB at startup, and is limited to 4GB unless you explicitly increase it with a flag.
- onetom 4y ago
  Because ppl use Docker, even when it's not really that necessary... I'm using Nix for the past few years and it has obviated the need for Docker. I have simple shell.nix files, which are activated via direnv and that's it; 0 runtime overhead, no need to install various java/node/python/ruby version managers. What actually feasts on memory is the various chat apps and project management and knowledge-base management software, in-browser email clients, github pages, JetBrains IDEs. You should keep these closed, whenever u can and then 8GB is enough comfortably. You will still receive Slack notifications on your phone, then u can fire up Slack to reply or have a discussion. Same with Notion or Logseq. You don't need to have a gmail tab open all the time either. The built-in Mail.app might just be enough for you too, which might eat slightly less memory. You can use Sublime Text or Emacs for editing, instead of VS Code or WebStorm. Install a browser-tab suspender extension. Download technical docs and read them via Dash (or whatever open-source equivalent it has). Have you looked into how much memory does a github.com page eats?
  - trenchgun 4y ago
    How is nix with M1 mac?
alwillis 4y ago
It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues like the ones you're mentioning. The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in the way we traditionally think about it.
- jcranberry 4y ago
  That certainly hasn't been my experience on my M1 Max MBP. When it swaps, I can immediately tell.
omnimus 4y ago
In my experience this is just not true. Unless you are doing multiple vms and some wierd stuff. Base Macbook Air is wonderful. It is faster than my 32gig desktop xeon workstation desktop from 5 years ago. I also think there is big argument for devs to be developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.
- Kognito 4y ago
  Made a point not to install Docker on this machine. Honestly loved it when I first tried it. Usually have like 20-25 tabs open in safari, a VS Code instance (sometimes two), a Nextjs app + express backend running against a local Postgres. This is always in the yellow memory pressure range for me. If I close the browser or just stick with a few tabs it’s all good, but when each tab can suck 100s of MB it quickly adds up. It’s a workflow my 2014 MBP with 16GB still handles though so I don’t feel like my expectations are too high.
jcytong 4y ago
I have a MBA 16GB and everything is fine until I use Docker. It's under constant memory pressure and I was looking into getting a 32/64GB Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro max. But really dreaded the additional weight/size of the laptop + 96W power brick which is an additional of ~2 lb

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. Looking forward to upgrading from the 8GB air to a 24GB air now.

cowtools 4y ago

why does web development require so much memory and computing power?

monocasa 4y ago
Running a more or less complete stack of the backend can be a lot of containers.
dylan604 4y ago
I want to make fun of javascript here
BoumTAC 4y ago
Docker
- axlee 4y ago
  Not Docker, webpack. Your run-of-the-mill webpack dev server will happily gulp gigabytes of RAM, and pray that your frontend dev stack only runs one of them. Your IDE will probably use a few more gigabytes on top of that for static analysis and autocompletion, and that's how you need at least 8-10GB to run develop your average mid-size web app without swapping.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    My webpack config for a fairly large app run under a single GB, and performance on my m1 pro machine is so good that I have it permanently running the background. Maybe you need to optimise your config?
  - postalrat 4y ago
    How about the rest of the app? Database servers, other servers, more servers, other services, etc all running in docker.
    - axlee 4y ago
      Whether they run in docker or not has very little impact on the memory usage, especially on Linux where the overhead is tiny. In VMs, YMMV.
- znpy 4y ago
  not docker, but the linux virtual machine that docker on mac has to use because mac os has no other way to run containers (which would mean running linux binaries anyway). on linux you would have pretty much no overhead from running software in containers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hugi 4y ago
You need 8GB just to run "modern" web applications, let alone develop them.
- HatchedLake721 4y ago
  Tell me you haven’t used an M1 device without telling me. People getting their hands on 8GB M1 MacBook Airs in the early days were saying the memory management and performance were making it snappier than the 16GB Intel MacBooks.
  - M4v3R 4y ago
    I made a mistake of purchasing a 8GB M1 MacBook Pro. It was painful to work with. For casual stuff it worked just fine, but as soon as I ran a Docker image (with 2GB memory limit), had Slack and few other light apps open, some tabs in Safari it started to become slow. Painfully slow. The spinning beach ball was a very frequent sight to me. My RAM usage was often in the red zone and I had to kill applications constantly. When I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM all of these issues went away.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      Docker on Mac is a pretty terrible experience in general in my experience. Better to run things natively if you can.
      - vetinari 4y ago
        Docker on Mac (and Windows) is a full-blown VM. The containers assume Linux, so they are getting it -- inside that VM. That also brings issue with networking. Sure, if you are using the bridged (in Docker's parlance) networks, you won't notice. If you need to use host/ipvlan/macvlan, you will.
    - astrange 4y ago
      VMs are much more memory intensive than other workloads because they wire a lot of memory and/or just access it constantly, which defeats pretty much every optimization you could conceivably do to hide it.
nabaraz 4y ago
I have M1 with 8GB, it can't handle basic node.js/react app. I have to force kill node and start again every few hours. This with just browsers and apple music playing.
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  You must have some kind of memory leak in that app. Node uses ~200MB at startup, and is limited to 4GB unless you explicitly increase it with a flag.
onetom 4y ago
Because ppl use Docker, even when it's not really that necessary... I'm using Nix for the past few years and it has obviated the need for Docker. I have simple shell.nix files, which are activated via direnv and that's it; 0 runtime overhead, no need to install various java/node/python/ruby version managers. What actually feasts on memory is the various chat apps and project management and knowledge-base management software, in-browser email clients, github pages, JetBrains IDEs. You should keep these closed, whenever u can and then 8GB is enough comfortably. You will still receive Slack notifications on your phone, then u can fire up Slack to reply or have a discussion. Same with Notion or Logseq. You don't need to have a gmail tab open all the time either. The built-in Mail.app might just be enough for you too, which might eat slightly less memory. You can use Sublime Text or Emacs for editing, instead of VS Code or WebStorm. Install a browser-tab suspender extension. Download technical docs and read them via Dash (or whatever open-source equivalent it has). Have you looked into how much memory does a github.com page eats?
- trenchgun 4y ago
  How is nix with M1 mac?

alwillis 4y ago

It’s viable but you’ll spend a lot of time with memory compression/swap working hard. Not a great experience IMO. It's more complicated than that; if you look at the reviews and tests 8GB M1 machines, you'll see there were no issues like the ones you're mentioning. The pipeline between the unified RAM and the SSD is so fast, it's essentially a L3 cache as apposed to swap as in the way we traditionally think about it.

jcranberry 4y ago
That certainly hasn't been my experience on my M1 Max MBP. When it swaps, I can immediately tell.

omnimus 4y ago

In my experience this is just not true. Unless you are doing multiple vms and some wierd stuff. Base Macbook Air is wonderful. It is faster than my 32gig desktop xeon workstation desktop from 5 years ago. I also think there is big argument for devs to be developing webaps on consumer gear. How else you can spot the issues with your apps. And tbh if your macbook air has problems running your webapp... well. Good luck.

Kognito 4y ago
Made a point not to install Docker on this machine. Honestly loved it when I first tried it. Usually have like 20-25 tabs open in safari, a VS Code instance (sometimes two), a Nextjs app + express backend running against a local Postgres. This is always in the yellow memory pressure range for me. If I close the browser or just stick with a few tabs it’s all good, but when each tab can suck 100s of MB it quickly adds up. It’s a workflow my 2014 MBP with 16GB still handles though so I don’t feel like my expectations are too high.

jcytong 4y ago

I have a MBA 16GB and everything is fine until I use Docker. It's under constant memory pressure and I was looking into getting a 32/64GB Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro max. But really dreaded the additional weight/size of the laptop + 96W power brick which is an additional of ~2 lb