How many times have you heard when you questioned the high RAM usage of a program/app: “bUt iT’s jUsT RAM, iT’s mEaNt tO bE uSeD aNyWaY” or “RAM iS cHeAp nOwAdAyS”? I’ve heard plenty.
RAM is meant for your entire computer/laptop/server/fridge, not just for a single application or program. There are exceptions, though. There are programs that do need lots of RAM and computational power, but MOST of the programs don’t.
The fact that RAM “needs” to be used or that it is cheap has become an excuse for some programmers to write unoptimized and shitty code. There are even managers and CEO’s that promote this idea. What they really mean is: “We don’t want to invest at all in our product, we will make it as cheap as possible while still charging you like it’s premium. Ah, you’ll have to upgrade your computer as well because we can’t be bothered with nonsense like user experience”.
So if you are writing a new app or program, please take a look at your memory usage. Do you need hundreds of RAM for a background app updater checker? Or a few gigs of RAM for a chat app? What the hell are you even storing in it? All the conversations on the server?
Invest in your user experience. Everyone likes fast apps. You don’t need over-optimisation just… common sense optimisation.
What is your experience with RAM hog apps?

Paul Vasile

A critique of developers who justify excessive RAM usage in applications by claiming "RAM is meant to be used" or "RAM is cheap." The author argues that RAM is a shared system resource, not exclusively for individual applications, and calls for common-sense optimization rather than resource-heavy solutions. The piece criticizes the trend of unoptimized code and poor user experience driven by cost-cutting development practices.

RAM is for the entire computer not just for your shitty app

This is why if I see app written in Java, Ruby, Python or JS I say thank you and look for alternatives. Especially if it’s Ruby on rails, 2Gb min requirements for hello world application

Another important point is that companies use high system requirements as mask to make their product look premium, because consumers think that if the system requirements are higher the product must be just that much better. Most people, unfortunately, don’t even think of optimization at all.

And every chat brings own copy of Electron with it… The art of writing good native GUI applications is almost forgotten (nobody bothers with digging native platform’s approaches to create native GUI app for every platform any more…)
And so, simple calculator application is taking 200MB of RAM from start - this is absolutely unacceptable!
Browsers and webpages are also hugely bloated, and even userpics on some “plaftorms” are not resized to match actual pixel dimensions…

Whenever I see an App built using Electron

cough looking at the Epic Games Launcher…