alt Hacker NewsLet me be the devils advocate here. Ok, let's say you optimize that TODO list app to only use 16 mb of RAM. What did you gain by that? Would you buy a smartphone that has less RAM now?
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Easier to run your todo list at the same time as applications that need the RAM for raw function. Maybe that’s CAD, maybe that’s A/V production, maybe it’s a context window.
It’s been convenient that we can throw better hardware at our constraints regularly. Our convenience much less our personal economic functions is not necessarily what markets will generally optimize for, much like developers of electron apps aren’t optimizing for user resources.
It’s the upgrade treadmill you would stop using, and stick to the initial entry device.
We can't ever escape the market forces? You're right, of course if software gets less bloated, vendors will "value-optimize" hardware so in the end, computers keep being barely usable as they are today.
It would be nice for browser tabs and apps to reload less often.
16MB still seems massive for this kind of app. I ran Visual Studio 4, not an app, but an entire app factory, on a 66MHz 486 with 16MB RAM. And it was snappy. A TODO list app that uses system UI elements could be significantly smaller.
What do I gain if more developers take this approach? Lightning fast performance. Faster backups. Decreased battery drain => longer battery service lifetime => more time in between hardware refreshes. Improved security posture due to orders of magnitude less SLOC. Improved reliability from decreased complexity.