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Comment by xutopia | Hacker News Reader

I once had a friend who closed all apps he wasn't using at the time so his memory usage was always below 40%. I told him this was ridiculous to purchase a computer he was only using so little off.

I don't care how much memory a text editor uses so long as it does what I need.

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For the same reasons I like editors that use less RAM. I leave all kinds of stuff open all the time because that's more convenient, meaning eventually I run out of RAM no matter how much I have. If an editor takes a gigabyte of ram, that means it's one of the first things I'll close because it's the largest gain. If instead the same editor would only use 100mb of ram, it could stay open indefinitely and I would close a few browser tabs instead.

I can understand leaving some background processes, but why leave open apps you aren't using? It's a bad habit. It's not just memory but also CPU cycles and battery life. Take my mother's iPhone 6; her phone runs slow much of the time because she doesn't care to close out apps she's not using. When I take her phone there's probably 20 apps running eating away battery life and performance.

I haven't noticed any effect on battery usage or performance from closing iOS apps. The OS seems to manage that just fine on its own. I have completely stopped closing apps.

This is not how iOS works. Only few apps work ("eat away battery life and performance") in the background, and only in some special circumstances (active music playback, background refresh once in a while if user allows for it). The apps seen it app switcher (double home press) are effectively dead, their state is kept around to allow user to switch back, but they cannot do any processing in background.

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