I'm a python and clojure dev, and part of the reason for going in search of tiny apps with source code was to see how they managed it. I know I'm part of the problem too, I like working at a very high level, but I, too, am getting old and grumpy and detest how 16GB ram isn't enough these days.

I was actually, partly, looking for a community who built or curated lists of apps with artificial constraints, for example: app must not use more than N MB of ram, must be open source, etc.

there is the demo scene, but I want to build practical apps, and there is suckless, but I found their community and philosophy a bit ... hardcore and unaccommodating.