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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

16GB of memory at a minimum is no brainer for coders in my opinion. Some projects can require lots of heavy programs running at the same time.

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You don't need more than 8GB of memory. I doubt anyone could notice a difference in real world performance between 8GB and 16GB.

The PCIe-based SSD in the Macbook Pro is so fast that virtual memory is equivalent to RAM for all practical purposes.

RAM is at least 10x faster than SSD memory so Im not 100% sure where you're coming from. If you're doing any kind of VM work (or just want to use more than two or three electron powered desktop applications at a time) 8GB RAM in 2017 is going to be pretty tight on a development machine.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR4_SDRAM -- see peak transfer rate

Everything stated here is false.

Well, talk for yourself.

I need typically 32-64 GB RAM (virtual machines, etc.) and 16 GB is painfully little.

Different people have different needs.

Oh, and I don't think Macbook Pro's RAM bandwidth is just 2 GB/s. Even phones have 30 GB/s RAM bandwidth nowadays.

Besides, you don't want to ruin your SSD by constantly swapping.

>I doubt anyone could notice a difference in real world performance between 8GB and 16GB.

Just having Slack and Chrome open at the same time causes my "Memory Pressure" graph on OSX to turn yellow on my 8GB RAM MBP.

Electron apps!

"Badly written Electron apps!" - FTFY

Are there any other kind? At least thanks to electron apps we still have a need for Moore’s law.

Visual Studio Code seems like a good Electron app, but I've never checked its memory usage. The point is it's possible to create one though.

I need 16GB because of lots of Chrome tabs + electron apps :(

I do embedded dev, and I need very little RAM for the embedded compilation environment and even doing large circuit designs.

But I regret getting 8GB on this 13" MBP. Between Electron apps and the browser with dozens of tabs open, it sucks up all the memory. A quick look at current usage: 7GB for Safari, 4GB for Atom, 1.5GB for Slack.

My home machine with 16GB was fine.

> 4GB for Atom, 1.5GB for Slack

WHY DO PEOPLE TOLERATE THIS?

(Caps are intentional.)

Slack: because it's how we communicate internally and with our big clients.

Atom: I have a setup with a project in each window, but also an attached terminal that's all set to go for compiling and uploading to my test boards. It's the nicest solution I've found, the only downside is the RAM. But you've motivated me to check out some alternatives...

I think the OP was referring to the massive memory bloat of these applications.

This. I've been trying to move back to native apps now that every "technologist" out there seems to want to build in Electron to save money on development.

There's no substitute for good native engineering.

> 1.5GB for Slack

Holy shit! Are there clients that take less memory than this, or is their interface completely locked down? A terminal client would be wonderful.

Yeah, speak for yourself. My work MBP is consistently using 12-14GB. The home one is in a constant state of swap on 8GB, without running much beyond a browser, text editor, and mail client.

We gave our interns the 8GB models this year and they universally had performance issues that impacted their productiivity in a meaningful way.

> You don't need more than 8GB of memory.

You clearly haven't opened a recent version of Photoshop.

Maybe 5-8 years ago 8GB was enough. In 2017? Yeah right.

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