To put this into perspective it's a small enough amount of memory that merely running a web browser with a dozen tabs open is often a choppy laggy experience.
Edit: are you closing things or are you quitting things?
I appreciate the search index tip!
I also have a work-issued M2 MBP with 32GB which has none of the slow-down issues I see on my personal M1 no matter what I do. Though sometimes the FireEye anti-malware process 'xagt' gets stuck using a shitload of CPU non-stop and murders the battery - killing that it immediately starts cooling down the outer case temperature noticeably within a few seconds, which is crazy. It starts up again shortly but doesn't continue using CPU like crazy ... I really need to write a daemon to do that automatically for me rather than just when I notice battery going way too fast.
8GB macs struggle driving a second display if you’re actually trying to do anything on it.
You understand that browsers don’t need gigs of ram per tab right?
are you sure you don't have any hidden extensions and/or computer viruses?
All at the same time? Because that’s hardly believable. Docker + any IDE already starts lagging with just 8GB. If you try connecting it to an external display it becomes virtually unusable.