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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

It sucks that you're getting downvoted. I totally agree that this "RAM is cheap" thinking is problematic. Sure, if you only ran one program at a time on a computer, it would make perfect sense. But when I have a finite amount of RAM to spread among a multitude of applications, screaming "RAM is cheap" is bollocks. Never mind that on my current laptop I'm already at the max it can physically support, which means if I want more RAM, I have to buy a whole new machine.

Here's a thought for developers: Next time you find yourself saying "RAM is cheap" (or any variation thereof) thwack yourself about the head multiple times with a big stick, then go rinse your mouth out with soap and water.

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Sometimes RAM is cheaper than engineer salaries. Sometimes it isn't. It depends on problem domain, scale, and what you're tying to optimize for. Debating this just seems pointless.

In any case, the number one evaluation criterion for browsers is not the RAM profile.

If performance matters that much, perhaps you should instead be asking why we are writing applications and UI in an ugly evolution of SGML.

Before you fault the Moz devs, ask yourself why we have CSS for high DPI images and why designers embed videos into website headers. Maybe your needs aren't at all times reflective of the majority. The browser serves the spec. The spec serves every case you care to imagine. Because that's what we evolved a doc format to do.

(Just imagine a parallel universe where it was instead MS Word that evolved into a facebooking client!)

I'm not faulting the Moz developers per-se, just saying that - as a group - developers should not just throw up their hands, shout "RAM is cheap" and then be totally cavalier about how their programs use RAM. It's a refrain that has become, IMO, all too common, and I think it's harmful.

Sure, Firefox, and every other program should use as much RAM as it needs. But we should be mindful of keeping that need as low as possible, at least for any program that falls into the category of "runs in a multi-program environment and probably won't be the only program running from a finite RAM pool".

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