Let's take an example in your favor and say you've got 16 integer local variables per stack frame and you're recursing 1000 (!!!) times over some really unbalanced tree or such. You saved 64 kilobytes...

Ok, now let's say 32 bit integers are the standard: You either wrote a program that starts to fail in mysterious ways when someone runs it on a 2 GB file, or you complicated the hell out of your data structures by needing arrays of arrays (i.e. https://www.nayuki.io/page/large-arrays-proposal-for-java).

It should be easier to make correct programs.