8 GB when using Android emulator and Xamarin has been a pain for me, but my iMac doesn't have a SSD drive (it's got an Apple Fusion drive). The machine was swapping all the time, e.g. when alt-tabbing between Android emulator and Xamarin.

After upgrading to 24 GB the machine became very usable.

I wouldn't ever want to go back to 8 GB. Perhaps 16 GB might be usable for iOS and Xamarin development, especially if the Android emulator can run in some kind of HAXM [0] mode, but for ARM processors ... not sure if that's possible right now. I'm sure the SSD also makes a big difference compared to my Fusion drive right now.

Still it feels safer (more future-proof) if the machine has a bit more memory than 16 GB.

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[0]: https://github.com/intel/haxm/wiki/Installation-Instructions...

FWIW on Windows a simple Flutter project in Android studio + the emulator + a couple browsers open and I'm hovering around 14 to 16 GB of ram.

There's no way I'm buying a 16 GB computer now, 32 GB is a minimum to be future proof.

An ssd would have made a bigger difference. And xamarin?? I’m so glad I don’t have to use that anymore.

Honestly Xamarin is pretty nice these days if ones’ aim is to share a lot of code between iOS and Android projects while still being able to provide a native experience.

I bought a 16GB MacBook Pro in 2013. I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t want more in 2021. I might have my next laptop until 2028.

As always, more RAM extends the usefulness of a computer.

If Virtual Machines are essential part of the workflow then 16GB is out of question IMO, could get away with Tiny Core Linux/Lubuntu on a VM to some extent but when getting some serious work done on both host and guest; 16GB would be a bottleneck for VM.