I'm hoping I haven't become an out of touch tech bro, but I believe if you're able to flash libreboot on your software development machine you're able to afford $50.

_should_ you have to spend more money to support bloated software? No of course not, especially since many users of such software _aren't_ tech bros, but as someone in tech, shelling out a little more money seems like a much more pragmatic solution vs having your computer be slow and/or waiting for the industry to change.

It's not just the price, there are tons of new computers out there being sold with <=16 GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard. It's not like one can just pop it out and put a new stick in.

Yup, $50 is definitely a lot when the whole computer was $150! Whatever it came with from the person I got the machine from on Craigslist, that's what it's generally staying with until I have to replace something - especially as I try to acquire multiples of my machines so I can continue to use them for a very long time. An entire functioning machine is more important to me than a RAM upgrade. (That said, it's really nice to be able to pop in new RAM if I happen to have some on hand, so having RAM slots is pretty important regardless!)

Got a refurbished X200 with 8 GB RAM and a CPU that has only 2 cores. Can develop software using it just fine. Can even watch YouTube videos in acceptable quality just fine. Can do all things ordinary people do just fine, all applications I need opened at the same time just fine. It all depends on ones software choices. If MacOS cannot cope with less than 16GB RAM, then that is a defect in itself.

There's also a lot of power wasted. That extra stick of RAM will cause a hit to your battery life.