Hold on to Your Hardware

Re:Hold on to Your Hardware by elevation on Friday March 27, 2026 @10:42AM (#47543218)

16MB still seems massive for this kind of app. I ran Visual Studio 4, not an app, but an entire app factory, on a 66MHz 486 with 16MB RAM. And it was snappy. A TODO list app that uses system UI elements could be significantly smaller.

What do I gain if more developers take this approach? Lightning fast performance. Faster backups. Decreased battery drain => longer battery service lifetime => more time in between hardware refreshes. Improved security posture due to orders of magnitude less SLOC. Improved reliability from decreased complexity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hold on to Your Hardware by fireant on Saturday March 28, 2026 @12:08AM (#47551537)

16MB is less than a display buffer for a 4k display. It is never ever going to happen again just due to hardware realities.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hold on to Your Hardware by phito on Saturday March 28, 2026 @02:06AM (#47552057)

Less RAM usage doesn't equal better performances or faster software. It actually might mean the opposite, if you're not caching things in RAM.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hold on to Your Hardware by account42 on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @07:09AM (#47585620)

If a TODO list app has more than 16MB of data it could possibly cache in RAM then there is already something seriously wrong.

[ Parent | on HN ]