Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That's not even close to an exaggeration. I'm running only half those things (or their competitive equivalents) right now on a Windows box. I just checked and I've got 14.8 GBs in use.

Fortunately, I have a Dell XPS 15 with 32 GBs of RAM, but the second I start up a single VM, one more messaging app, a small handful of Docker containers, or any IDE (of which I'm running none right now), I'm going over 16 GBs.

Realistically, most of us on HN probably need around 20-24 GBs, but laptops don't come in those increments.



> of us on HN probably need around 20-24 GBs

I develop for a living. I use 6 GB including a browser, a VM and an IDE.

Some of you greatly exaggerate the needs. Some workflows require 16+ GB of RAM, but most people complaining about RAM mismanage it or do not understand that caches are not mandatory.


I'm running firefox and mail in macOS, and 12gb are in use. The OS keeps things loaded in memory if you have it to spare.


Right now on macOS I'm running Firefox, Outlook, 2 VSCode instances, Postman, 1 Electron chat app and another chat app and I'm under 5GB. Uptime 4 days.


Cache does not count when discussing memory requirements.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: