I don't use the app, I use a tab in Firefox. I even alluded to "alternatively, we could tax software companies for their waste". We're on the same team, bud, I just also have to accept the reality I currently live in: to pay the bills, I need a job (I'm not an indie developer yet, though one day I might like to be, and work on patronage or something!), and to do that job I have to use whatever the corporate chat app du jour is. Sadly, I will likely never be in a position to pitch anything for that; these decisions are made by non-tech-geeks for the most part, and so I'll rarely, if ever, get to use eg. Zulip or IRC in a corporate setting again. It's Slack, or Teams, or some other heavyweight mess, all the way down. And so I need the RAM to render it, and thus I need laptop manufacturers, and mini PC manufacturers, and etc., to get their shit together and either: (a) stop soldering RAM down, or (b) provide $LUDICROUS_NUMBER amount of it, and to stop pretending pittances of RAM are acceptable for professionals in nearly-2024.
> it should be nearly criminal to ship a consumer device with less than 16GB now
I assume you were just being hyperbole because now you're talking strictly professional devices. You can and should give your expertise when non techies have opinions, one could even argue it's in our job description. You seem to have just caved and buy more RAM. I took the other more painful route, scrapped every electron app, learned vim, and am very vocal about the issues at $DAY_JOB. If more people did the same would we be in this situation today?
If you're compiling huge programs I get the need for ridiculous amounts of RAM, but consumers should absolutely be fine with 8GB, many even with 4GB. I work in VMs with 4GB daily and it's no problem using my normal stack, a few terminals, a browser window with a couple of tabs. It doesn't break a sweat so it's difficult to relate.
