Every Developer Deserves More Memory

http://www.manyniches.com/developers/every-developer-deserves-more-memory/

by BrandonWatson • 17 years ago

49 27 17 years ago

cschneid• 17 years ago

Best choice was to get the 16gb of ram in my Mac Pro. It's epic working with that kind of hardware behind you. I'm running a Windows VM, all my servers are up constantly, dozen programs, etc. And still have 4.25 gb free for the sweet sweet caching.

nickyp• 17 years ago

Hear, Hear! Also went to 20Gb (up from 8Gb) on the Mac Pro in the summer. Best 300$ I ever spent on hardware upgrades. Never close apps anymore, and never experience a swapstorm anymore.

Only one very, very big drawback: you'll want that much RAM in every system you use afterwards. I guarantee it: I just put back the screws on my laptop 10 minutes ago ;-)

ludwig• 17 years ago

That's awesome! Now I know what I'll be buying for Xmas :D

stuff4ben• 17 years ago

Dang and I thought the 3GB I have on my P4 3Ghz desktop circa 2005 was awesome </sarcasm>. Although I can't complain, I can still run the latest Ubuntu, an XP VM for Outlook and the occasional Word doc, Eclipse and a memory hungry Weblogic/ATG setup. free -m reports I'm only using just over half of that 3GB so I'm doing pretty good. To be on a MacPro with 20GB of RAM...sigh...

lyime• 17 years ago

Brandon, You are a great man. +infinity karma for you.

param• 17 years ago

How soon before we see this meme evolving to "Every developer deserves more SSDs"?

BrandonWatson2• 17 years ago

Mine would be the first machine upgraded. :)

codexon• 17 years ago

How soon before we see this meme evolving to "Every developer deserves more L1 Cache"?

Tuna-Fish• 17 years ago

Well, since the speed of a SRAM cache depends mostly on it's size, I predict that craze to die pretty much instantly when they grow big enough that pipelining cannot mask the increased latency anymore and performance begins to suffer.

antirez2• 17 years ago

I should stop to continue to live with 2GB I guess. can I install any kind of DDR2 SDRAM in my macbook, right? I hope I don't need to get super overpriced Apple RAM.

cracki• 17 years ago

not any RAM modules, but SO-DIMMs. they're about half as long as what you'd plug into a normal desktop PC.

pmjordan2• 17 years ago

Yep, and newer MacBooks actually use DDR3 rather than DDR2 memory. 'About my mac' will tell you what kind to get.

jon_dahl2• 17 years ago

You don't need Apple RAM. Check out Other World Computing for an Apple-friendly RAM shop.

smokey_the_bear• 17 years ago

I just found out that the old macbook pros can take 6GB of ram. The late 2007 and 2008 pre unibody models. So if you're going to order some, might as well order the best.

Here's a link about it - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=573906

btilly• 17 years ago

Every developer would like and enjoy more memory. But if you're developing applications for normal folks, it is very important that you experience what life is like on a more limited machine.

That is why, more often than not, I've deliberately worked with hardware that was a generation or two behind the latest and greatest. Yes, it is a PITA. Yes, I'd enjoy the bright and shiny. But it keeps me honest about what is going to work in the wild.

pmjordan2• 17 years ago

There's definitely some truth to that, but I think you'd be better off switching to an older machine (or deliberately taking out RAM/underclocking the CPU) occasionally. The productivity gains from working with decent hardware are worth it.

silvestrov• 17 years ago

You really need 2 computers: one development machine that is the latest and greatest (incl. Intel SSD), and one old slow grandmom computer that shows how slow the 1/4 slowest customer computers are.

You can't combine it into a single computer, because even if it is only 80% of the latest and greatest, it is still way faster than grandmom, thus not representative of your customer base.

bfung• 17 years ago

How about a compromise; develop on shiny fast box, test on the generation or two behind box. Personally, I'm like the GP, I don't feel like my older computer (Athlon XP 1800, bought in 2002) is significantly slower for things that I program. The only slowness are flash movies, but I'm not a flash developer.

jon_dahl2• 17 years ago

I hear what you're saying, but I'd personally rather work more quickly than experience my users' pain. Most of my users won't have a 24" monitor either, but it's worth every penny.

adolfoabegg• 17 years ago

just install Windows XP on a VM with 768Mb of RAM. (You can do the same with all other "box scenarios" you need)

vicaya• 17 years ago

Yeah, I'd like to upgrade my brain with more and faster memory as well.

jfager• 17 years ago

So... why are you doing this? Nice gestures are nice, but this one seems really expensive. What's the payoff for Microsoft? Simply a goodwill play?

mhd• 17 years ago

Every developer who creates desktop apps should work with a rather low spec machine for a while, maybe even for a whole day per week.

Moore's law yadda yadda, but while it's great that we don't have to include inline assembly anymore, some of the waste we're seeing currently is just abysmal.

Every Developer Deserves More Memory

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