Unused memory is not useless, it is just unused. If I want to pull up a guide on how to giggle the grables in my favorite game Grable Giggler, I would be very happy if I had unused memory which I can now use for my browser.

Also, smaller RAM usage generally correlates to smaller file size, which is very useful on computers with limited storage.

And finally, there's also low spec gaming and accessibility. Minecraft, at least prior to the microsoft acquisition, was a very low spec game. I wouldn't say it was optimized, but a game of minecraft took less ram than chrome. There was nearly no computers at the time which couldn't run minecraft. At the time of minecraft's early boom, kids were getting low-spec hand-me-downs, and so minecraft was one of the most open-ended games they could play. What I'm trying to say is that minecraft—and Doom for that matter—owe a large part of their success to low memory usage.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Unused memory is not useless, it is just unused

Yes, which means it's doing precisely nothing to improve your performance.

If I want to pull up a guide on how to giggle the grables in my favorite game Grable Giggler, I would be very happy if I had unused memory which I can now use for my browser.

Your operating system should just free up some memory for that. In fact, your browser could be in memory before you decide to launch it. That's the magic of caching, baby! I'm just saying, don't be afraid to use memory - people are already buying way more of it than they need. That doesn't mean you should be creating games with memory leaks! But e.g loading things into memory before they're used saves you loading from disk in the moment - which would be slow.

And finally, there’s also low spec gaming and accessibility. Minecraft, at least prior to the microsoft acquisition, was a very low spec game. I wouldn’t say it was optimized, but a game of minecraft took less ram than chrome.

Minecraft was made in Java, the JVM is literally one of the worst platforms for memory usage (running something in the browser is just about the only way to make it use more memory than Java), so that just proves my point: Optimizing down to the kilobyte is useless in 2025. It was already useless in 2010. Also, you'll be happy to know that Microsoft rewrote it in C++ to save memory, it's called the Bedrock Edition and it runs on cheaper hardware than the Java Edition!

In fact, the horribly memory inefficient platform, Java, greatly contributed to its success! First off, it was much faster for Notch alone (initially) to write it in Java compared to C. Secondly, it allowed for much easier modding.

and Doom

came out in 1993, when 16 gigabytes of memory would've cost 2,867,200 USD (175 dollars for 1MB is what I found online). Now it's 50 bucks. 40 if you have an older machine that runs DDR4 and 30 if you have a DDR4 laptop.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Caching is a weird term for “just move the needless waste of space into another part of the computer”.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

I mean you can also just install a bare OS with no additional software, even a browser, and get by with 128 MB of RAM even in 2025. Then you're not wasting any space. It should also fit onto a 1 GB microSD card so no need to have any real storage.