"As memory prices continue to rise, it is time engineers reconsidered their applications and toolchains' voracious appetite for memory. Does a simple web page really need megabytes to show a user the modern equivalent of Hello World? Today's Windows Task Manager executable occupies 6 MB of disk space. It demands almost 70 MB before it will show a user just how much of a memory hog Chrome is these days. The original weighs in at 85 KB on disk."
"But as tech progress marched on and memory densities seemed destined to increase without end, protesting about bloat felt a lot like "old man yells at cloud." Enter the AI boom. As the world races to pack datacenters full of computing gear, memory prices have rocketed in recent months and currently show no signs of returning to levels where a developer could shrug and bolt on another multi-megabyte framework to meet an arbitrary user requirement."
Memory prices have risen sharply as datacentres expand to support AI, creating a practical shortage that demands greater software efficiency. Modern applications and toolchains consume megabytes or gigabytes where older programs operated in kilobytes, exemplified by Windows Task Manager's growth from 85 KB on disk to a 6 MB executable and almost 70 MB runtime. Engineers should reassess which parts of frameworks are necessary and prioritize leaner implementations. Managers should allocate time and resources to measure and improve toolchain efficiency rather than defaulting to larger frameworks. Historical examples show usable software ran from floppy disks on systems with kilobytes of RAM.
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