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Comment by JacobEdelman | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the idea of developing for current machines. With the constant advances in computers the next generation of applications, "developer apps" should be made for the next generation of computers, meaning that its okay if it's a bit of a hog. I mean, 200MB is just a drop in a bucket now.

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Just imagine... if fewer people agreed with you, my 2.2 GHz quad core pocket supercomputer might be able to animate a list of tabs without stuttering.

...and fuck those people who can't afford to build a new bleeding edge gaming rig ever year, right? </s>

Developer arrogance like this is exactly why all software sucks. It's actually a lot worse than it used to be due to mobile phones, which are hugely underspecced but attract the same mentality of "my code is surely the only important thing users will ever run so it's ok to use 700MB for a browser".

If you want to have bleeding edge developer software than you may need bleeding edge developer hardware. To clarify, I don't think mainstream applications or even betas should aim at bleeding edge hardware, just that when we plan on making some new piece of software that may take years to build its okay to assume that people in the future will have better computers.

In 2006, the next computer was the iPhone with 1GB of memory and the iPhone 6 still has 1GB today. I wouldn't count on everything being a 16GB+ monster rig just to bring a browser up.

I don't necessarily disagree that stuff is getting too bloated, but the iPhone 1 had 128 MB of RAM. So iPhone memory is doubling every 2-3 years so far. That trend will likely continue as Apple's software is also getting more bloated.

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