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   Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:11:28 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

   I think the thing that bothers me the most about my industry in 2026 is that programming and making software used to be about embracing limitations and making well-working applications that worked for the humans who needed them despite limited computational resources.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:16:03 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     Now, a single browser tab (the one for this Mastodon window) uses almost 200MB memory.

     My first computer had 256KB RAM total. And a 20MB hard disk.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:26:13 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     @gsuberland fwiw sites I hand-made, including some with heavy animation and interactive elements normally use 80–100MB in a Chromium-based browser

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     Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (gsuberland@chaos.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:26:16 JST Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs you could probably render the same thing in 20MB but it'd be dogshit slow to use. and if you're not using the RAM for anything you're paying to refresh those cells for nothing. it's why the OS uses it as a disk cache when you've got nothing better to do with it.

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     Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (gsuberland@chaos.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:26:19 JST Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs right, but it uses 200MB to prefetch assets to make browsing faster, and scales memory usage to system memory pressure as an optimisation. this has been the case for ages.

     I'm all for "hey we should make software more efficient and responsive" but "my browser uses a lot of RAM" is an overused and unhelpful talking point.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:27:22 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
     • Nefles

     @nefles @kelpana my 10 year old car key has more memory than that

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     Nefles (nefles@piaille.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:27:24 JST Nefles

     in reply to

     • Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

     @kelpana @thomasfuchs I win, my first computer had 1 kb RAM.
     Ok, I did buy a 16 kb extension pretty quick😂

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     Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (kelpana@mastodon.ie)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:27:25 JST Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs my first computer had 64KiB and a tape drive 😬. In the 1990s, it was old then.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:31:06 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
     • Fabian Transchel

     @ftranschel @gsuberland fwiw I don't think Mastodon uses tracking at all, and this is a Mastodon tab

     The real problem here is client-side MVC

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     Fabian Transchel (ftranschel@norden.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 06:31:07 JST Fabian Transchel

     in reply to

     • Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     @gsuberland @thomasfuchs While you're technically correct, don't forget to mention that the main reason prefetch is wildly expensive is that either one of these is true:

     a) The website uses more tracking than skynet.

     b) In order to prevent a), the browser has x amount of adblockers running havoc.

     c) The websites themselves try to force unwanted content to no end on the user.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 11:01:15 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
     • Sunshine and Wind

     @gsuberland @WigglyWigtails This just comes back to what I said about "embracing limitations and making well-working applications" in my OP.

     Maybe we shouldn't do web apps as SPAs with endless scrolling.

     Maybe if there's no other way, we should go out of our way to optimize it to not use up the user's finite resources and power.

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     Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (gsuberland@chaos.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 11:01:17 JST Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     in reply to

     • Sunshine and Wind

     @WigglyWigtails @thomasfuchs it's just cache. SPAs, in particular those with infinite scroll like Mastodon, heavily rely on cache to be performant while scrolling or when switching back and forth between tabs.

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     Sunshine and Wind (wigglywigtails@theblower.au)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 11:01:19 JST Sunshine and Wind

     in reply to

     • Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

     @gsuberland @thomasfuchs "20MB and run dogs hit (;) slow", do you suppose this poor perf would be because of an inefficient rendering engine not managing memory well, CPU bottleneck or something else?

     RAM had been cheap until 2020something, will browser product managers start to optimise for a world with less available RAM?

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 21:38:57 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Hydrian

     @hydrian I've used graphical web browsers on computers with 4MB of RAM ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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     Hydrian (hydrian@twit.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 21:38:58 JST Hydrian

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs Your first computer didn't have Internet access either.

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     Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 21:45:43 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

     in reply to

     • Hydrian

     @hydrian There's also graphical web browsers for DOS, which run even on a original IBM PC from 1981, with a 8-bit Ethernet card and 640KB or even less memory.