16GB or 32GB of RAM for developer

[macagain]

Usually I will have at most Chrome, mail, Spotify, sublime text, Terminal, and maybe Sketch open at one time.

I loaded everything up on my 2011 MBP with 8gb of ram and took a look at Activity Monitor. Everything was still in the green.

I tried to stop using serious memory hog applications, as much as possible, like Adobe stuff and Microsoft crap.

With the new 6 core processor and SSD drives, I’m thinking the standard 16gb of ram will be enough.

I have looked at Windows machines, but I just don’t see them as good local development machines like the Macs are. Plus having to buy all new software, relearn ****, and not throw up every time I load Windows 10.

So I’m thinking about going with the 15 MBP 2.2GHZ, 256 SSD, and 16gb of ram. I am just hoping not to get that wonderful “buyer’s remorse” feeling

Yeah, with what you use, 16 is plenty... none of the apps you mentioned are real memory hogs (unless you have a gazillion tabs open in chrome that is...).

Re: windows... for the sw you mentioned, pretty much everything is on subscription, so you have to pay regardless of platform, except for sublime text which is not much... The dell xps 15 is actually a pretty nice machine for not a lot of money, as are various razers... but the dealbreaker for me is as you pointed out, it's hard to "not throw up every time I load Windows 10"!

I love my 2018 mbp 15!

 

[igorpreston]

As everyone else has mentioned. 16GB is plenty, even future proof for web application development.
[doublepost=1539004590][/doublepost]
The OP was asking if 16GB was enough for web application development. It is.

Please contact Docker forums for assistance with memory overflow issues that have been reported since 2014, this is why many have moved away from it. Ruby also has a history of massive memory usage. Please be conscientious of your end users ( I am sure you are. You are just trapped in a storm of regret, because nobody uses Ruby voluntarily ).

What are you talking about? I just shared with the OP my use case for web development so he can consider it, compare with his use case and decide what’s best for him. Of course 16GB is enough, I used 8GB 13 inch 2015 at some point of time for some not that much demanding projects (again docker and ruby), but web development is the broad area and sometimes 16GB might not be enough. I worked for the company with big enterprise projects in Java that custom built developer machines with AT LEAST 32GB RAM, and that is as well web development, just like simple PHP and JavaScript apps that don’t require much memory.

P.S. I have no issues with memory overflow in Docker, it is just the project itself consisting of many microservices built with custom CQRS + Event Sourcing + DDD approach which is architectured that way and we need at least 8GB RAM for it to run properly. So I have no idea what you’re talking about, clearly it seems to me you don’t know the topic well enough.

 

[haralds]

I am looking to buy a new Macbook Pro and I'm stuck on if I should get 32gb of ram or just 16gb.

I primarily do web and application development without tons of VM's.

If there are other developers here, I really like to hear your thoughts and opinions on if 16gb is enough or is 32gb really needed.

I think it depends on the amortization cycle you expect from your machine. If it is short term, 16GB are sufficient. If you are looking for 4 years or longer - I would go 32GB.
Personally I use VMs a lot, but that was not the deciding factor for me buying 32GB.

 

[Saturn1217]

I do web development full time and I plan on getting 16gb for my next personal computer purchase. My reasoning is that I generally push my work computer pretty hard (2015 15" MBP with 16gb ram) and even with the ****** security and vpn software that my company forces to have running in the background, and tons of chrome tabs, and vscode windows open, plus slack, onenote and sketch running, I generally don't have issues with 16gb of ram.