20 years ago or so, I was at a computer parts store, pricing up parts to build a computer. I was on a limited budget and had already decided on a CPU, graphics card, and a motherboard.
“Ah, crap, I forgot about RAM”, I said.
“No problem”, the shopkeeper replied, “RAM is cheap”
I don’t remember what the CPU I got was, but the GPU was an Nvidia GeForce 6600GT.
I bought my current PC 13 years ago. Haven’t changed a part out of it. At the time I bought it, it had a GTX 745 in it, i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz, 12gb DDR3 ram, and I got it for less than a $1000. While I can’t play games like RDR2 or the AAA modern day games on it, it still gets the job done for the games I enjoy playing in 2026.
“Ah, crap, I forgot about RAM”, I said. “No problem”, the shopkeeper replied, “RAM is cheap”
That was also the mindset in programming up to very recently. Memory is cheap and plentiful, so you didn’t need to worry too much for all but the most conservative of memory management.
Strange to think that with how computers are today, we’re looping back around to resource-limited compute, not because of software bloat or anything, but that people won’t be able to afford to change their computers out for something more powerful.
20 years ago or so, I was at a computer parts store, pricing up parts to build a computer. I was on a limited budget and had already decided on a CPU, graphics card, and a motherboard.
“Ah, crap, I forgot about RAM”, I said. “No problem”, the shopkeeper replied, “RAM is cheap”
I don’t remember what the CPU I got was, but the GPU was an Nvidia GeForce 6600GT.
I bought my current PC 13 years ago. Haven’t changed a part out of it. At the time I bought it, it had a GTX 745 in it, i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz, 12gb DDR3 ram, and I got it for less than a $1000. While I can’t play games like RDR2 or the AAA modern day games on it, it still gets the job done for the games I enjoy playing in 2026.
That was also the mindset in programming up to very recently. Memory is cheap and plentiful, so you didn’t need to worry too much for all but the most conservative of memory management.
Strange to think that with how computers are today, we’re looping back around to resource-limited compute, not because of software bloat or anything, but that people won’t be able to afford to change their computers out for something more powerful.