Comment Re:It doesn't matter (Score 1) 317
Exactly. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
I keep seeing this assertion. If applications aggressively grab memory and resources that they might use, and if I'm a user who uses the computer for more than just a single-domain application (say, web browsing), then I'm going to encounter a lot of OS swapping as I jump around between applications. If the OS has a free buffer of RAM, then new applications I open are going to open more quickly as the OS doesn't first have to swap opt currently in-use memory.
I can't help but think that this philosophy that unused RAM is wasted RAM is what's led to application bloat. I see this most in my career in situations such as frantic last-minute GC tuning resulting from UAT load testing; or when a developer discovers that some new feature is going to push the app over some threshold, and they have to go back and spend extra time analyzing and tuning other parts of the code base that don't, strictly, have anything to do with the feature they were task with developing.
It's as if, when it became widely recognized that eager optimization had consequences, the industry threw the baby out with the bathwater and took it as permission to entirely ignore resource use considerations during the initial design and development phase. This philosophy has apparently permeated through to the general computing zeitgeist, as evidenced by your (commonly held, and understandable) conviction.