Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

Some programmers will write more efficient code. At my $dayjob (one of the big tech companies) we're already planning a major goal next year of optimizing server code to reduce RAM requirements, and this is directly in response to the crunch.

In practice I expect most optimizations will come from "stop doing stupid stuff" and not "use fancy advanced algorithms." But that's a cynical perspective so don't be cynical like me.

Until prices hit the large hyperscalers, I don't think most people are going to make significant changes. You might see a small set of open source projects related to self hosting put in an effort, but in general, I don't think so.

Some big-tech orgs (that have their own hardware) will take costs into account, but they already do that. The "optimization" is more likely to be business-optimizations; "this can be slower if it uses less memory", rather than inventing new stuff.

Note that I am excluding any of the big AI labs. They are definitely going to be working to figure out how to use less memory, but that's primarily not related to the direct cost.

If that happens, we will see it in triple-A games first. If some new titles have significant lower hardware specs than expected.

If buyers can't afford the hardware anymore, the studios need to adjust. It's definitively possible to scale games down a lot. There are a few AAA games that were "dumbed down" for the Switch 1 (Hogwarts, cyberpunk, ...). And that's a really low-spec device.

There are two factors: existing gamers not able to afford upgrading. But also new gamers, that might only be able to afford much lower spec PCs than people who bought 2 years earlier.

Why games? Because there is a clear point where people stop buying games. Minimum hw specs are known before buying.

I don't think we will in the HN snark sense of "this react site or electron app uses way too much memory". Those companies will continue to work in the same way, maybe even less efficiently as people chase modern UIs with extra animations or videos or effects, or with some AI code generation tacking on too many features or tech debt.

In specific sectors I do think we will see more optimization. If you're working on cloud compute or AI training / large scale data processing, there will be a big focus on optimization as prices are very large at that scale and shortages have a bigger effect.

Also in gaming I think the next cycle will be different. Big game studios used to push for the best possible graphics that might require the newest consoles or high end gaming computers, but the next releases might not be as much of an upgrade. The next gen of consoles or graphics cards themselves might be delayed, or be less powerful, or be too expensive and flop, as chip manufacturing companies continue focus on more lucrative markets and leave average consumers behind.

For this incentive to exist, the app needs to be such an obvious memory hog that users start identifying it as the source of the problem.

Even then, a lot is required for most businesses to prioritize this (presumably) temporary issue at the cost of things like: participation in the AI race, other features, bug fixes, new markets etc.

Heck, sometimes software is so inefficient that it costs developer and tester productivity but a fix is not prioritized for years.

No, even at these high memory prices it's cheaper to produce code as fast as possible than to spend the time to optimize it for efficiency. It has always been the case that hardware improves at a faster pace than software. So what will happen is that we will get tech improvements in hardware that will reduce its price faster than we can write software to fully take advantage of the hardware. The current bottle neck that's causing the spike in memory prices will subside relatively soon so we'll be in better shape before we know it.

I was thinking about this recently. If you discount web/electron bloat, actually the memory bloat of software isn't hugely terrible.

I still often notice that servers on Linux use <1GB of RAM even with relatively high use. I don't think that's really changed massively in 20 years.

Programmers might write more efficient code if the performance was unacceptable on their own laptops, but even in the not-flush-with-cash companies I've worked all my career, it's been easy for me to always have a dev laptop with twice as much RAM as most consumers have. I'm presently working on a laptop with 64GB, and we don't even use any local AI models. If a PE company is willing to spec dev laptops like this, even in the memory shortage, then I assume the memory pressure will never hit developers.

So, this carefree attitude directly shapes all code that runs client-side (JS + native apps) since the only impact on the company is whatever happens on the dev's laptop. The rest of the impact is "free" since it's paid (in either money or in misery) by customers.

For server side, I also highly doubt it, as being more memory efficient on the server side has always had a benefit to the company who pays the bill. The only things that may change may be the relative cost, but if management comes and says "AWS bill going up, help?" devs will say "OK, we can find ways to save RAM, but the team won't be doing any new features or fixing any customer-facing bugs during that time" and management will say "Okie dokie, we'll just pay the bigger bill then."

Unless users complain it’s not going to happen. Somehow SPA (Single-page application) consume memory as much as operating system.

> will programmers write

Who’s going to tell them?

One can certainly wish, but I am inclined to believe that RAM use isn’t just about sloppy programmers. I think it is, to a significant degree, about the kinds of problems we solve now that we have more RAM.

And not all exorbitant RAM use is about sloppiness. Sometimes you can trade more RAM use for lower complexity. Bugs and development time were expensive. RAM was not. So sometimes there is calculation rather than sloppiness behind certain types of heavy RAM use.

I've dumped python for anything that doesn't involve scipy / pytorch in favor of go. So yes, I'm having my llm's output go now which is generally more memory efficient than python.

Will they? I don't know. Should they? Yes. If AI is so great, we should use it to optimize. Rewrite all the bloat into lean efficient systems...

There's hope for the extinction of Electron based apps.

currently porting code from Go to Rust primarily motivated by memory efficiency gains

Algorithms and data structures aren't the problem, bundling Chromium to make a chat app is the problem.

I think Rust's rise in popularity will probably lead to some benefits.

Games will probably get more efficient but they're easier to scale down to the memory that's available.

The memory shortage is really for these insane memory requirements for LLMs.

A web browser and the basic mobile app will be fine.

The iPhone 17 Pro has the most RAM and it's only 12GB. Hell the iPhone 16 Pro only had 8 GB. The vast majority of consumer cases don't need it. I doubt Apple and other manufacturers will go beyond that to keep prices down.

Only if people start buying computers with less memory, if they just buy fewer computers it doesn’t seem worhwhile.

I doubt many of the newer generation ever even tried. Maybe they had a course at uni where they did some C or Assembly, but that's probably the extend of it. So no, I don't think so lol.

No. The cost of one programmer’s hour of work compared to the increase in price of RAM is not very big. One is a variable cost one is fixed.

Memory? Doubt it.

But I’m hopefully optimistic that we’ll see a renewed emphasis on speed and responsiveness, since users do notice that despite most products ignoring it.

Depends. I can certainly offer to rewrite my old code that contributed to the memory shortage, for a price.

I don't see the trend reversing, but if we're lucky, perhaps a freeze. Won't get more efficient but may not get worse.

No. Customers will pay more across all markets.

A few will write low level code that will make all code behave more memory efficiently.

Will you stop using docker to deploy a simple application? No? Didn't think so.

If the producers see a long term demand for memory they will meet the challenge and produce enough to bring prices down.

Economics will invariably alleviate the memory crunch. It just takes long and requires a huge upfront CapEx.

They have been burned in the past and are hesitant to over invest, worried that the bubble might burst.

I expect high prices to stick around for a while, but I would be surprised if this was permanent.

Which means to me, that price pressure probably won't be the driving force for writing more memory efficient software.

For those who want, I expect AI to make it easier to do that, assuming it's done right, i.e. not vibe coding it.

If you have a subscription to The Economist, I recommend listening to this Money Talks podcast. They talk about the shortage and the economics behind it.

Can anything stop South Korea’s bull run?

https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2026/05/21/can-anything-s...

claude code and friends will make it much easier to rewrite python/js/$memory-hungry code in rust.

Of course not. Why would they? The software nowadays is mostly written for people who already own computers with RAM already installed. Yeah, they probably won't upgrade for the next couple of years, so what?

Besides, have you heard about "virtual memory" and "swapping"? Nowadays, SSDs (and especially NVMe) are quite fast, so thrashing is much less of an issue.

Programmers won't, but LLMs will.

I don't think at this point in history limitations drive the the way we do things, abundance does.

no

No.

Lad, modern day "programmers" don't even know what memory is. You'll be lucky to find any "software engineer" who can even tell you what a pointer is.