How crazy would I be to buy a laptop with only 4gb of sodered RAM for programming?

Question

Can I programming comfortably with only 4gbs of RAM?

Answer 1

The enterprise applications I work on would bring those 4GB of RAM to their knees begging to be put out of its misery. LOL

I'm actually upgrading from 16GB to 32GB because I run VMs and docker containers.

If your projects are small enough where you can be productive with or without an IDE, 4GB should be fine.

However, the larger your project and the more you rely on feature rich IDEs with intellisense and real time code checks, it's going to compete for more and more of that RAM.

Answer 2

What will work is going to depend on what you're trying to program and the OS you use along with what else is running. 4GB should be enough for most projects that aren't very complex, but with large data sets or too much running it could easily cause the CPU/RAM to be hogged and make your project(s) run slower.

Answer 3

In Linux pc, you could run any applications conformtably with 4Gb ram.

However I have a Samsung Slate tablet Windows pc with 4Gb ram, 128Gb SSD. I could edit images in Photoshop or Illustrator flawlessly, sometime I still use it to code and compile React Native apps through Android Studio without any obvious lagging issues.

You could consider change your HDD to SSD, if your pc come with HDD only

Answer 4

David Carroll Calviղ
Ended up finding a better deal for an hp with 8gigs. Already planning to swap out the CD drive for an SSD. Thanks guys!

Answer 5

It matters on what cpu you have and what your planning on doing with it, ram is really good if your running a lot of programs at once, like vms or virtualbox or you are pentesting, or doing ceh

Answer 6

「ＨＡＰＰＹ ＴＯ ＨＥＬＰ」 Okay that's how I was feeling. It's a 8th gen quad core i5, so Im feeling pretty safe. I cannot imagine coding something that's gonna require more than 4 gigs Thanks for your answer!

Answer 7

Tom Shaver yeah for bigger projects like you describe I'm sure I'll need an upgrade. Mostly I program on my desktop, much more of a powerhouse. I just need something mobile as I take all these online programming courses.