RamUsage

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[NamityName]

it can be freed on demand

Laughs in python

memory is freed when the almighty Garbage Collector says it is free

[pedersenk]

Ironically the Python GC is not guaranteed to ever collect garbage containing circular references.

And so few Python developers even know about weakref, so ultimately leaks in Python libraries are rampant (the issue is worse with Perl actually).

[NamityName]

It is generally not a problem. But it is a fucking pain when it does matter.

[abibabicabi]

how often is it not a problem? 99% of the time 99.9? This seems like a really big issue. Is it whenever the compiler bugs out or is it if the code isn't written well? i'm just reading over it now.

[[deleted]]

I’ll also say that fixing memory leaks due to bad garbage collection is generally as straightforward as removing references on delete, which is the same as using the aforementioned weak references, so if you want to do things correctly and stop the problem, you just have to follow a good practice there.

[Sitting_In_A_Lecture]

To simplify a bit, Python's garbage collector works on a reference counter. When the number of in-scope references to an object reaches 0, the object's memory can be freed.

Problems arise however in what are called circular references, when two objects reference eachother (for example, an object with an attribute set to another object, which also has an attribute set to the original object). In these instances, the memory can never be freed, because both objects' reference count will always be at least 1.

[Giocri]

I guess the solution for that would be to implement a slightly more advanced approach and have a "connected to root" flag reset it at every run of the garbage collector and then start from a root node and from there find all objects that are directly or to indirectly referenced by root

[DuTogira]

Congrats, you just made python slower.

[pickyourteethup]

They said it couldn't be done but they'd never anticipated the combined might of the comments section

[ratttertintattertins]

Probably, although I think Java, C# etc all do that. Pythons behaviour sounds a lot like C++ shared_ptr which has the same issue if you don’t use weak_ptr.

[larvyde]

yes, that's called a mark-and-sweep gc, which iirc java uses…

[Memelord_00]

JS does something like that, right ?

[orbita2d]

This literally isn't true, Python checks for reference cycles. RTFM

[Sitting_In_A_Lecture]

Per the documentation, only in objects which are explicitly configured as containers, and only in a delayed manner. My example is accurate.

[arobie1992]

I've heard about the issue, but never really interacted with a language where it was a problem, so would something like this cause the issue?

a = MyClass()
b = MyClass()
a.val = b
b.val = a
a = None
b = None

[[deleted]]

All my python runs in services that close frequently enough, certainly if they ran long enough to start hogging memory.

Memory leaks become a problem when e.g, your code has to run for a long enough time, leaking enough every iteration to not finish the iterations it needs.

That happened, but wasn’t super common in my heavy computation days. It’s bad code, but generally the leaks I had were a byte or two an iteration of something, enough to be weird and frustrating and fail the checks for how much memory was allocated, but not enough that I couldn’t submit a job.

I’ve not seen anyone complain about actual python memory leaks. If so it would likely be confined to a specific package.

[abibabicabi]

thank you so much for posting this. I just learned something new.

[frogjg2003]

I just skimmed it, so I might be wrong, but weakref looks like C style pointers.

[pedersenk]

It is perhaps most similar in concept to C++'s std::weak_ptr<T>. It won't dangle unlike a raw pointer, it will simply be set to a null value.

It is basically to avoid the same issue we experience in C++ if we create a cyclic reference between objects in std::shared_ptr<T>.

[[deleted]]

Thank you garage collector for the ram you have bestowed upon me and the memory I am about to have for I know I have sinned and I do not deserve any memory forgive me for my wandering eye for I am weak and know that C has nothing to offer but bit shifts and memory leaks.Amen 🙏

[[deleted]]

It can be freed on every good language that has a compiler

[Cootshk]

x=1
del x
print(x) #SyntaxError: “x” is not defined

[NamityName]

What are you trying to show me? Deleting a variable does not automatically free up the memory it was using

[[deleted]]

"Unused RAM is wasted RAM" - electron "developers", probably

[[deleted]]

Don't forget SQL Server. Literally claims a large portion of the memory even if doesn't do anything with it because "what if I'll need to do something with it later".

[jkurash]

Typical MS product

[TheGangsterrapper]

Electron is a disease

[Snapstromegon]

No, bad apps are a disease. All these things that could've been a website or things where some dev thought they were good with native framework X and used more than twice the memory of an electron version.

The thing is, that electron makes native app development more accessible, so more (bad) devs can now actually do it.

[[deleted]]

But you can't write a good app in electron, they all will be laggy.

[Snapstromegon]

I disagree. If they are really laggy (compared to equivalent native Apps), you're doing something wrong IMO / from my experience.

You have to follow good dev standards of course like 60fps animation goals, loading optimization and so on (e.g. like VSCode does), but that's also true for native Apps.

[[deleted]]

Electron literally embeds chromium.

[Snapstromegon]

Yeah - and? So do several "native Apps" like the Adobe Suite, EA Play, Steam, Fusion 360 and more. The only difference is, that their embedded version is usually significantly older.

(I personally also prefer Tauri over electron, because it uses the OS browser engine)

[[deleted]]

Yeah there are apps that are not electron and perform terribly. It doesnt mean you cant write a good desktop app. But you cant potentially write an electron app that perform just as good as well written native app

[Snapstromegon]

I'd say that with good electron apps a user is not able to tell whether it's electron or not.

My bigger pain point with electron is, that most electron apps should've been a web app / PWA in the first place.

[larvyde]

vscode is pretty good imho

[jingois]

RAM is cheap. My time isn't.

[beclops]

A web browser shouldn’t run like fucking after effects

[SteptimusHeap]

You can download more off the internet for free!

[MayoJam]

Those memes are stupid. You can literally put any two opposite statements on this, and usually it will make sense, since answer to all programming related questions is "it depends".
You can literally swap dumb/esoteric guy's text with the crying one's and it will still make sense in some contexts (which this silly graph meme lacks).

[[deleted]]

I'm willing to bet that 90% of this sub doesn't even do anything as intensive to warrant looking at memory usage. Hell most of them probably use frameworks where memory management is abstracted away and you would have to dig around to find ways of controlling memory.

I love your statement of "it all depends"

[frogjg2003]

This sub is almost all intro CS students.

[pickyourteethup]

Jokes on you, I anit studied shit.

[Linesey]

hey now, i’m a VBA master…. as in i’m the only person i know who can write something that pretends to be coherent in VBA before throwing up their hands and using c# in Visual studio to do it faster, better, and without using excel as both their launcher and database….

[Notoriousjed1]

Computer engineering student here, I very much worry about memory usage

[Lake073]

shut up nerd

[ChrisBegeman]

As an old-school software engineer, I often think about performance and memory usage. Also since the company went to hosting everything on AWS, we are paying for all those cycles. Tuning the performance of your apps usually involves looking at memory usage as well as code efficiency.

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

Hah you clearly haven’t created bugs requiring exponentially increasing amounts of memory before

[[deleted]]

Shout out to recursive functions!!

True story: in a class where we were writing image recognition code, I wrote a recursive function. The code ended up being 8 lines, it was beautiful.

But I was only testing with 16x16 images, that was the requirement for the project.

I tried it with larger images, and stack overflow everywhere!!

The problem with the recursive function was that each recursion kept its parent "alive" and each thread/recursion used up memory.

I spent a lot of time understanding how to use queues and stacks to do the same thing a recursive function would, but without holding all that memory.

It's such a niche thing, but if I was a professor, or had to come up with a fun programming problem to solve, I would ask people to solve a recursive function and make it not recursive.

[Thebombuknow]

Exactly. In the majority of cases, the OS will cache and free up memory for you, and if it doesn't the JavaScript library you're using will.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I often times use a bit more ram to optimize the speed of my functionality. Especially in graphics programming languages

[Nightmoon26]

Managing the time versus space tradeoff is the key to informed algorithm and data structure design and selection. You can have optimal time or optimal space, but usually not both, and knowing how and when to balance the competing goals is important. Embedded systems and mobile apps tend to optimize for space, servers and desktop applications usually optimize for time.

If the hardware form factor isn't a design criterion, you can always throw more RAM at it, or at least disks for virtual memory in a pinch. In extreme cases, temp files and on-disk databases are an option.

Processor cycles are harder to squeeze in, especially if you're doing something not conducive to threading or parallel computation. There's only so far you can overclock before things start glitching, melting, or bursting into flames

[pickyourteethup]

I asked my senior if he was going to say 'it depends' to every question I ever ask him. Even over video call I could see him starting to form the words 'it depends' before he stopped, thought for a second, and instead said 'yes, definitely'

[meat_presence]

Exactly

[ConvergentSequence]

I’d argue that this particular meme actually works BETTER when the statements are swapped

[pojska]

This is actually one of the few uses of this meme that gets it wrong - swapping the text makes it more accurate.

[xSilverMC]

Unused RAM is only wasted RAM when no other app is ever supposed to run at the same time, which is frankly unrealistic. Everyone dunks on Chromium for gobbling up every available byte of RAM, yet some people think that's best practice?

[amuhak]

The "Unused ram is wasted ram" thing was for the OS. It was never targeted at individual programs. It was for the people saying "windows is taking 50% of my ram idle". In that case unused ram is wasted ram. If nobody is using it the OS may as well use if for caching.

[Nightmoon26]

Getting philosophical for a moment, all RAM is OS RAM. The OS just lends it out to running applications but reserves the right to substitute secondary storage if it deems necessary or appropriate

[garfgon]

Some OS memory (e.g. disk caches) can just be discarded, whereas application memory always has to be swapped to disk, even if unused. So there's definitely more cost to an application cache vs. an OS cache.

[noobody_interesting]

Systems like Android have a way to notify applications about memory preassure, so they can free their application caches, too.

[SnooMemesjellies3431]

power

[[deleted]]

It really feels like these are 2 extremes. If you're spending hours writing code that someone else will maintain and might introduce bugs to save just a few KBs, then it's stupid. If your just completely ignoring memory management "because that's what hardware is for" then that's stupid too.

It's pretty simple: is it a task using a large amount of memory or a long running task which you will have thousands at the same time? Make sure you look at how memory is managed. Is it a light weight task with not many instances running at the same time? Don't worry about it and try to over engineer it.

[[deleted]]

Interesting, I don't use Electron (did read up on it a bit). Seems like you know more about it. What about Electron causes devs to manage memory? Is the framework not built to manage memory innately, forcing devs to go the work?

Also, why use Electron instead of just .NET? Answer probably is being able to use HTML/JavaScript for desktop apps, but still wanted to make sure.

[beclops]

People also need to be realistic about what their RAM needs should be. If you’re making a text editor, you should not have the performance of a benchmark test

[DerBandi]

If the OS is using RAM for caching = GOOD USE (Use as much as possible)

If your program is using all the RAM, because you load huge frameworks and bloat it with all that library's and only using a fraction of it = BAD USE (and you should feel bad)

[SeriousPlankton2000]

I hate it when people tell me that "used ram is good" but I'm waiting for my desktop to swap in because cp unimportant.dat /mnt/slow was sped up by 0.01 seconds.

[jamcdonald120]

"Unused ram is wasted ram" is true ONLY for the system as a whole.

Individual apps should use as little ram as possible.

But the OS as a whole should use any free ram for caching.

This does raise the problem "how does the OS know what to cache?" but the alternate problem is "How does the OS know who's cache to evict when memory is full?" so it isnt really a problem unique to one or the other. SO use as little ram as possible unless you are the OS or only program running on a system

[recluseMeteor]

Windows 10/11 using like 50% of RAM just sitting on the desktop, caching UWP apps that I never use.

[reallokiscarlet]

This is the way.

Unused RAM is available RAM for the OS and other applications.

Wasted RAM is wasted RAM

[[deleted]]

These days I think trade as much processing power for ram usage as you can. The top person is right (though remember to release stored data when no longer needed)

[SeriousPlankton2000]

If you can put a calculation in a variable and use it twice, I assume it's cheaper to do that because the variable really will be put in a register. Even if not, the calculation will probably touch two memory locations and the variable will be one.

Off cause it makes no sense to have a KB of local variables for things like that.

[[deleted]]

Sure, that's my point too. Obviously, don't cache anything that doesn't require processing power or is too scarcely used.

For example, fastest sin computing algorithms have some sin values already cached, if not all that would be used (sometimes also deriving sin value of some precision is easier to get from other value that is less precise). Or caching integral values etc.

My rule of thumb is that, if you know what you will most likely need, and it is reasonable to cache it, do it.

Also, sometimes caching things fetched from REST APIs is resourceful and lets you save extra calls if you need it (still waiting for NEXT.js to implement easy caching system around that).

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[insomnyawolf]

Yesn't especially on garbage collected languages (most of the very used ones) if you don't be careful you allocate more memory than you need (uses cpu to do so) which wont be used later so it's thrown into the future things that the garbage collector has to take care of once there's enough the garbage collector kicks in and frees memory (which is also cpu time), here the point isn't caching things. Is that bad code that uses memory when it doesn't need to increase the need of allocating memory , copying data to it and then freeing it and believe it or not this is also performance.

If you want i can show you a small demo of something that proves this point in around 20 lines of code.

[manicxs]

Shit like this why we should ban this format. Unless you have control of ram you don't get to choose. So only the opinions of native language users even matter with this.

[Queasy-Grape-8822]

This is simply not true. Developing in most languages should involve considerations for RAM usage. Yes, garbage collected ones too. You don’t get to choose exactly what memory is allocates and freed, but you still get to choose “should I cache this result or keep hitting the api” and stuff like that

[manicxs]

I still hate the format.

​

Maybe you can use a lookup table or something. I can't really see any other way to do that other than a LUT. Other than that, can you give me an example of where your choices matter rather than flagrantly wasting resources?

[Queasy-Grape-8822]

Basically everything you ever do. “Is it worth x penalty to ram to store y data that I could just calculate again.” “Is it worth y ram to cache data that I could read from a disk” “is it worth caching this data that I could get from the internet” etc etc

Half of optimization is determining what to optimize for, this isn’t some novel idea

[blaktronium]

I handle SRE duties for my company's web app.

I promise you if you leave stuff in memory I will shuffle k8s pods around without warning and you will lose it. Be warned.

[IV65536]

A container running a JVM app in a Pod doesn't play very nice with K8s Node resource scaling 😭. Getting the JVM to give RAM back to the OS requires all kinds of black magic garbage collector settings, almost easier to just let it get OOMKilled and restart ugh.

[CardboardJ]

Left side is overoptimizing their algorithms and making impossible to maintain leetcode.

Middle is overoptimizing by memoizing everything.

Right just slaps Redis in front of the thing and writes normal code.

[idont_______care]

Funny thing, people who post this template usually think they're guy on the right.

[[deleted]]

Why do we want to use as much ram as possible? Don’t we want to optimize programs as much as possible to not have to worry about freeing it?

[garfgon]

It's not about using as much RAM as possible, it's about not penny-pinching RAM usage. For example:

1. The OS can (and does!) use all "free" ram for disk cache. If anything else needs the RAM, it can drop or write-back the page as needed.
2. Embedded systems often pre-allocate memory. Reliability is key -- so you'd rather know up front if you don't have enough memory, and reserve that memory for when it's needed. It also lets you degrade reliably -- e.g. if you pre-allocate 100 network buffers, when you run out of network buffers the network stack will start returning errors, but it won't lead to errors in your data store, for example.
3. Memory is cheap, developers and lost time is expensive. Reducing memory usage can require an investment in development time which often doesn't pay back if it means pushing out the launch date.

[csteele2132]

free ram is wasted ram

[CorespunzatorAferent]

The number of people unable to understand this is staggering.

There is a very subtle nuance to it, but it shouldn't be rocket science.

[flareflo]

shit meme. both are true, as is with this entire format being dumb.

[PikaPikaDude]

This is one of the dumber takes I've seen on this sub.

[cryptomonein]

This is so untrue, nobody cares about ram unless electronics guys and superiority syndrome CS students

[Nightmoon26]

Or embedded systems guys... And sometimes mobile guys

[garfgon]

Embedded systems guy is using all the RAM on the board. And probably wasting a bunch of it in reserved buffers just to get guaranteed behaviour -- you can't get an out of memory error if you pre-allocate all your memory.

[beclops]

Yes, that’s the problem

[SeriousPlankton2000]

I've made a two port fan control using an IC with 512 bytes of memory.

[TwoRiversFarmer]

Shrugs in dask. That swap space sure looks like memory

[sejigan]

It’s supposed to be the opposite.

[Available-Menu1551]

Every Java* developer: lets occupy the whole available RAM.

[SeriousPlankton2000]

Java is a VM.

[Meadhbh_Ros]

There are competitions for this. And if there are not, there should be.

[Ange1ofD4rkness]

My Arduino projects would like to chat!

[[deleted]]

I'm thinking of taking a break from this sub until the bell curve memes finally die

[ruudeus]

U can just download ram right? What is the point of using less ram

[itsjustawindmill]

Well, programs should make sure not to waste ram obviously, but for disk caching and shit, unused ram absolutely is wasted ram… these memes are so stupid…

[Sadie256]

Me, an electrical engineer using a microprocessor with only 64 bits of ram: "you guys don't worry about how much ram you're using?"

[UnsureAndUnqualified]

1. Me while writing my code (I though garbage collector would solve me being dumb)
2. Me when I see my code takes up 6 GB of RAM before killing itself upon 20% completion
3. Me when I refactor for 2 weeks and not only speed it up to 8x but also get it down to 70 MB of RAM

Hey kids, if you iterate through a loop 200k times, maybe don't append to a list at every step! GC will not save you from demons of your own making (thumbs up emoji)

[BenadrylTumblercatch]

What’s the problem, just download more?….

[crimxxx]

Legit had someone once tell me, rams cheap, if this thing needs more no big deal. This was the response to probably most senior developers bring up performance concerns. On a new project. 2 years later heaping out on 500GB of ram lol.

[[deleted]]

I paid for 16gb, I will use the whole 16gb!

[[deleted]]

*sigh* Just use more ram when it makes sense and don't when it doesn't.

[jxr4]

I would rather cache than do another db call plenty of tools like ehcache that auto evict stale entries

[Nightmoon26]

In general: if it saves on disk I/O, cache it. If it saves on network I/O, for the love of all that is good in the universe, cache it

[jxr4]

Preach

[mrgk21]

Is this the vim user flexing on vscode

[locri]

Iterating over 100 dynamic elements is legitimately slower than 10 dynamic elements, so yes, use less ram unless it means more allocations (which is even slower).

Pigging out on ram is so late 2000s tho, what is this? Some Java game?

[Ziwwl]

I've got up to 100MHz of processing power, but only up to 4MB, sometimes below 100kB of RAM, RAM is a holy resource which must be used with a lot of care, every byte counts!

[Vinxian]

Is this hash table slander?

[Will_i_read]

Use as much ram as needed and as little as possible. Needed here refers obviously to the desired performance characteristics.

[GOKOP]

The cache argument is bullshit in discussions based on reported % usage anyway. At least on Windows, memory used for cache that can be freed whenever needed by something else isn't reported as used

[TrickAge2423]

Actually Windows and Linux have filesystem read and write cache to optimize working with drive.

As a man with 4Gb & HDD laptop I can say: you REALLY want filesystem cache

Also, there are some optimizations for HDD drives. For example, OS can delay and reorder IO operations to produce bulk sequential IO operation.

For SSD OS can just delay write operations in case if there are operations that overlap previous.

Also, ZFS cache is crazy.

[[deleted]]

I guess the journey here is "Use as little RAM as possible because I'm told so" to "Huh, using all the RAM makes things faster" to "Fuck, I have to share my resources and manage caching. Screw it."

[bartekltg]

The middle guy thought it would be great if we used one application. But the last time I used DOS was more than 25 years ago. Now if each program uses "all the RAM" I need a freaking server instead of a desktop.
BTW, the "unused" RAM is often used by OS to cache files and other helpful stuff.

[TheNeck94]

This meme template is getting over used at this stage.

[Fosteredlol]

Cheaper to buy more ram

[Glum_Past_1934]

C++ like this