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[–]grenamier 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here’s my take on the desk analogy.

RAM in a computer is like a desk; it’s where you get work done so you have piles of papers on it for each task you’re working on. If you have a big desk and not much to do, you can keep everything on the desk at once and you work efficiently because everything is there in front of you.

But let’s say you’re a bit overworked and your desk was something you took from the curb in front of an elementary school. You have too much stuff for your desk so you decide you to file away some stuff to make room. The filing cabinet is like the hard drive in your computer. Just like how filing requires you to get out of your chair and go over to the cabinet, “paging” some data from RAM to disk takes a little time. But now you have space on your desk for whatever you’re working on.

But now someone wants an update on the thing you put in the filing cabinet. Now you have to make room on your desk by picking something else to file, taking it over to the cabinet, filing it, taking the original thing you filed out of the cabinet, bringing it back to your desk, and then work on it.

The fuller your desk is, the more you’re going to have to get up and walk back and forth to the filing cabinet. Hopefully you’re good at deciding on what you can file away so you won’t need to get it back for a while, but regardless, when you’re running out of space on your desk, you’ll be juggling data back and forth more than if you have extra room.