zlacker

>>makira+(OP)
From the „Camel Book”, one of my favorite programming books (not because it was enlightening, but because it was entertaining); on the Perl philosophy:

“If you’re running out of memory, you can buy more. But if you’re running out of time, you’re screwed.”

>>xlii+s21
This can work both ways. If the program needs more memory than the computer has, it can't run until you buy more. But if it takes twice as long, at least it runs at all.

>>immibi+Kh1
Modern computers have so much memory it feels like it doesn't matter. Spending that memory on arrays for algorithms or things like a Garbage Collector just make sense. And, extra memory is worthless. You WANT the summation of all your programs to use all your memory. The processor, on the other hand, can context switch and do everything in it's power to make sure it stays busy.

The CPU is like an engine and memory is your gas tank. Idling the engine is bad, but leaving gas in the tank doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help either. I'm not gonna get to my destination faster because I have a full tank.

>>const_+UW1
Only if running one such memory-hungry program at a time, which usually cannot be afforded. Multi-program workloads are much more common and the strategy of using as much ram as possible can't work in that environment.