It is sufficient if the laptop has 4GB of RAM. The amount of RAM necessary will differ depending on whether you are compiling massive projects or running virtual machines, emulators, and integrated development environments. Ideally, you should have at least 8GB of RAM on your laptop. For game developers, the requirements are even higher.
8GB, 16GB, 32GB, & 64GB RAM
In order to avoid bottlenecks, you should at least have 8GB of RAM. This is especially true since your operating system and other applications you have open, such as your browser, do not contribute to this. You should have 16GB of RAM if you are working on most games and apps, and 32GB if you are working on more complex ones.
Even if you are on a tight budget, 8GB RAM is recommended for Android Studio development. Your Android App development will be slowed down if you choose 4GB RAM. It is best to choose 16GB of RAM. At least 16GB of RAM is required for the development of applications, however, Google recommends 64GB.
The minimum requirement for a responsive development environment is at least 16 GB of memory to allow for reasonable multitasking, research, and fast build times. It may be worth your time and money to invest in at least 32 GB of memory if you run several applications at the same time, use memory-hungry tools and builds processes, and run virtual machines.
How Do You Run Out Of Available RAM?
Memory (RAM) is one of the most important components of a computer, and many people underestimate its importance. A computer may slow down when your applications demand more memory than is available. Computers (operating systems) will swap data between your memory and virtual memory in this situation. A virtual memory device (SSD or hard drive) is a large chunk of storage space used for storing data that cannot fit in RAM. RAM is much faster than SSDs, so once you run out of available RAM, your experience can rapidly become unpleasant.
RAM & Modern-Day Development Workflow
According to some, developers could theoretically use only a text editor for development if they had a minuscule amount of RAM. A modern development workflow, however, cannot accommodate this.
One application or process consuming all of the RAM isn’t a problem for most developers. A scarce resource is actually being fought over by a number of applications at the same time.
Adding more memory will not improve your experience if your OS and applications are not using it. As soon as your system reaches capacity, switching tasks can cause applications to lag. Once there is no more free space in the memory, the OS must decide what data to copy into or out of virtual memory. For instance, if you have a Zoom video call scheduled, it is likely you don’t want the build to slow down when you do have not enough RAM available.
This brings us to the end of the article. We hope you have all the information you need to find the answer to your question, “How much RAM do you need as a developer?”. All the best!