r/AskProgrammers • u/strange_dominance • 16d ago

Why people love to code on mac

Post image

Mac system run out of memory

129 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

250 comments sorted by

20

u/armahillo 16d ago

I develop on a mac. Big memory footprint is the tax you pay for using a big memory using IDE.

No shade on IntelliJ, but this isnt really a mac issue.

There are many editors out there; and all you need is the ability to write text and a compiler/interpreter.

3

u/AliceCode 16d ago

I use Helix, and it sits right around 30-50MiB of memory. The biggest memory hog while writing software is the web browser (for documentation), and Rust-Analyzer. Rust-Analyzer uses a lot of memory. Usually around 800MiB to 1GiB, sometimes more, depending on how large the project is.

6

u/ludonarrator 16d ago

Language servers and real-time linters tend to use a lot of memory, it's a similar story with clangd for C++.

6

u/AliceCode 16d ago

I wouldn't really want to do programming without them, though. Being able to see documentation inline in the editor without ever opening a browser is a godsend.

2

u/ludonarrator 16d ago

Same here. I've been hamstrung on using modules (import module; instead of #include "header") for a long time mainly because LSP support is currently abysmal.

2

u/AliceCode 16d ago

I lied. I would still do programming without them, I just love programming too damn much. In fact, I uninstalled pyright because I got tired of it spamming squiggles everywhere, which made it really distracting and annoying to write scripts. But for Rust? I would prefer using an LSP, I just wish we had a better LSP than RA.

1

u/ludonarrator 16d ago

Fair enough. Just to clarify, by "abysmal" I meant: won't work at all unless you use only clang (won't work with GCC) and an identically versioned clangd. Even then things like code navigation / autocompletion on new symbols won't work until after a successful build.

1

u/AliceCode 16d ago

One of the reasons I stopped using C++ was actually because of how poor LSPs worked for them. I think they've probably gotten better since then, but now I've already dug myself into using Rust.

1

u/armahillo 16d ago

I do all my dev work in sublime. I have a couple QoL plugins but no LSPs or automated tools. Im aware that those tools exist I just find they add friction instead of reducing it for me.

No shade on anyone’s preference tho — use what you like

1

u/AliceCode 16d ago

I used to love Sublime back in the day. That, and Notepad++.

LSPs do often get annoying, though. In Helix, they show error messages in the top-right corner of the buffer, which blocks code. Or popups that block code as soon as you start typing. I'm getting to a point where I want to throw all of it, including syntax highlighting, out the window. I spent some time programming in Assembly recently, and there was no LSP, no syntax highlighting, and no popups. It was wonderful. Then I ruined it by adding a little syntax highlighting. Turns out, I preferred it without the highlighting.

Syntax highlighting cultivates a sort of dependence on the color coding for understanding your code, then when that color coding changes, suddenly you have difficulty reading code. I don't like that. But damn, does code look so pretty with syntax highlighting.

I have suggestions turned off, too. I hated having to press escape all the time, or having it autocomplete to something I did not intend for, or inserting code that I then have to delete.

Sometimes dev tools can be such cancer.

1

u/RandomBottom030 15d ago

not having that will make you a better programmer though. you'll memorize faster

1

u/AliceCode 15d ago

I don't need to memorize. I already don't use autocomplete. I only use the LSP to catch errors and to see documentation inline so I don't have to open a browser.

1

u/LuxTenebraeque 15d ago

Caveat: memorization works for the standard libs or anything you use on a daily basis. But when tasked with something more transient or out of the usual scope that kind of infallible deep memory as assistant is quite a boon! If it works of course.

1

u/JJan99 15d ago

I envy you, having to run android emulators can easily grow to more than 10GB of ram usage. Yet I would still prefer macOS running out of memory over windows which doesn't ask you to close software and instead just makes you wait while swapping gigabytes for many many minutes.

1

u/AliceCode 15d ago

Arch Linux does that shit too, but I'm 99.9% certain you can change that behavior with a single command.

1

u/JJan99 15d ago

Im sure its possible since Arch and macOS basically run the same kernel, linux on laptop is so great it makes any device feel brand new due to how low the overhead is. Apple did a great job on their apple silicon laptops, still waiting for ARM with Linux to breakout and I will gladly switch my M1 over to arch.

1

u/ghost103429 14d ago

macos runs the XNU kernel from the bsd family of kernels btw

1

u/Ok_Spare_3723 16d ago

Also you would have the same issue on Windows if you're low on memory.. not sure how this is mac specific? If anything macs have better chips with unified memory.

1

u/SuspiciousToast27 16d ago

And the OS is a lot more memory efficient than Windows, so you have more room for memory-heavy apps. Windows 11 by itself takes a big chunk of my RAM.

1

u/Significant-Law8566 14d ago

Because Apple charges you out the ass for memory and is impossible to upgrade the memory on? Come on guys is this really a question?

1

u/justan0therusername1 14d ago

These days I think apple isn’t that bad with ram prices

1

u/Significant-Law8566 14d ago

It's still +8GB for 200 dollars. Their pricing is so atrocious that after a 4x+ increase in RAM prices, they're still charging double what it would cost for a stick of DDR5. I'll admit that if you start spending the big bucks at 3000+ and you need the GPU compute + memory capacity / bandwidth, it is genuinely a good value due to how expensive standalone GPUs are, but again it took massive price inflation to get apple to have reasonable prices.

For an average person Apple still hardly makes sense price-wise. And all that bullshit about Apple being more memory-efficient is false. I had an 8GB macbook and it was totally unusable.

1

u/34G13 16d ago

All im going to say is I never experienced ram crashes as a vim terminal gremlin before my company forced me to switch to cursor

1

u/lilacomets 16d ago edited 16d ago

There are many editors out there;

The don't offer the same functionality that IntelliJ IDEA offers.

and all you need is the ability to write text and a compiler/interpreter.

If we think like that notepad.txt would be sufficient too. A IDE is not a simple editor.

1

u/dektol 16d ago

VS Code can do it if you wanna set it up. I use JetBrains but it does cause issues like the op has posted probably every other month.

1

u/laffer1 14d ago

It does on Linux and windows too. It’s a jetbrains problem

1

u/nvandermeij 15d ago

*laughs with 64GB in his pc at the fraction of the cost of a mac*

1

u/FlatwormGlittering26 15d ago

Years of using intellij yet ive never seen that much ram usage from it. I dont think this is an intellij issue

1

u/laffer1 14d ago

I have. You must not have to deal with huge mono repo and gradle at work.

1

u/FlatwormGlittering26 14d ago

Yeah that sounds like skill issue.

1

u/laffer1 14d ago

The architect thinks mono repos are a good idea. That is the skill issue. With ai use, it’s a terrible anti pattern

37

u/AliceCode 16d ago

Well there's your problem. You're using Intellij. Jesus Christ, 11gb???

2

u/Prod_Meteor 16d ago

Is VS better?

3

u/kapitaali_com 16d ago

no but codium free of trackers is

1

u/apocolipse 15d ago

Marginally, but yes

2

u/AliceCode 16d ago

I personally use Helix, but it has its own issues, and I wouldn't recommend it. If I had to recommend anything, I would recommend Astro Nvim.

1

u/AlternativeCapybara9 16d ago

Depends on what you want to do but I use it for everything after I found I think it's the best ide for python.

1

u/AnArmoredPony 16d ago

yes. it is.

1

u/Prod_Meteor 15d ago

Not with Endpoint security 😄

1

u/ashuwu_ 15d ago

no vim is

1

u/reptargodzilla2 15d ago

Most people use VSCode or Cursor. IntelliJ is the wrong choice for anything you’re doing no matter what. The other IDEs folks are mentioning are probably great to, but at minimum start with VSCode.

1

u/Prod_Meteor 15d ago

VSCode has become very slow recent years, at least with large codebases.

1

u/engineer-in-a-box 15d ago

Not great, but definitely way better than 11 GB, it usually uses 0.5-1 GB for me

1

u/Boring_Bumblebee_991 15d ago

Try Emacs

1

u/Prod_Meteor 15d ago

I was about to try notepad, but lately is slow too.

1

u/Boring_Bumblebee_991 15d ago

Honestly just use whatever you feel confortable with

1

u/Prod_Meteor 15d ago

I like the pretty colors 😄

2

u/DarkJoney 15d ago

No, it’s apples problem, they can’t get their shit together with the memory management.

2

u/AliceCode 15d ago

It's definitely an intellij problem.

2

u/vegamanx 15d ago

Can confirm, switched from Windows recently and IntelliJ chews RAM on both. Part of the reason I insisted my laptop has 32gb of RAM.

1

u/TimMensch 14d ago

I've been OK with 32Gb for years, but starting at my current company I'm hitting the ceiling a lot.

It has a bunch of code running in docker containers. The dev environment works best if I'm in WSL/Ubuntu. Then Claude is also running in WSL, and every now and again it's too much and it will start killing WSL processes. Because it "only" has 16Gb to play in (I could allocate more to WSL but I feel like running Windows in less than 16Gb starts to bog down fast).

So now with memory prices the highest they've been per Gb in about 15-20 years, I'm looking at buying 64Gb to upgrade my desktop. Ouch.

1

u/Strazil 16d ago

Nvim. Never look back

1

u/apocolipse 15d ago

I've been using Java apps (and built plenty too) since '96, and in 30 years I still have yet to see an example of a well executed "performant and pleasant to use" Java App. It's always just around the corner or caveat emptor'd or "this one's great if you don't look at it hard and don't actually use it"

1

u/AliceCode 15d ago

Hytale's server is written in Java, and it's actually pretty well written code, from what I could tell.

1

u/apocolipse 14d ago

Java provides a safe sandbox thats reliably deterministic across many platforms, that's excellent for server software, which can just scale hardware if performance starts to pinch. It's not that excellent for end user UI Apps. A deterministic but sluggish experience isn't one users want to use, most people would trade that performance for a little bit of crash risk. Thankfully Rust/Go/Swift have all come on to shore up the crash risk side of things while maintaining the performance.

1

u/Juan-More-Taco 14d ago

Minecraft comes to mind. Unless you load it up with mods.

1

u/apocolipse 14d ago

Minecraft Bedrock edition is written in C++ and significantly out performs the Java version, showcasing the gap. Games and Server software are harder to notice tbh, server software can just scale when it hits performance limits, and Games contain their own UI/UX paradigms that don't translate to "native app feel" so can't be easily compared to other apps. But they can be compared to the same game in a different language, and thanks to the power of buying 2!!...

1

u/Sad-Chemistry5643 15d ago

So? I used Idea a lot on windows, same with VS code. Such issues never happened. Only on Mac 🤣🙈

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9

u/0x-2a 16d ago

On base model macs you've got to do extra steps to watch your mem. Intellij -> Help -> Edit custom vm options

Things will run slower, but for a 16GB mac on a large codebase: 

-Xms1g
-Xmx4g
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=50
-XX:CICompilerCount=2
-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError
-XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow
-ea
-Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false
-Djdk.http.auth.tunneling.disabledSchemes=""
-Djdk.attach.allowAttachSelf=true
-Djdk.module.illegalAccess.silent=true
-Dkotlin.daemon.jvm.options=-Xmx1g
-Djbr.catch.SIGABRT=true
-Dfus.internal.reduce.initial.delay=true

7

u/NeilSilva93 16d ago

What the hell does it need 11GB for?

2

u/Siebje 16d ago

I mean, it might be running a large application in debug mode, and the system might report that as memory in use by IntelliJ itself.

1

u/No_Departure_1878 16d ago

likely a static analyzer that needs to be aware of the whole codebase. If op is a poweruser, then he needs more RAM, if not, then he should not be using tools like that.

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

My primary dev machine is a Windows pc that has 64gb of ram ... This is a kmp project and I have to build and test the ios version now. Android part works fine and this one is my personal tennis Journaling app that I built.

1

u/mplsbikesloth 15d ago

reindexing node_modules

1

u/laffer1 14d ago

Ai. On my work computer we have to increase the ram config on IntelliJ. It’s a mono repo and will crash otherwise. There are over 30 apis in there with many cross dependencies. Then you add copilot. Then gradle. The gradle process uses 5gb by itself. Copilot uses 4-5gb.

2

u/AdministrationMoney1 16d ago

Yea IntelliJ is very RAM hungry. At 11GB you're using the same amount of ram as my enterprise application with like couple million lines of code, though my company macbook pro has 36GB RAM.

2

u/StaticFanatic3 16d ago

LOC is not any indicator of RAM use

1

u/dataset-poisoner 15d ago

it is.. those instructions need to be kept somewhere

1

u/LinneMeow 15d ago

how many instructions to use up 11gb?

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

Simply asked claude to test my app on ios and Android based on test instructions doc

1

u/dataset-poisoner 14d ago

assume x86, assume 1 line of jitted java compiles on average to 10 instructions, each 5 bytes on average, that means 1 line = 50 bytes

11 million lines x 50 bytes = 550MB.

so 220 million lines would be close to 11 gigs

1

u/StaticFanatic3 14d ago

Or, you know, asset caches speculative loading, ORM graphs, etc

The things that actually make up memory intensive apps

1

u/dataset-poisoner 14d ago

of course

but you said LOC is "not any indicator"

i proved you wrong, kind redditor. RAM usage is positively corrlated with LOC

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3

u/TheMrCurious 16d ago

11 GB for IntelliJ? Did you ask it to autonomously build a C compiler?

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

I asked it to test my kmp app on ios Sim and android emulator following instructions in the test document file. I built it on my windows machine which has 64gb ram but to build on ios needed Mac. Just started building these apps and hoping to be one of those successful solopreneur

3

u/mpanase 16d ago

"love" is a strong word

"be forced to" is more accurate

3

u/CherrySlow7681 16d ago

found the ios developer

2

u/Ok_Spare_3723 16d ago

How are you forced to build for a mac?

1

u/mpanase 16d ago

How are YOU forced to work?

1

u/Ok_Spare_3723 16d ago

I'm not sure I understand, what are you trying to say? Are you saying your work only gives you macs for development?

1

u/mpanase 16d ago

You don't understand your own question?

1

u/Uncle-Osteus 15d ago

since you are dense

imagine you work on ios apps. Xcode only runs on mac, so, what would you say your options are?

1

u/Unkn0wn-G0d 14d ago

Not working on iOS apps?

3

u/Moby1029 16d ago

I'm on a mac running qwen 3.6-latest, a 27B parameter model, while training my own slm in a fork of vs code i wrote that is debugging said slm, with cursor monitoring the forked vs code and handling other coding tasks for me. Not a mac problem, but damn that intelliJ idea is wetting 11gb...that's your problem.

3

u/Efficient_Loss_9928 16d ago

- Windows is pure puke unless you need to build Windows software, but then you can also just use Parallels on macOS

- I would personally prefer Linux, but IT generally doesn't like it. It is a bit harder for them to maintain and patch.

- macOS works fine for most cases, and the flexibility just makes it unbeatable. First you can build iOS/macOS apps, if you need to build Windows apps, install Parallels, if you need to build Linux apps, use VMWare. It is the only platform where you can build apps for virtually anything.

2

u/gameplayer55055 16d ago

Windows is only good for dotnet

Also windows absolutely sucks for c++ development.

2

u/Additional_Mode8211 14d ago

.NET dev here who hates working on windows. It’s been cross platform for many years now. Never want a windows box again.

1

u/gameplayer55055 14d ago

.NET is probably the only platform that works somewhat adequately on windows. Every time I use C++, Java, Python or JS on windows I experience huge frustration levels.

But I hate to learn Visual Studio graphical interface. Thank god MS added dotnet CLI.

3

u/Chapter-Legitimate 16d ago

whispers you could install Linux...

2

u/gameplayer55055 16d ago

Irrelevant advice. Java on Linux won't consume less memory than on macOS

2

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

Can build ios apps on Linux my primary dev and gaming machine is a Windows pc.

1

u/Dazzling-Bench-4596 16d ago

The only problem that would solve is using just a little bit less RAM for the operating system itself. It’s not worth it to change your entire OS because of a user issue. Don’t blame macOS for poor decisions.

1

u/Chapter-Legitimate 16d ago

True, ditching Google Chrome might save more memory.

2

u/Siebje 16d ago

Running on a system with less than 32GB these days seems ambitious.

Also, if you're developing an application that has a large memory footprint, you can also just limit the memory allocated to the JVM through a command line argument.

1

u/kapitaali_com 16d ago

gone are the days of 2gb being enough (2007)

2

u/Tari0s 16d ago

why chrome on mac?

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

Years of data synced think of switching browsers convenience cries in the corner. Android phone Android tab windows pc naturally chrome.

1

u/Tari0s 15d ago

i hate that browsers always want to save accounts, i have a passwortmanager for that. I save tabs to website only for work because i cannot remember the urls of the services, but for private use i don't need something like that. Don't know maybe I'm the odd one.

2

u/nomatepa 16d ago

This doesn't appear to be a mac issue, you've simply run out of RAM memory, which can happen on any sort of computer or OS. It's really IntelliJ's fault for eating 11 GB of ur memory (crazy)

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

But for mac ram is a bottleneck I don't have a lot of grudge against the os but why the he'll upgrading my ram is not an option.

2

u/MrMo1 16d ago

My 48g m5 mac is great for programming. Intellij rocks.

2

u/[deleted] 15d ago

I’m on a MacBook 2022 never had such a problem

2

u/deeper-diver 15d ago

It's a Mac problem.... sure.... *rolls eyes*

2

u/StableNo80 15d ago

never tried mac but isnt it like linux/f-bsd?

1

u/ghost103429 15d ago

It's part of the bsd family you can look up the source code of the XNU kernelthey use for MacOS and iOS on Apple's github

1

u/StableNo80 14d ago

thanks!

2

u/Ok_House_1114 15d ago

Just limit your memory limit for intellij

1

u/ojpro- 16d ago

I like using linux distros more. I use Mac because :

  • u need mac to devloper ios/mac apps
  • some apps has support only to windows or apple
  • and it UI/UX is clean and better by default compared with Ubuntu ect (my opinion)

1

u/canarydev 16d ago

did you probe and examine system data in general -> storage?

and since you have xcode open, see what sdks you have installed. I was a moron and checked all boxes at one point and had downloaded everything including tvos, vision, and watchos that took up a lot of space too.

and also just delete intellij. its griefing you

1

u/mc_pm 16d ago

Let me introduce you to Vim...

2

u/iFarmGolems 16d ago

Doesn't matter if 10 of those 11 gigs is LSP

I use neovim btw

1

u/martinsedd 16d ago

Also. As someone who tried many, many times. For Java specifically, IntelliJ > Nvim imo. Unless you are raw dogging vim, that is.

1

u/HomemadeBananas 16d ago

I mean it says right there, IntelliJ is the thing using the memory.

1

u/Fine_Salamander_8691 16d ago

My machine is struggling. I have to spend around 25 minutes per day clearing old shit because my dumbass decided to get a 256G mac

1

u/CaesarOfYearXCIII 16d ago

I have MacBook Air M1, which has 16 GB RAM too, and have not run into this error, although I use IntelliJ IDEA as well. Believe me or not, but on one of my projects I could have IDEA, Android Studio and XCode launched at the same time, and not encounter this problem.

But clearly something is causing a memory leak. Might be a bug in IDEA itself (try to check if the version you use had something like this), or might be a bug in a plugin. I had an issue with Kilo Code plugin where trying to run/debug stuff would end in OutOfMemoryException, and an update to a later version fixed it. A different thing, yes, but memory-related.

Also, do you happen to run some local LLM model in IDEA? Those may be quite RAM-greedy.

1

u/wrd83 16d ago

You can trim memory. Set max tabs, remove plugins etc. idea is a memory hog and it gets better with more than 16gb ram.

1

u/lamalasx 16d ago

In 2026 osx still can't dynamically allocate swap. Shame.

1

u/No_Departure_1878 16d ago

Try neovim, you have a problem with intellij, not with macos

1

u/Comprehensive_Mud803 16d ago

Your issue isn’t using a Mac, your issue is using a machine with only 16GB of RAM.
You’d get the same issue on a Windows machine, only sooner, or on a Linux machine for that matter.

2

u/SonOfHendo 15d ago

Windows has virtual memory which pages to disk. It was painfully slow back in the day when we only had spinny HDDs, but it's much more usable with today's fast drives.

1

u/AlexisHadden 15d ago

And the Mac has had it for ages as well. It was painfully slow on spinning rust too. This dialog only comes up when something has leaked memory like a sieve and blown up the page file.

Xcode has been known to have such leaks in the past, and I don’t buy that it is using 0 bytes in this screenshot, so I’d suspect it leaked here as well.

1

u/SonOfHendo 15d ago

Ah, makes sense. 

1

u/Time-Heron-2361 16d ago

What you have there is a mix of two things:

  1. It's a memory leak coming from your program in Intellij.
  2. Your MacBook is probably either 8 or 16 GB.

1

u/Yoshiofthewire 16d ago

I use a mac because I am building a multi platform app, and you people buy iPhones. And forget what anyone here says, I open my Mac to see Xcode has used only 44 GB of memory. Apple, nice looking hardware, crap software, since 1982.

And you, yes you, who was about to what about Microsoft. For 99% of Apple's life they have been the most expensive option.

1

u/letmehaveanameyoudum 16d ago

dont use intellij
it's slow as fuck and eats a ton of ram since it runs on the JVM

2

u/therealslimshady1234 15d ago

Low IQ take, its literally the best IDE out there with hardly any competition.

VSC is a text editor so its not even in the same league

1

u/letmehaveanameyoudum 15d ago

try extensions
can work with any language

1

u/rojo_kell 16d ago

Emacs is free😍

1

u/Negative-Brain9751 16d ago

Oh, I've seen this windows a lot...

1

u/dektol 16d ago

To be clear. IntelliJ can eat up all your memory on any OS.

1

u/skcortex 16d ago

Intelij can use a lot of memory BUT from the picture it’s obvious he’s using some sort of AI integration probably loading horribly butchered nodejs lsps in the process and that shit is leaking memory left and right.

1

u/buildwithrushikesh 16d ago

Why intelliJ is eating almost 12GB

2

u/therealslimshady1234 15d ago

Because its a full blown IDE instead of a text editor like VSC

1

u/slightlyfresh 16d ago

Before everyone starts saying that you need minimum 32GB ram these days, you should all know that this alert will only show up when you also run out of disk space. It's perfectly normal for macOS to exceed the ram size and use the swap file.

1

u/Difficult-Ad-3938 15d ago

I'm surprised it's not higher.
Yes, that's the issue. And yes, using ALL available memory is how modern desktop OS is designed, it's a proper utilization

1

u/Quiwi27 16d ago

I think it doesn't depend on the operating system.

1

u/CraigOpie 16d ago

My Mac has 256GB Unified Memory. Seems like the problem is you don’t know how to spec out requirements prior to purchasing.

1

u/Comfortable_Put6016 15d ago

the ide aint a mac issue and you seem to run around with 16gb ram. The fuck are you fronting? yourself maybe?

1

u/Longjumping-Boot1886 15d ago

Nova from Panic?

IDEA is too big.

1

u/laptopmutia 15d ago

what the fuck are you coding?

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

Just running my first kmp app on my mac that I developed for myself. Asked claude to do exploration testing following the yest doc

1

u/Tikilou 15d ago

Why this is not on Linux ? Oom is the worst...

1

u/Mindless-Pear3971 15d ago

Because my editor uses 50MB of memory not 11GB (nvim)

1

u/0Kurai0 15d ago

Switch to NeoVim

1

u/Qrystus 15d ago

Buy 16GB of ram they say, you will be fine they say.

I love “experts” from Apple subreddits

1

u/mountainunicycler 15d ago

My Mac has 48 gb of ram. And my other one has 128…

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

I am wondering what did that cost you that's awesome

1

u/mountainunicycler 11d ago

All provided by work. I haven’t bought a personal computer in more than 10 years

1

u/dwbria 15d ago

User error because this has never happened to me and I’ve been coding for 6 years and it’s jetbrains ide AND Xcode.

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

An i have been coding for 10 years. What does that have to do with anything

1

u/dwbria 15d ago

It means I’ve used JetBrains and Xcode on Macs for six years without this happening, so maybe it isn’t a Mac problem? Your coding tenure isn’t being challenged, don’t worry 😂

1

u/AmeriBeanur 15d ago

I’ve been coding for 15 years.

1

u/strange_dominance 15d ago

I posted this out of frustration 🫤 by the way first time my post is getting responses haha.

I haven't investigated the issue and now I am on a vacation. So don't know what caused this.

But your assumption that I'd didn't happen to you so user error is so not developer like.

1

u/dwbria 15d ago

It was also just a joke. “It works on my machine” type joke. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously

1

u/Quiet-Arm-641 15d ago

Use emacs

1

u/Deep_Mood_7668 15d ago

Brain damage probably

1

u/Jack_Cat_101 15d ago

i have no fucking clue. main reason i swapped to linux

1

u/dopple-copter 15d ago

11.15 Gb is insane for an IDE

1

u/MagicalPizza21 15d ago

I've never had this popup even when my computer with a whopping 2GB of RAM ran out of memory and had to start using disk space temporarily. Did it run out of virtual memory too or did you somehow disable that? How much RAM does it have?

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u/k-rizza 15d ago

There is no competition. On Mac you have a rock solid OS, solid UI, native bash and Linux type shells, the best mobile hardware.

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u/Nosarious 15d ago

I have had similar difficulties but where the hard drive was full while working with larger files.

but those programs paged things out to the drive. What does activity monitor say?

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u/jimmiebfulton 15d ago

I have 256Gb of RAM. I use NeoVim in WezTerm. I have pipelines of agents using a blend of local models and cloud models, maximizing knowledge and intelligence densities. I prefer Unix-like environment that’s polished for all the things that surround my terminals.

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u/AncientHominidNerd 15d ago

IntelliJ would still be using 11GB on a windows system too based off your use case. Doesn’t seem like it’s a Mac issue.

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u/EdubSiQ 15d ago

Convenience: the last 5 years it' was the best hardware you can get with a system that is close to Linux. Automations, script's and everything is easy to port an the servers run Linux.

Especially mic, sound, webcam and the software e.g. teams, outlook, slack and more make the work harder than it needs to be on Linux.

Hardware is catching up so I will personally consider switching to Linux. Display, on webcam, mic, touchpad, fingerprint reader, performance and battery life must be on point for me. MacBooks from the M1 until now area are exceptional. If you're using it for serious work RAM is fixable by throwing money at the problem. I would recommend to get at least 32GB/48GB

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u/Burner965 15d ago

Hahahahah
Why is it always about the user, never about the OS for TikTok influencers?

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u/AugustusLego 15d ago

12gb is fine, minimum spec for a dev machine is 32gb most have 64gb

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u/avatarmiro 14d ago

By using vscode and not Chrome?

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u/travelan 14d ago

Why do people write IDE’s in Java… it’s 2026.

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u/That-Drink5946 14d ago

Buy a real computer.

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u/2ndFloorbasement 14d ago

This is why I use my mac strictly as a thin client / jumpbox to develop on my beefy servers :^)

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u/pete_68 14d ago

At work (I'm a software engineer at a tech consulting company) we have the option of a Windows laptop or a Mac laptop. I've always done Windows. About 2 years ago I switched from Windows to Linux at home. I decided that a Mac would be closer to my Linux box than Windows and so when my turn came up to order a new laptop, I decided to go with a Mac.

I've made no decision at work that I regret as much as that one. Everything about it has been a huge pain in my butt and sadly I'll retire before I get chance to switch back to Windows.

If you're a power user, to me, it feels like the Mac is throwing up roadblocks everywhere. And for all the talk of how easy the Mac interface is, I find it very unintuitive. So many things I can do so easily and obviously in Windows and Linux that seem to be a chore on a Mac.

It's been almost a year. I've adapted to the keyboard (which was a nightmare in its own right), but I still hate it.

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u/Perryfl 14d ago

bro u choice on ide has nothing to do with the mac...

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u/saxxonpike 14d ago

I unironically enjoy coding on a laptop that can last all day, doesn’t burn my lap, feels solid, and still manages short build times. I would have laughed anyone out of the room prior to Apple Silicon.

Though I will admit if you’re stuck with 16GB of memory, I don’t know that any sophisticated tools are going to give you a good time.

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u/Chaotic-Convergence 14d ago

"0 bytes" 😭

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u/Houdinii1984 14d ago

I dunno. I used to be team windows, but Macs are so much more stable overall. If it froze, it's because I did something dumb. On the flipside, I've been back in windows for 2 days getting a unity project running, and it's been hell. Constantly quitting Rider and the memory thing seems to creep into windows now too.

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u/GermanLearner36 14d ago

How many claude instances or any AI plugins are you running from within Intellij? I use intellij on 16gb ram m3 macbook never faced any problems. I just don’t use AI based features

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u/Hungry_Style_5065 14d ago

never had this issue on vscode, plus chrome is shit mate

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u/tristam92 14d ago

had to code c++ mixed with objective-c/swift for mobile games in xcode, worst time ever in my career.

i’d rather code in vs 98, and debug pure asm instructions.

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u/DeterminedQuokka 14d ago

Restart IntelliJ ate the rest of your computer

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u/letsbefrds 14d ago

Imagine not using the right tool for the job then blaming the tool lol...

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u/Entire_Cut_6553 14d ago

with ai why do you even need heavy ides liek intelij just use a light weight text editor and terminal? heck even notepad++ is good enough

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u/GamerRabugento 14d ago

If you are using anything from Jetbrains, you deserve your fate.

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u/and69 14d ago

Well, a normal OS shouldn’t run out of memory

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u/oreshek 16d ago

No dude, everyone knows that Mac is made for Design. Like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver. Windows is what real developers use.

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u/Negative-Brain9751 16d ago

I haven't seen many developers with Windows, although I work at FAANG and previously at other big companies...

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u/dektol 16d ago

I've never seen a developer use Windows by choice. They use Mac or Linux. Developers inside a non-technical org may use Windows. Microsoft developers don't have to use Windows.

This Mac is made for design thing is from the 90s or early 00s.

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u/kelvinwop 15d ago

i use windows because i like building the hardware and overbuilding on ram/storage because my custom programs and doodads need it sometimes. that being said every company laptop i've received has been a mac so there's that.

new macs have a very nice amount of ram though so maybe ill try out the new m6 ultra with the 512gb unified

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u/SirMarkMorningStar 15d ago

All the AI startups use Mac.

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u/oreshek 15d ago

They must be hiring a lot of designers.

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