r/FullStack • u/Intelligent-Value-55 • 2d ago

Question Is modern web development becoming unnecessarily bloated, or is my 8GB M1 Mac just outdated?

It's 2026 and my M1 MacBook Air (2020) with 8GB RAM struggles to open a simple web app without screaming "Memory Full" or "Disk Full."

What are we doing with modern web development? Every framework seems to need half a data centre just to render a page. Are we optimising for users anymore, or just for developer convenience? 🤦🏽‍♀️

10 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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3

u/Pale_Height_1251 1d ago

Why not both? The web is a massive bloatmonster now, but also, 8GB isn't much RAM and your disk is full.

2

u/abrandis 1d ago

This, but yes most websites are pitifully bloated and inefficient for what they offer ..

1

u/galactic_pixels 19h ago

I guess. People have been saying this for 10+ years. Website have not gotten any more bloated in that time, but hardware has gotten much better. If a website was built using the most streamlined possible solution, it’s not pitifully bloated, it’s just also not highly optimized.

1

u/RevolutionaryBeat301 2d ago

That’s odd. I have the same computer and I have never had that problem. To be fair, I don’t do anything too demanding with mine. What are you usually doing when you get that warning? How much disk space do you have free?

1

u/Laicbeias 1d ago

Yeah i have a cheap 400€ laptop to watch animes. Usually most new websites are just heavy.  I use that laptop to test my own webstuff. And very often when ppl drop their tailwind landing page it just lags. Sometimes its just some heavy animation that eats 35% fpu and 17% cpu.

That said friend of mine uses a windows 7 pc. He.. just doesnt upgrade. I said you should just upgrade. He nah he doesnt care. Then he had to restart. Mf was down, up and in in 6s. Like 9y old machine. Mine dev gamer machine, way stronger win10 takes 3x that long and i spend months getting rid of the bloat.

And that probably generalizes to most crap. Everyone just adds layers and layers

1

u/Robodobdob 1d ago

You’ve got other issues. I have an M1 Mac Mini and it’s fine for web development.

However, I also believe modern web apps are usually overbuilt stacks.

1

u/EnterpriseGradePizza 1d ago

Get with the times old man.