This is a guide to surviving that.
The actual memory map
On a typical dev session for Breezely, I'm running:
- VS Code with 3–4 extensions active: ~800MB
- Chrome with the extension loaded and DevTools open: ~600MB
- Angular dev server: ~300MB
- Firebase emulators (auth + firestore + functions): ~400MB
- Node process for the backend: ~200MB
- Playwright browser instance: ~500MB
That's ~2.8GB before I open a second Chrome tab. I have 8GB. Windows takes ~2GB at idle. I have about 3GB of actual working room.
What I actually do
Kill the emulators when you're not testing them. This sounds obvious. It isn't, because they start automatically and you forget they're running. I have a batch script that kills all Node processes in one keystroke. I run it probably 30 times a day.
One browser, managed aggressively. I use Chrome with a tab suspender. Anything I haven't touched in 10 minutes gets suspended. I keep a text file of URLs I'll need again instead of keeping tabs open.
VS Code workspace files. I don't open VS Code with a folder — I open it with a workspace file that only includes the parts of the project I'm actively working on. The difference in memory usage is real.
WSL2 memory limit. If you're using WSL2 on Windows, it will eat RAM until Windows kills it. Set a .wslconfig file with memory=2GB. You'll thank yourself.
The Playwright trick. Don't spin up a browser for every test run. Use persistent contexts and reuse the browser instance. Saves ~400MB and saves 3–4 seconds per run.
The NTFS corruption story
I once ran npm install during a power cut. Windows NTFS corrupted the C: drive. The system wouldn't boot. I spent six hours in Windows Recovery Environment running chkdsk /f /r, sfc /scannow, and manually taking ownership of system folders. It eventually came back.
The lesson: always have your important work pushed to remote. I lost nothing because everything was on GitHub. The laptop was just inconvenienced.
The actual cost
The real cost of low RAM isn't slowness. It's context switching overhead — the mental tax of constantly managing your environment instead of your work. That's the thing worth solving.
Get a PageFile on an SSD if you're on Windows. It's not the same as RAM but it's not nothing. And keep your task manager open. Know what's running. Be deliberate about it.