Overhead of individual python apps

[Paul Rubin]

Larry Bates <larry.bates at websafe.com> writes:
> Several apps using 4Mb each shouldn't be very much memory (maybe
> 20Mb at most).  You didn't say how much memory was in your machine,
> but 256Mb of memory will cost you no more than $50.  Not really
> worth a lot of effort.

That is bogus reasoning.  I can't add 256mb to the machine I'm typing
on right now for any amount of money, let alone $50.  It's an older
laptop, it's maxed out at 512 meg, and I can't add any more to it,
period.  An even older laptop that I still use from time to time is
maxed out at 72 meg.  And my Sharp Zaurus (Linux handheld) has 32 meg
and is not expandable.  If Python claims to be a lightweight language,
it should not present any obstacles to running on machines of that
class.  It's already slightly annoying that Python can't run well in
an 8 meg Palm Pilot, since there were many Common Lisp implementations
that ran tolerably in less memory than that.