how little goes into optimizing that since “space is cheap”

More and more developers seem to assume everyone else can afford what they consider to be cheap, and feel entitled to gobble up all the resources on other people's systems as if they aren't needed for anything else.

And speaking of environmental costs, there's also the pollution and e-waste generated by constantly pushing people to upgrade their hardware instead of optimizing the software.

As a developer myself, I find it embarrassing and sad.