I'm not sure what you imagine when you say "modern computer running a modern OS". Does this not include anything but desktop PCs and laptops? Because phones and tablets have some rather nasty memory limits for applications to deal with, which developers run into frequently.
The space I work in deals with phones and tablets, as well as other embedded systems (TVs, set-top boxes, etc.) that tend to run things people think of as "modern" (recentish Linux kernels, userlands based on Android or centered around WebKit), while having serious limits on memory and storage. My desktop calendar application uses more memory than we have available on some of these systems.
In these environments, it is essential to either avoid any possibility of memory exhaustion, or have ways to gracefully deal with the inevitable. This is often quite easy in theory -- several megabytes of memory might be used by a cached data structure that can easily be re-loaded or re-downloaded at the cost of a short wait when the user backs out of whatever screen they're in.
But one of the consequences of this cavalier attitude to memory allocation is that even in these constrained systems, platform owners have mandated apps sit atop an ever-growing stack of shit that makes it all but impossible for developers to effectively understand and manage memory usage.
The space I work in deals with phones and tablets, as well as other embedded systems (TVs, set-top boxes, etc.) that tend to run things people think of as "modern" (recentish Linux kernels, userlands based on Android or centered around WebKit), while having serious limits on memory and storage. My desktop calendar application uses more memory than we have available on some of these systems.
In these environments, it is essential to either avoid any possibility of memory exhaustion, or have ways to gracefully deal with the inevitable. This is often quite easy in theory -- several megabytes of memory might be used by a cached data structure that can easily be re-loaded or re-downloaded at the cost of a short wait when the user backs out of whatever screen they're in.
But one of the consequences of this cavalier attitude to memory allocation is that even in these constrained systems, platform owners have mandated apps sit atop an ever-growing stack of shit that makes it all but impossible for developers to effectively understand and manage memory usage.