30 years ago we could play Doom with 4 MB of RAM.

Web development has devolved to the point where now you need 32 GB to view a Chinese take-out menu.

My firefox is currently on 450mb on RAM, putting it in third place behind KDE's file indexer and one of the currently running electron instances.

If you use Linux, then you're not stuck pre-dedicating a big block of RAM to a VM to run docker in, you're just using whatever the container is using.

Uninstall Firefox and stop developing junk in Next.js or any other vendor-as-a-service frameworks

Install htop/btop and be more conscious about what your machine is actually doing. Needing more than 32GB RAM to develop a website is absurd

If you need an 8gb docker image as part of your local web development stack, that’s a toolchain problem.

Firefox takes less than half a GB base plus your usage, so you might want to see which extensions are bloating it up.

The Thinkpad P15 workstation line of laptops support 128gb of memory. I've seen refurbished gen 1 at around 600 USD and 128gb of ram (has 4 slots) is another 250 USD on top. (Give or take, I'm converting from euros, and the US market doesn't VAT so it should be cheaper than that)

Since you mention "Docker VM" I'm assuming you're using a Mac?

If so my best advice is to not use Docker for day-to-day development; reverse-engineer the docker-compose.yml/etc and run what you'd run in containers locally.

As a web developer I've been getting away with doing this for almost a decade now. It's a one-time cost to review what containers the app needs and then map that to a native world (install Postgres/etc via homebrew, adjust the env vars, etc).

The only time I run Docker nowadays is when I actually need to work on the Dockerfile itself and need to test it locally.

I've never got upvotes reciting this but won't stop doing: there's right amount of sluggishness that the majority wants, and both software bloat and debloat happens until it hits honey-like sublime-to-some lagging is achieved. Only software and technologies that are _buttery_ smooth, not ethanoly smooth, will survive, and nothing will ever solve the software sluggishness that frustrates some, which unfortunately include myself.

Get a proper laptop where you can install sodimm memory and m2 ssds. A previous gen base model with decent screen Elitebook 8xx or Thinkpad T1x, 128gb ddr5 kit is 300€, 4tb ssd 200€ and you dont have to worry about upgrades. My 5yr old machine has 64gb/4tb, it was doable for a long time

FWIW I didn't choose the docker or nextjs stack. Sometimes you have clients or work at a job that makes tech stack choices you don't agree with.

Switch from docker to one of the other alternatives and wi be less ram probably.