You can do this with other languages (C# for example) as well. Memory is so cheap, though, that most companies should spend their money on increasing memory rather than on paying programmers to optimize memory usage.

I don't think memory usage is the problem, but rather allocation costs and memory layout, i.e. performance.

Serving web traffic simply isn't a very memory hungry task.

Yes, for most use cases it doesn’t really matter which language is chosen.

Regarding just spending more money on memory - I agree that it’s definitely cheaper but it’s not only about wasting bytes of memory. If the garbage collector has a lot of work to do it may also impact response time/throughput.

And yes, C# did a pretty good job with implementing mechanisms for reducing allocations on a language level. This definitely helps to reduce garbage collection.

Cheap for whom? American programmers with FAANG salaries, or an under-funded third world NGO?