One can certainly wish, but I am inclined to believe that RAM use isn’t just about sloppy programmers. I think it is, to a significant degree, about the kinds of problems we solve now that we have more RAM.

And not all exorbitant RAM use is about sloppiness. Sometimes you can trade more RAM use for lower complexity. Bugs and development time were expensive. RAM was not. So sometimes there is calculation rather than sloppiness behind certain types of heavy RAM use.