My laptop sounds like it is preparing for a low-orbit launch. The fan is screaming. The metal chassis is hot enough to burn my palms.
And the reason is not a complex data simulation, a massive Docker build, or a rogue machine learning model.
The reason is that I currently have 147 browser tabs open, and I am emotionally incapable of closing a single one of them.
Look at your browser right now. Look at the top bar. If the icons have shrunk so much that they are just a solid, unreadable line of pixelated colors, you know exactly the kind of psychological trap I am talking about. We need to talk about this digital hoarding, because it is entirely out of control.
The Insurance Policy (aka The Fixed Bug)
There is a Stack Overflow thread sitting in my third window. It is about a minor routing bug I fixed last Tuesday. The code is committed. The pull request is merged. The feature is literally running in production.
But I cannot close the tab. What if the bug comes back? What if the server somehow forgets the solution and I have to find the exact answer again? Closing that tab feels like throwing away a compass in the middle of a dark forest. I am keeping it open as a pathetic insurance policy against my own future incompetence.
The Aspirational Lie
Then we have the aspirational tabs. You know exactly the ones I mean. A massive, ten-thousand-word article on the memory management architecture of Rust. A tutorial on a complex state machine concept. You opened them three weeks ago because you wanted to be the kind of developer who reads deep technical literature over a quiet morning coffee.
You are never going to read them. You are going to stare blankly at your screen while your pipeline fails for the fourth time. But keeping those tabs open is a performance. It is a lie we tell ourselves to feel intellectually superior. Closing them means admitting defeat. It means looking in the mirror and accepting that you are just a regular person trying to survive the sprint, not a software architect visionary.
The 64GB Ram Lie
We buy machines with 64 gigabytes of RAM. We tell our managers we need the memory to run heavy local environments and databases. That is a complete fabrication.
We need 64 gigabytes of RAM to sustain our psychological inability to let go of a GitHub issue we clicked on by mistake last month. We are slowly destroying our expensive hardware to feed our emotional insecurities.
The Physical Panic of the Accidental Click
The absolute worst part is the physical panic of the accidental click. You aim for one specific tab, your hand twitches, and you hit the little cross on the entire window. A cold sweat breaks out immediately. Your heart rate spikes.
You frantically smash the keyboard shortcut to reopen closed windows, holding your breath until all forty tabs slowly resurrect from the dead. You did not even know what half of those tabs were. You could not name three of them if your life depended on it. You just desperately needed the comfort of the clutter.
Closing a tab is an act of finality. It means a task is truly done, an idea is abandoned, or a problem is solved. And in an industry where nothing ever feels completely finished, where the code is always evolving and breaking, holding onto those tabs is our pathetic way of keeping control. They are a museum of out-lived anxiety and unfinished thoughts.
I am not going to tell you to clear your workspace. I am not going to write a motivational guide on digital minimalism, because I am clearly in no position to give advice. I am just going to ask you to do one thing.
Find one tab. Just one. Maybe an API documentation page for a version of a library you stopped using two years ago. Look at it. Thank it for its service. And close it.
Your laptop fan might just quiet down for half a second.
Top comments (84)
147 Tabs open????
I usually have 10 AT MAX lol. I get quite concern when my fan start working, even at a bare minimum because I have bad experience on using Laptops where it dies on me the second I use it D:
Great post once again! Well done :D
Ten tabs is basically a zen garden. I wish I had your trauma-induced discipline. My laptop is currently hot enough to cook an egg, and I’m just sitting here adding more fuel to the fire. If I ever got down to ten tabs, I’d probably think I’d accidentally deleted my entire career. 😂
I had a friend where his PC is hot enough where the sticker on his PC starts to move lol. I usually have 10 tabs open if I am doing an Open-Book, Open-Note exam, but nothing really outside of that!
I don't use tabs at all. I always hit ctrl+shift+n to open multiple private windows with 1-3 tabs each. For some reason, it's easier for me to switch between 10 windows than between 10 tabs. I'm weird...
I would assume you used Google Chrome for this. You must have a God Tier PC if you are able to handle that much Windows opened
I use Brave. And no, my office hardware (umm... from 2010) isn't that powerful. Surprisingly, I tried opening 20 windows, and it barely slowed performance. Maybe because they were empty. I don't think there's much of a performance difference between windows and tabs, and Brave manages tab memory at God-Level.
That’s most of the time also my max. I get anxiety when I see some of my colleagues browsers
I am in same river. Spend a time to make a group like watch later
The "watch later" group is basically just a waiting room for a doctor’s appointment that never happens. It’s a polite way of telling those tabs they’re fired without actually hurting their feelings. It’s definitely a win for your RAM, but we both know that group is just where productivity goes to hide. 😂
Icon and groups vibe.
😂😂
I’ve developed a demo version of a file‑syncing software that connects two PCs through a secure, one‑time 6‑digit pairing code. Once paired, each PC designates a folder for synchronization. Any file dropped into the shared folder on one machine is automatically mirrored to the paired folder on the other.
The system uses peer‑to‑peer transfer when both devices are online for fast, direct syncing. If either device goes offline, files are temporarily stored in a database. Once the offline device reconnects, it automatically fetches the pending files from the database, ensuring no data is lost. Synchronization is fully bidirectional, keeping both folders up to date.
I would really love to hear your review on this.
I’ve developed a demo version of a file‑syncing software that connects two PCs through a secure, one‑time 6‑digit pairing code. Once paired, each PC designates a folder for synchronization. Any file dropped into the shared folder on one machine is automatically mirrored to the paired folder on the other.
The system uses peer‑to‑peer transfer when both devices are online for fast, direct syncing. If either device goes offline, files are temporarily stored in a database. Once the offline device reconnects, it automatically fetches the pending files from the database, ensuring no data is lost. Synchronization is fully bidirectional, keeping both folders up to date.
I would really love to hear your review on this.
Hahaha funniest dev.to article ever ... well, here's what I do, maybe it's useful (probably not, haha):
I just drag the URLs of those open tabs to my desktop, and then I move them to a "TO DO - READ THIS LATER !" folder - which I never do :P - however, I can (and will) then close those tabs!
(and even then I still have 35 to 40 tabs open - it's a disease !)
That folder is just a digital witness protection program. You know they’re never coming back, but it helps you sleep at night. Honestly, 35 tabs is basically a blank screen in my book. Your CPU is probably wondering why you’re being so nice to it all of a sudden. 😂
Some time ago I did have between 100 and 200 tabs open, and all kinds of things started "acting weird" - that's when I decided to move 150 tab URLs to my "TO DO - REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT - READ THIS LATER !!" folder and close those tabs ...
P.S. my computer has just 8 GB RAM, so yeah I'm "forced" to be a bit 'sane' about this ;-)
OneTab is good for this.
Good post! I remember a funny incident when I wanted to make a button that would open a web page when you clicked it. I don't remember how it happened, but my Windows crashed with an out-of-memory error. I don't know how many tabs were open because the browser crashed too.
Luckily, this was on a "clean" computer where I hadn't yet cluttered my browser with tabs, so I didn't lose anything. I wonder what would have happened if I'd pressed ctrl+shift+t.
Hitting Ctrl+Shift+T after an infinite loop crash is basically like asking the ghost that just haunted your house to come back for a second round. Your CPU would’ve probably just caught fire out of pure protest.
You’re lucky it was a clean machine, trying to resurrect a crash like that with 150 tabs in the chamber is how people end up as tech-support legends for all the wrong reasons. 😅
I’ve developed a demo version of a file‑syncing software that connects two PCs through a secure, one‑time 6‑digit pairing code. Once paired, each PC designates a folder for synchronization. Any file dropped into the shared folder on one machine is automatically mirrored to the paired folder on the other.
The system uses peer‑to‑peer transfer when both devices are online for fast, direct syncing. If either device goes offline, files are temporarily stored in a database. Once the offline device reconnects, it automatically fetches the pending files from the database, ensuring no data is lost. Synchronization is fully bidirectional, keeping both folders up to date.
I would really love to hear your review on this.
The 64GB RAM lie is the honest line. We're not buying memory for the workload. We're buying it for the inability to commit. A closed tab is a decision that the thing is done, abandoned, or no longer worth keeping open. Developers who can't close tabs are often the same ones who can't kill a feature, end a meeting, or ship without one more pass. It's not a browser problem. It's a closure problem. The tool isn't the issue. The muscle for finality is.
You just turned a rant about browser tabs into a therapy session. Calling it a "closure problem" is honestly a bit of a personal attack. It's true though—we're basically paying thousands of dollars for hardware just so we don't have to experience the existential dread of a blank screen. It’s not memory, it’s an expensive safety blanket for people who can’t commit to finishing a task.
I’ve developed a demo version of a file‑syncing software that connects two PCs through a secure, one‑time 6‑digit pairing code. Once paired, each PC designates a folder for synchronization. Any file dropped into the shared folder on one machine is automatically mirrored to the paired folder on the other.
The system uses peer‑to‑peer transfer when both devices are online for fast, direct syncing. If either device goes offline, files are temporarily stored in a database. Once the offline device reconnects, it automatically fetches the pending files from the database, ensuring no data is lost. Synchronization is fully bidirectional, keeping both folders up to date.
I would really love to hear your review on this.
Haha I don’t even keep those architectural gems open in tabs anymore 😄 I’ve accepted I’m just a random dev at this point 😂
Instead I’ve got YouTube full of workouts I plan to do… with very mixed execution 😅
Haha! the rabbit hole of exercise, i think we have all been down that road 😂 btw how did your performance go?!
I feel personally attacked. 😂
I currently have 47 tabs open. Some of them are from last month. At least 12 are Stack Overflow questions I already solved but kept just in case. There's a YouTube video about a framework I'll never use. And one tab is literally just the default new tab page I don't know why it's there.
The worst part? I know I'll never look at 90% of these again. But closing them feels like... admitting defeat? Like I'm throwing away potential knowledge.
You're right though the terror is real. And also ridiculous.
I'm going to close 10 tabs right now. Maybe. We'll see.
Thanks for the laugh and the uncomfortable self-reflection. 🙌
That blank tab is the funniest part. It's like keeping an empty cardboard box just because it looks like a "really sturdy box." And the solved Stack Overflow threads? That’s pure digital hoarding, like keeping the receipt for a sandwich you already finished. Don’t even pretend you're closing those 10 tabs. You’ll just end up opening five more while you're trying to decide which ones deserve to die. 😂
I feel seen, attacked, and judged all at the same time. I currently have a "How to exit Vim" tab open from 2022 because, honestly, I’m still not convinced I’ve truly escaped 😂
That Aspirational Lie hit especially hard. My browser is basically a graveyard of "Advanced RxJS Subject vs BehaviorSubject" deep-dives and "Angular Signals" migration guides that I’ll read right after I finish this quick CSS fix (which has currently taken three days and spawned 12 new tabs). I’ll close one tab today, but just know that I’ll probably replace it with three more by lunch. Solidarity.
Keeping that Vim tab since 2022 is basically a religious ritual at this point. If you actually close it, the universe might just drag you back into the terminal as punishment. 😂
And we all know the "quick CSS fix" is the biggest lie in tech, it’s just a trap door that leads to 15 new tabs about z-index and deep regret. Closing one only to have three more grow in its place by lunch is just the circle of life. We're all just drowning in style.
I’ve developed a demo version of a file‑syncing software that connects two PCs through a secure, one‑time 6‑digit pairing code. Once paired, each PC designates a folder for synchronization. Any file dropped into the shared folder on one machine is automatically mirrored to the paired folder on the other.
The system uses peer‑to‑peer transfer when both devices are online for fast, direct syncing. If either device goes offline, files are temporarily stored in a database. Once the offline device reconnects, it automatically fetches the pending files from the database, ensuring no data is lost. Synchronization is fully bidirectional, keeping both folders up to date.
I would really love to hear your review on this.
I see many of my co-workers with the exact same problem. But personally i don't care about tabs or open windows. All the work im doing is scoped, meaning that at the end of the day, i close all browsers, no matter what they might contain. Nothing is lost, i just have to open the pages again and Im good :D
This is some high-level psychopathic discipline. 😂
Closing everything regardless of what’s inside feels like burning your house down every night just to enjoy the smell of a new construction site in the morning. I’m not sure if I should admire the efficiency or be terrified of the total lack of emotional attachment.
The total lack of emotional attachment is real 😅
For me, memory is a red line. Anytime memory usage starts skyrocketing, excessive tabs are the ones to get sacrificed. If, in case, I feel guilty of closing them, I close the whole browser window and open incognito window instead.
The incognito move is basically the digital version of moving to a new country and changing your name because your current apartment is too messy. It’s not a solution; it’s just witness protection for your browsing habits. Your RAM probably throws a party every time you hit that "X," but we both know you’re just hiding from your past self in the shadows of a fresh window.
Totally agree! But sometimes you just need to function again, even if your room isn't clean. Incognito mode is like a temporary reset: it calms the fan, stops the RAM from crying, and allows me to think clearly. The old tabs aren't really gone; they're just existing in a parallel universe where "I'll get back to this later" still feels believable. This isn't closure; it's a controlled denial.
"Controlled denial" is basically a professional-grade survival tactic. It’s like checking into a hotel because your own house is too messy to breathe in. You know you have to go back eventually, but for those twenty minutes of silence from the CPU, the lie feels pretty good.
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