Your web browser probably doesn't have many tabs open, and those that are open, are probably not web apps (think Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp, various internal corporate apps, etc.).
I can't even remember a time when just my web browser used up less than 4-5 GB of RAM, on its own.
Add at least 500MB - 1 GB for the OS itself, and we're talking about 2 - 3.5GB for apps. I'd immediately swap with just 8GB of RAM with an IDE and a DB running.
You’re right, I can’t mentally deal with more a few open tabs and I use none of those webapps at home. I might be an outline in the other direction, but there’s a lot of room between using maybe 4GB of RAM in total an using that for a browser alone.
How often? I set mine to discard after 60 minutes, except for slack, WhatsApp and a couple of others; cost is reload when I do venture into discarded tabs - e.g. I scan HN and Reddit headlines in the morning, open each interesting comments page in a tab; much later, when I have downtime, I visit them - but I used to reload to get the new comments. Now with ATD, they get reloaded automatically, so for that use it is even bette than the real thing.
I can't even remember a time when just my web browser used up less than 4-5 GB of RAM, on its own.
Add at least 500MB - 1 GB for the OS itself, and we're talking about 2 - 3.5GB for apps. I'd immediately swap with just 8GB of RAM with an IDE and a DB running.