I started off with Machine Code, on a device with 256 bytes (not KB) of RAM. That was 256 bytes, to install the executable, reserve the stack, and set up the heap.
We often used bit (not byte) fields, to convey information.
Made life challenging.
However, being able to be sloppy has its definite advantages. It takes a long time to design highly-optimized stuff. If just declaring a couple of new properties takes thirty seconds, and designing a bitfield takes an hour, then we have some real cost-savings, there.
That said, it's easy to get crazy, these days. I just spent a couple of days, chasing down greedy memory hogs. These were operations that ate gigabytes of memory. I determined that the real culprit was actually Apple MapKit, and figured out a simple workaround, but it took a long time to get there. If I suspect the OS, then it's usually my fault, and trying everything before going back to the OS takes time.
How do you deal with all the daemons and automatic crap that does this on Mac? Isnt it all reinforced by SIP?
I think all operating systems have these.
In this one case, allocating a MapView via storyboard, caused some kind of cascading strong reference stuff.
Simply allocating it programmatically, fixed it.
Took awhile to get there, though.