A Megabyte Here, A Megabyte There
I guess I've gotten used to the luxury of modern computing. Remember, I started out on machines with 32K of memory and stacks of punch cards; a box of cards holds about 240K, and we used to think that was a lot.
Today, I was working on Tinderbox weblog import and, when a customer's MovableType server started to complain, I wanted to know "What's the problem? I'm only asking for a lousy megabyte!"
But, while a meg is nothing much on a personal computer, it's a bit much to ask for when you're sharing the computer with hundreds of others. Another reason the Tinderbox client-side architecture is better for serious weblogs: your data is yours, and your processor and memory is all right there when you need them.
But, on the server front, we're rewriting the import code so that it no longer asks for anything big from the server. Instead, we ask for lots of little things, one at a time. That's slower, but it keeps the server happy.