It's true that programs today are several orders of magnitude more capable, but it is also true that code now is hideously RAM inefficient and bloated.

The entire codebase of software in production, yes. But one thing that people might not realize is that some of our software algorithms themselves, at least for certain algorithm families, are also much more efficient than before.

I thought this was an interesting overview:

https://futuretech.mit.edu/publication/how-fast-do-algorithms-improve

The focus isn't on memory usage, but the same general trend applies there: when someone discovered a new algorithm that improves on old ones, it can change the amount of memory used to accomplish a specific result.