I will agree with your last point. If I had bought this machine for doing seriously development I would've gone for 16gb. Saying that, I've been pleasantly surprised with its power. I've been playing with Metal, throwing together a native version ShaderToy, and it hasn't felt unpowered once. Even when running the iPad emulator.
I did feel a little duped when I learned that some M1/M2 machines can only support one external monitor. Now I have to replace my two monitors with a widescreen.
IMO, the 'problem' is that MacOS will use 4-5gb OOB, and using an Electron app with a browser open will easily push that into swap space. For most daily drivers, even light users, they'll be happy to have upgraded memory.
Right now with just safari and a few background things I'm hovering at 6gb in use, so you're not wrong about how much memory is being used. Regardless I don't think it's a problem for light users. A light user imo would be just browsing and email. 8GB will give you plenty of headroom in that case.
I'm going to keep an eye on ram usage for the next few days. I'm curious what it will look like on a more full workload because if things have been swapping out, I haven't noticed.
I did feel a little duped when I learned that some M1/M2 machines can only support one external monitor. Now I have to replace my two monitors with a widescreen.