It does not need 840 MB of memory — it uses it because the purpose of this example is to show that packaging is now easy, and non-essential parts were left out to keep it simple. I just tried limiting it to 50 MB and it runs just fine.
I'm sorry to say this, but I think you made the wrong call here by treating startup time and memory usage as "non-essential". At least when presenting the case here, on HN.
Programmers here tend to be experienced in many different languages and platforms, and when we see a post about packaging an app, we stop and ask what is it that gets packaged first. In other words, what's the point of easy packaging, if the packaged result is slow as molasses and eats RAM like there's no tomorrow. We have literally dozens of tools at our disposal which make packaging as simple, yet the result would runs circles around your demo, even if - and here's the kicker - we considered performance and memory optimization as non-essential. Sane defaults and all that...
To sum it up: we're just as interested in how you package it as in what is in the package. If it's really easy to optimize for startup time and memory footprint as you say, then all the more reason to apply these to the demo. No one here would think the demo is too complex (not simple) just because of that. And if it's not easy... well, that's also something we'd like to know.
