When I started using Unix (36 years ago) I could open a file in ed, make a small change in the file, and save it back to disk, faster than it took vi to startup.
Eight Megs? On the machine I was using 36 years ago, each process had a limit of 64 KB for code + 64 KB for data. It was 8086 based and that was called the small-memory model. Later versions of the OS added support for the medium-memory model which could support 192 KB of code + 64 KB of data.