Getting a More Intuitive Understanding of RAM

I'm a self-taught programmer and I've never felt super confident talking through what vertical scaling might do to improve performance. For example, I feel like I've heard folks say "oh yea you need x GB of RAM for that" or "That machine isn't powerful enough for that".

If you didn't learn this stuff in school, how did you develop this intuition? One population I'd imagine might be good at this is gamers, as they are often trying to see what machine they can afford to have an optimal gaming experience, but I'm not a gamer. I'd like to gain this intuition to feel more confident at work and in these types of conversations.