Do programs in the dock use any system memory to reside there

Use Activity Monitor.
If you are running short of RAM, the simplest thing is to increase your RAM.
Why are you concerned with RAM use? Is it causing issues?

Activity Monitor is located in your Applications > Utilities Folder

See > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

Hello Jerry:

Out of curiosity, why are you trying to manage memory allocation? OS X has sophisticated algorithms to manage both real and virtual memory.

IMHO, trying to do what you describe is a waste of time.

Barry

Hi Jerry:

You are welcome. When I reread my post, I seemed a bit curt. Thank you for not taking offense I used to use Windows in my previous workaday world, so I understand concern.

OS X now incorporates all sorts of "routine" maintenance routines that run +"under the covers."+ I always sleep my iMacs, so those routines will run as scheduled after a wake. OS X " defrags" files of less than 20 MB on the fly.

I rarely use it (only for rare troubleshooting), but I have a neat little program called Cocktail that has GUI front ends to all sorts of system routines. If you use it, however, take care as you can do harm and/or slow a system (clearing system cache files, for example, will slow the system for awhile). It does access all sorts of interesting things that are very hard to find with terminal commands (which I avoid like the plague).

Please ask away in the future. These are the best on-line forums anywhere, and virtually everyone is a volunteer.

Barry

So there are some people here that are paid to help?

Only the Hosts are Apple employees.

The rest of us are unpaid volunteers who do all the work! 🙂

Hello sin:

Oops, Klaus1 beat me to it (normal, I am slow!).

The only Apple forum hosts that post will have purple apples in their identifying information. A "regular" Apple employee will have a gray apple. If you want to see what a host ID looks like, visit the feedback forum. They answer questions there occasionally.

The rest of us that try to assist people do so because we enjoy (for the most part) problem solving and helping other Apple users.

Barry

There are several different things in the Dock.
Most are simply icons - shortcuts that virtually take up no space.
Some icons in the Dock such as Finder, have a blue dot below them. This means that they are active and are using system resources.
If you open an app and then minimize it, it appears in the dock with a blue dot and is using resources.
Folders in the right-hand side of the dock - Documents, Downloads, etc. use no resources. They are aliases for the real folders. "No" means almost zero, obviously.

The reason Finder always has a blue dot under it is that your desktop is actually a Finder file.
Finder is a bit like Windows Desktop Explorer, except it also provides the GUI desktop.

You will also find that some apps that appear in the Dock such as grab, do not appear on screen. All they have is a menu, top left, when you click on them.

Don't get confused by the new terminology or way things work. I also use Windows, and except for some specifics, many of the differences are cosmetic, although things work faster and more smoothly on a Mac.

There is even a terminal on Macs, not unlike Window's command prompt, but again, terminal is far superior - more powerful and actually exposes what is really running the show, BSD - a Unix-like environment.