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Tiny Apps

tinyapps.org

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Re: Tiny Apps

#31

Post by voltagex_ »

Lerc wrote: post #17

When I see the specs of things like the Raspberry Pi and Apps like this, it makes me wonder how great a system like that could be. Executable size may not be the best measure of these things though. Ram usage of some things can be quite huge. tinyapps.org seems to avoid this by disallowing things needing runtimes, which while not the cause of RAM bloat, often tends to be a common factor. I'd actually like to see an i…

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM.

When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to write tiny apps. Rust and Go look great, even with a very steep learning curve coming from C# and Python.

And yes, I know as a C# developer sitting on top of hundreds of megabytes of runtime, I'm "part of the problem".

Re: Tiny Apps

#32

Post by steanne »

voltagex_ wrote: post #30
steanne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/AlwaysMouseWheel http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

nircmd is great, although I wonder how much you could replace with PowerShell these days. Invaluable along with SysInternals [1] 1: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals

powershell requires .net. that is no longer tiny.

Re: Tiny Apps

#33

Post by voltagex_ »

steanne wrote: post #32
voltagex_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nircmd is great, although I wonder how much you could replace with PowerShell these days. Invaluable along with SysInternals [1] 1: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals

powershell requires .net. that is no longer tiny.

Depends what boxes you're normally on, but it's a rare day I'm somewhere without .NET.

Re: Tiny Apps

#34

Post by lsh »

voltagex_ wrote: post #31
Lerc wrote: post #17

When I see the specs of things like the Raspberry Pi and Apps like this, it makes me wonder how great a system like that could be. Executable size may not be the best measure of these things though. Ram usage of some things can be quite huge. tinyapps.org seems to avoid this by disallowing things needing runtimes, which while not the cause of RAM bloat, often tends to be a common factor. I'd actually like to see an i…

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM. When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to w…

I'm a python and clojure dev, and part of the reason for going in search of tiny apps with source code was to see how they managed it. I know I'm part of the problem too, I like working at a very high level, but I, too, am getting old and grumpy and detest how 16GB ram isn't enough these days.

I was actually, partly, looking for a community who built or curated lists of apps with artificial constraints, for example: app must not use more than N MB of ram, must be open source, etc.

there is the demo scene, but I want to build practical apps, and there is suckless, but I found their community and philosophy a bit ... hardcore and unaccommodating.

Re: Tiny Apps

#35

Post by voltagex_ »

lsh wrote: post #34
voltagex_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM. When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to w…

I'm a python and clojure dev, and part of the reason for going in search of tiny apps with source code was to see how they managed it. I know I'm part of the problem too, I like working at a very high level, but I, too, am getting old and grumpy and detest how 16GB ram isn't enough these days. I was actually, partly, looking for a community who built or curated lists of apps with artificial constraints, for example:…

I'd definitely like to talk about this more - I don't have time for any more side projects but it's an interesting idea.

"app must not use more than N MB of RAM" is a tricky one - how would you measure usage in all cases?

Re: Tiny Apps

#36

Post by microtonal »

voltagex_ wrote: post #31
Lerc wrote: post #17

When I see the specs of things like the Raspberry Pi and Apps like this, it makes me wonder how great a system like that could be. Executable size may not be the best measure of these things though. Ram usage of some things can be quite huge. tinyapps.org seems to avoid this by disallowing things needing runtimes, which while not the cause of RAM bloat, often tends to be a common factor. I'd actually like to see an i…

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM. When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to w…

I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before.

But it was easy before. If you are willing to forego completely native UIs (which you are when you are using Electron), it's always been easy to make GUI apps with Qt. Drag together an UI in designer, use (py|whatever)uic to generate classes, hook up signals/slots, and you are done.

I can only pin it on intellectual laziness of front-end programmers not wanting to learn anything else than HTML/CSS/JS and companies wanting replaceable developers. There is virtually no benefit for the end user over native applications or cross-platform applications written with e.g. Qt.

Re: Tiny Apps

#37

Post by voltagex_ »

microtonal wrote: post #36
voltagex_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM. When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to w…

I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. But it was easy before. If you are willing to forego completely native UIs (which you are when you are using Electron), it's always been easy to make GUI apps with Qt. Drag together an UI in designer, use (py|whatever)uic to generate classes, hook up signals/slots, and you are done. I can only pin it on intellectual laziness of front-end programmers not wanting to…

Is a PyQt app really more lightweight than Electron?

To be fair, Qt is a lot trickier than Electron - you've mentioned slots and signals which are not something you'd encounter every day (at least in webdev world).

Edit: I also don't buy any argument that relies on "intellectual laziness". There's enough elitism around already.

Re: Tiny Apps

#38

Post by torrent-of-ions »

christophilus wrote: post #3
lsh wrote: post #2

I was curious about how small (file size) and efficient (memory) I could write a program with a GUI and came across this old gem. Most of them have links to their source.

This is refreshing to see. I was just at the doctor today, and they mentioned how a recent system update (they use a system called Epic) made their receipt printing go from an abysmal 30 seconds to a full minute. It seems that programs get bloated and slower with each passing day. I'd love to see a Renaissance of small, focused, efficient applications.

The quality of programmers working for companies like this is terrible. I'm talking about programmers who claim to "know" C++ because they used it once during a computer science project and just managed to avoid getting segfaults too often after lots of trial and error. Writing a small, effective program has been a sign of competence forever because we know that you can't "fake" it. You really have to know what you're doing.

Re: Tiny Apps

#39

Post by roryisok »

voltagex_ wrote: post #31
Lerc wrote: post #17

When I see the specs of things like the Raspberry Pi and Apps like this, it makes me wonder how great a system like that could be. Executable size may not be the best measure of these things though. Ram usage of some things can be quite huge. tinyapps.org seems to avoid this by disallowing things needing runtimes, which while not the cause of RAM bloat, often tends to be a common factor. I'd actually like to see an i…

I've been thinking about this a lot, mainly due to being grumpy about the proliferation of Electron apps and the effect that's having on my available RAM. When I'm not being so grumpy, I'm glad it's easier to write apps than ever before. I think someone on here posited that it's a choice between something written in Electron or not written at all. I think that's fair enough - maybe we just need to make it easier to w…

The thing about electron is, there's a time and a place for it.

VsCode is an excellent use case for electron - a complex cross platform app with a very quick release cycle, a large plugin ecosystem and a requirement for display and processing of a lot of different types of markup.

But I've also seen a tray notification app worn in electron. It didn't even have a UI. There's also an sd card formatter, and a "quick" launcher.

Devs who wasn't to release some tiny single function app like this should rightly be ridiculed for using electron, but more complex stuff (gitKraken etc) should get a pass. Building a large, complex editor is hard work

Re: Tiny Apps

#40

Post by roryisok »

voltagex_ wrote: post #35
lsh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a python and clojure dev, and part of the reason for going in search of tiny apps with source code was to see how they managed it. I know I'm part of the problem too, I like working at a very high level, but I, too, am getting old and grumpy and detest how 16GB ram isn't enough these days. I was actually, partly, looking for a community who built or curated lists of apps with artificial constraints, for example:…

I'd definitely like to talk about this more - I don't have time for any more side projects but it's an interesting idea. "app must not use more than N MB of RAM" is a tricky one - how would you measure usage in all cases?

I think its less about a hard limit and more about comparing to other apps out there that do the same thing. Music players for instance. 1by1 < foobar < VLC < Songbird / Spotify
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