Besides the file size restriction of 1.4 MB, I agree 100% with the requirements for good OS software. Portability and ad/junk-free is most important.
Tiny Apps
41–50 of 114 posts
Re: Tiny Apps
#42Quite a few links and sites offline - e.g. the top network tool, the top text tool.. :(
Re: Tiny Apps
#43When 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 once had a volume knob widget on my task bar that used 4 meg of ram. Somehow I feel it could have been done better.
Yesterday, I decided to finally retire my old self-written 'sticky notes' utility, and migrate all my notes to the built in Windows 10 Sticky Notes.
* My note app: ~3mb whilst running.
* Win10 Sticky Notes: ~22mb whilst running.
22mb might not be a lot of ram, but I do struggle to understand how it's using that much memory just to display small squares with text in them...
...
Anecdote: Two hours later, whilst trying to copy-paste text from one note to another, I lost the text completely, and Sticky Notes crashed... ~sigh~ back to my crappy app then...
Re: Tiny Apps
#44When 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 once had a volume knob widget on my task bar that used 4 meg of ram. Somehow I feel it could have been done better. Yesterday, I decided to finally retire my old self-written 'sticky notes' utility, and migrate all my notes to the built in Windows 10 Sticky Notes. * My note app: ~3mb whilst running. * Win10 Sticky Notes: ~22mb whilst running. 22mb might not be a lot of ram, but I do struggle to understand how it'…
Probably because the Sticky Notes on Windows 10 has a bit more functionality built in. If I remember correctly, it has integration with other systems (including Outlook), so you can make a note and create a calendar event with said note.
Basically there's just a lot going on under the hood for many of these "simple" apps that isn't user facing. For better or for worse, that's why.
Re: Tiny Apps
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I once had a volume knob widget on my task bar that used 4 meg of ram. Somehow I feel it could have been done better. Yesterday, I decided to finally retire my old self-written 'sticky notes' utility, and migrate all my notes to the built in Windows 10 Sticky Notes. * My note app: ~3mb whilst running. * Win10 Sticky Notes: ~22mb whilst running. 22mb might not be a lot of ram, but I do struggle to understand how it'…
Probably because the Sticky Notes on Windows 10 has a bit more functionality built in. If I remember correctly, it has integration with other systems (including Outlook), so you can make a note and create a calendar event with said note. Basically there's just a lot going on under the hood for many of these "simple" apps that isn't user facing. For better or for worse, that's why.
> so you can make a note and create a calendar event with said note
hmm wasn't aware of that, and didn't see the option - if this so, then I shall redact my outrage. :)
Re: Tiny Apps
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, I can't speak for today, but back in the early 2000s, I put together a simple web browser in Qt, which is easy because it already includes a simple web engine, added a simple JS engine, and the web browser was up and running.
I recall being disappointed it wouldn't run nicely on '98 for some people, because it used about 25mb of RAM, and many only had 128mb for their entire system.
Re: Tiny Apps
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
.NET's memory management can be kinda crappy though, depending of course on the program. Evens out a bit when you start to get complex things.
nircmd is low in memory footprint as well as binary size.
Re: Tiny Apps
#48Paging HN user miles! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12985672 I'm afraid (or perhaps the word I'm looking for is "glad" ;-) that the Internet has passed tinyapps.org on by. After its fleeting 15 seconds of fame back in 2001 (thanks to a Slashdotting and tiny blurb in Wired), the site has mainly served as an irregular tech blog lo these many years.
Ha! Thanks so much for the kind shout-out, j_s - what a memory you have! Glad to see my humble corner of the web is still of some small interest ;-)
Longtime supporter of tinyapps.org.
Go, Miles, go!
Re: Tiny Apps
#49When 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 once had a volume knob widget on my task bar that used 4 meg of ram. Somehow I feel it could have been done better. Yesterday, I decided to finally retire my old self-written 'sticky notes' utility, and migrate all my notes to the built in Windows 10 Sticky Notes. * My note app: ~3mb whilst running. * Win10 Sticky Notes: ~22mb whilst running. 22mb might not be a lot of ram, but I do struggle to understand how it'…
"Stickes" from Zhorn Software currently running ~8MB private bytes. I've been using this software for...er...longer than I can actually remember. I don't recall it crashing once.
Re: Tiny Apps
#50When 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…
> And yes, I know as a C# developer sitting on top of hundreds of megabytes of runtime, I'm "part of the problem".
This should be a solvable problem, IMO.
I mean, C/C++ apps are not inherently tiny - they sit on top of a large runtime too, but one that usually comes with the OS. What makes Python or Lisp apps (in binary form) multi-megabyte by default is that they can't depend on users having the runtime installed, unlike C/C++ apps. JVM managed to cross that gap too - most users, at some point, will install a JRE, which allows .jar files to be small.
I wonder why generalized solution for managing programming language runtimes OS/user-side didn't materialize.