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The argument got rather confused at the end. The todo list has 13,000 dependencies precisely because the NPM community follows the advice here to create many small libraries. So is that supposed to be a good or bad thing?
Another thing.. computing is over. At least in the previous era form. It's not bringing dreams anymore, will probably turn into an ubiquitous invisible form where intrinsic details such as resource usage won't matter.
I was expecting Moore's Law to give us a renaissance in algorithmic thinking, but The Cloud has shown me I was wrong. First, we're going to have to fully explore Amdahl's law. Eventually every problem goes to logn time, best case. The logn factor shows up over and over, from constraints on on-chip cache to communication delays to adding numbers of arbitrary size. We make a lot of problems look like they are O(1) unti…
I was expecting Moore's Law to give us a renaissance in algorithmic thinking, but The Cloud has shown me I was wrong. First, we're going to have to fully explore Amdahl's law. Eventually every problem goes to logn time, best case. The logn factor shows up over and over, from constraints on on-chip cache to communication delays to adding numbers of arbitrary size. We make a lot of problems look like they are O(1) unti…
Funny! Depressing :(
I think a lot of this is governed by Conway's Adage: the software reflects the social systems that built it. If you look at the larger software ecosystem, it reflects the larger society that built it. The priorities and social customs of communities are leading to the "bloat." It's hard to say whether that is a growth on society's part or that software is simply still catching up with society.
For one, PHP did not start out object oriented. Nor did it come with an IDE. Sure, it was dynamically typed (unlike Java). If I recall, it was 1994 too but I can’t be sure.
It was only PHP4 that added an abomination of a class system that motivated the current object system in PHP5. In fact, the problems with PHP have more to do with that pattern: creating abominations that motivate the development of something that isn’t a total abomination (often whilst retaining said abomination for a while).
And, as others have said, small “libraries” is exactly why the todo app needs 13k NPM packages.
I say “libraries” but you can’t call them that. I mean where’s the analogy? A library of one function? Behave
I'd join.
Fragmented parts could be suckless.org, old cheap thinkpads from ebay, fast Linux distros, unix command line tools, retrocomputing, raspberry pi; all things with communities and fans who like a certain quality, simplicity and the good old days.
And the trend is not slowing. That said some people like low fat computing. Another thing.. computing is over. At least in the previous era form. It's not bringing dreams anymore, will probably turn into an ubiquitous invisible form where intrinsic details such as resource usage won't matter.
low power always-on devices with long range radio (LoRa), few resources (32k ram), the security constraints of securing every device, dealing with terabytes of log data in the cloud, ML at the edge (Kendryte K210), open-source firmware including radio (DASH7 firmware), open-source hardware (and open-source FPGA tooling) to create custom hardware designs (hardware implementation of algorithms), formal verification of OS and protocols, etc etc.
Even a handful of innovation in any of the above would be groundbreaking.
People spend time making software less bloated, when it's the number one problem they have. When hardware speed is taking care of making that only the #2 or #3 problem they have, then they will work on whatever the #1 problem is, meanwhile adding more software bloat.
When Moore's Law once and for all stops, due to some law of physics reason, then software bloat will become a priority. Until then, other things are.