Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
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Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
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Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#2Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have.
Two contrasting examples spring to mind:
- Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB.
- An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service application that parks the disk (if my memory serves) would occupy about 200MB of memory. Think of all the functionality this program had. It could stop the disk. It could start it. Fantastic.
That's bloatware. Especially as I had 2GB of RAM at the time.
P.S. Yes, many over-large programs can get swapped. No, swap is not a magic solution, and happily tanks performance.
In summary, I do agree with many of the points Joel makes, but I always hope that programmers at least think about memory implications, if only for a little bit. Some co-workers and I were discussing a small utility we were developing. A very simple, fast structure was suggested. We then took a moment to consider memory, and realized in our expected worst-case workload, the process would require upwards of 64GB of RAM. This is why you need to spend at least a moment thinking about memory! It is cheap, but not infinite, and oh-so-easy to chew through gobs.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#3Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have. Two contrasting examples spring to mind: - Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB. - An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service applicatio…
How could that app possibly use 200MB of memory? Was that resident memory or simply mapped memory?
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#4Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have. Two contrasting examples spring to mind: - Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB. - An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service applicatio…
The Bluetooth driver for quite a few Lenovo Thinkpads is a 210 MiB download. It includes btrez.dll (two seemingly near identical copies for x64 and one for x86, each about 25 MB) and all of the .NET 4.0 runtime, among other things.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#5Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have. Two contrasting examples spring to mind: - Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB. - An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service applicatio…
How could that app possibly use 200MB of memory? Was that resident memory or simply mapped memory?
How could that app possibly use 200MB of memory?
I don't really know, but all the software for that notebook was impressively bad. The ones the user would interact with were literally the slowest programs I've ever used, and we're just talking about opening menus or clicking buttons under idle load. I still haven't figured out how opening a menu on a 2008 laptop can require 5-10 seconds of compute.
So I would conclude, "most likely a complete and utter disregard for limited resources". Which is why I am repelled by memory is practically free, don't even think about it arguments. To my figuring, give it a little attention. Not gobs, but don't pretend memory is a solved problem.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#6Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have. Two contrasting examples spring to mind: - Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB. - An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service applicatio…
My wife's HP laptop had some software that monitored the "audio mute" key so it could turn the associated LED on and off. That herculean task required a constant 50% of the CPU.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#715 mb?
I was using Excel on the Macintosh for laboratory analysis as early as 1987. It could run on two 800K floppies. So, 1.6 mb. It had 80% of the functionality I ever used Excel for.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#8Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have. Two contrasting examples spring to mind: - Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB. - An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service applicatio…
My wife's HP laptop had some software that monitored the "audio mute" key so it could turn the associated LED on and off. That herculean task required a constant 50% of the CPU.
To make matters more amusing, this laptop was in all probability dual core, which means the software was pegging one of the cores.
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#915 mb? I was using Excel on the Macintosh for laboratory analysis as early as 1987. It could run on two 800K floppies. So, 1.6 mb. It had 80% of the functionality I ever used Excel for.
Millibit?
Re: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife's HP laptop had some software that monitored the "audio mute" key so it could turn the associated LED on and off. That herculean task required a constant 50% of the CPU.
To make matters more amusing, this laptop was in all probability dual core, which means the software was pegging one of the cores.
I think you are right.