Software bloat makes me sad • Hacker News Board

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#41

Post by bloateddevtards » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

goldfire wrote: post #35

bloateddevtards wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could edit a doc with a word processor that could fit onto a floppy, and it worked well. Now, why does the same task require a multi GB pos bloatfest to do the same job? And oftentimes, more slowly! Imagine for a second, the power of today's hardware running optimised lean code. It could be so good, but we accept bloated crappy bug ridden shitfests of OS and application software. We seem to care more about glossy a…

If I want to start Microsoft Word right now, here's what I have to do: I press the Windows key, type "word", press enter, and then wait for it to start. That entire process takes three seconds; I just timed it. Now that Word's been run once already, I can start it again in less than one second. That compares pretty favorably with the process of finding a floppy disk, inserting it, and then finally running a command o…

Once it installed from the floppy, why would I need to keep using from the floppy? You also described caching behaviour of the OS, rather than the huge size of modern day word.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#42

Post by dpweb » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

Over time, all software tends to get bigger and not necessarily better.

Windows went from 7MB required (95) to 6GB required (Vista), 1000x bigger, in just 10 years. It's true in file formats as well and verbosity is one of the reasons XML was/is so hated.

There is an irresitable urge to make things bigger bigger bigger, and huge cpu, mem, and disk resources are essentially free.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#43

Post by alkonaut » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

Feature bloat is inevitable if you write an application in which thousands of users want different features. Most users want just a subset of the features, and think of the rest as "bloat" even though it might be a core feature for another user. The alternative is multiple lighter applications which would just reduce bloat at the cost of integration, a trade off almost no one seems to want.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#44

Post by redcalx » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #23

redcalx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I suspect that that subtlety to the rule is often lost to the reader. Perhaps a rewording is in order that puts emphasis on the conditional part (i.e. what constitutes premature)

Or you could just reference the full quote, which reveals a remarkably different context than what is commonly interpreted.

Ha! But that is the quote that gets repeated, i.e. it's been 'optimised' to aid viral/meme transfer, but not optimised in meaning :)

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#45

Post by bloateddevtards » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #34

bloateddevtards wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could edit a doc with a word processor that could fit onto a floppy, and it worked well. Now, why does the same task require a multi GB pos bloatfest to do the same job? And oftentimes, more slowly! Imagine for a second, the power of today's hardware running optimised lean code. It could be so good, but we accept bloated crappy bug ridden shitfests of OS and application software. We seem to care more about glossy a…

The problem is you can't write that optimized lean assembly code in a lifetime anymore. Software today does a lot more than it used to under the seams now that most people forget about.

I am not sure we need to go as lean as hand-rolled asm, but we sure went down a wrong path when we just accept that word will get bigger and bigger with each release. No one asks why.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#46

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #26

I've previously decried bloat too, but I find that my rants against software bloat are based on emotion, not reason. So, looking at this rationally, consider your favorite lightweight window manager or desktop environment for Linux. Is it fully internationalized, including support for CJK input methods? Is it fully accessible to users with disabilities, e.g. blind people and people with mobility impairments? Does it…

And, for some reason you forgot about KDE...

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#47

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

goldfire wrote: post #35

bloateddevtards wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could edit a doc with a word processor that could fit onto a floppy, and it worked well. Now, why does the same task require a multi GB pos bloatfest to do the same job? And oftentimes, more slowly! Imagine for a second, the power of today's hardware running optimised lean code. It could be so good, but we accept bloated crappy bug ridden shitfests of OS and application software. We seem to care more about glossy a…

If I want to start Microsoft Word right now, here's what I have to do: I press the Windows key, type "word", press enter, and then wait for it to start. That entire process takes three seconds; I just timed it. Now that Word's been run once already, I can start it again in less than one second. That compares pretty favorably with the process of finding a floppy disk, inserting it, and then finally running a command o…

That's probably because you have SSD, but anyway; I could do the exact same process 10 years ago (with "winword" instead of "word"), get similar response times, and yet the software was an order of magnitude smaller and more responsive. And it's not like Word gained many actually useful features during that time.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#48

Post by kstenerud » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #40

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5

I'm not really convinced. Leaving aside the argument about whether or not software is 'bloated' at all, or what 'bloat' actually means, this in particular stands out: “wouldn’t it have been easier not to create the problem in the first place?” It would seem obvious that the answer to this is indeed “yes”. It doesn't seem obvious at all, especially considering the implicit assumptions about whether or not bloat is act…

I came to believe there are two types of programmers - those who get emotionally upset about ineficciencies, and those who couldn't care less. I'm in the first camp, so I understand the feelings of the author perfectly. You say your computer can do "more things much faster" than before - just imagine how many more things, how much faster you could do if the software didn't bloat itself up almost at the same pace as t…

> But then there's the kind of bloat that can only be explained by programmers having no clue about what their software is doing.

Not everyone is cut out for high performance software development. If you're not happy with what they've produced, don't support them.

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#49

Post by runj__ » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #15

point 2 about atom: Well, writing a text editor is far more complicated than it seems at first place.In order to support big files (50mb logs for instance), you need to make all your code rely on complex memory management, streaming and caching. Maybe js is not the right tool for the job in order to implement these features. I always thought that atom should be build in Qt with an api that can interact with JS,a bit…

Atom is a super weird example, wouldn't it bloat the software to add support for files larger than 2MB? Wouldn't that be feature bloat? I mean, a code editor shouldn't have to deal with gigantic files since code shouldn't be written that way [citation needed].

Re: Software bloat makes me sad

#50

Post by scrollaway » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #26

I've previously decried bloat too, but I find that my rants against software bloat are based on emotion, not reason. So, looking at this rationally, consider your favorite lightweight window manager or desktop environment for Linux. Is it fully internationalized, including support for CJK input methods? Is it fully accessible to users with disabilities, e.g. blind people and people with mobility impairments? Does it…

> AFAIK, the only Linux desktop environments that come close are GNOME and Unity.

I'm the project lead of LXQt. All those things you listed can be supported without introducing much bloat at all. In DEs, most bloat comes from pure technical debt. Unnecessary libraries, duplicated code/libs, etc.

Feature bloat is another matter and is more subjective. A lot of it is down to UX.

Fun fact: KDE 4.x depends on ruby in most distros. Do you know why? Dolphin ships with a ruby script to update some folders (don't remember what it does). Nobody runs it. That's it.