Software Disenchantment (2018)

But what real enhancements does Windows 10 provide, which couldn't have simply been done as patches to Windows 7, keeping the same main structure and layout and overall design, but just continually improving it, the way Henry Ford did with the Model T for 20+ years?

For that matter, one could for example take the Windows NT 4.0 source code, add in drivers for the necessary hardware, fix boot code, linking, etc to be compatible with late model computers, spruce up the UI with better font rendering, antialiasing, 24-bit color wallpaper, OpenGL rendering even--and in the end, you'd have something just as functional as Win 7/10 but at 1/4 of the bloat.

This sort of thing would be technically very easy to do. It's much easier than the status quo of continually reinventing the wheel. So why, oh why, is there this overpowering desire to continually throw out good code and replace it with heavier, more bloated junk, which doesn't really offer any real increase in functionality?

I like calling regulations, "protections" in some circumstances. And here we are, awaiting some new protections.

My "oasis" is just text files in git, or photos in directories for the most part. The challenge is integrating with others and my god damn iPhone.

> this bloated 'shitware' today is the result of it having been written by people who a) have no deeper understanding of what the computer is actually doing; also known as typical Python/Java/etc/etc/etc programmers, and/or b) simply not giving a damn about conservation of resources

Much of the blame lies with bloated frameworks, such as Electron, rather than with the developer who uses the framework. You've covered this under Option B.

This topic cropped up recently on a Show HN. Someone built a Slack client for Windows 3.1. [0] It uses a tiny fraction of the memory used by the official Electron-based client, of course.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832815

Heh, software in general, absolutely! But I think the "Web 2.0" is the worst offender: https://nixpulvis.com/ramblings/2018-08-11-web-shit-point-oh

> Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters?

I think the analogy here is backwards. The better question is "how much would you prioritize a car that used only 0.05 liters per 100km over one that used 0.5? What about one that used only 0.005L?". I'd say that at that point, other factors like comfort, performance, base price, etc. become (relatively) much more important.

If basic computer operations like loading a webpage took minutes rather than seconds, I think there would be more general interest in improving performance. For now though, most users are happy-enough with the performance of most software, and other factors like aesthetics, ease-of-use, etc. are the main differentiators (admittedly feature bloat, ads, tracking, etc. are also a problem, but I think they're mostly orthogonal to under-the-hood performance).

These days, I think most users will lose more time and be more frustrated by poor UI design, accidental inputs, etc. than any performance characteristics of the software they use. Hence the complexity/performance overhead of using technologies that allow software to be easily iterated and expanded are justified, to my mind (though we should be mindful of technology that claims to improve our agility but really only adds complexity).