141–150 of 403 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's ahead of time and AOT compilation is done at OS startup, not sure if that is being measured here.
OS startup? AOT compilation happens in the build pipeline, before the app is distributed.
Sure, Electron does not come natively for iOS. But with tools like Capacitor, you can take a web app (even an Electron one) and package it for iOS/Android, adding native features and running in a native WebView, allowing it to be an “Electron for Mobile”.
Another reason, is rusty code (not Rust. It's a play on the saying "Code doesn't rust", which I used to hear, last century).
It does, indeed, rust. Actually, "rots" is probably more apropos.
I'll bet that's the reason that Xcode is such a pig (makes GMail look like an anorexic).
Code is created that people no longer understand, so they are loath to make large changes. They just do enough to fix a bug, and pray that they don't need to dig any deeper. One of my first software jobs, was exactly like that.
When that happens, the code never shrinks. It just accretes.
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Is it plausible that the libraries are so big? I mean, for example, NodeJS is in the order of 100mb and contains the whole v8 engine. The Gmail app size has to be assets, right?
Static linking will do that. Imagine you have 400mb of binary objects your app depends on. Libraries your company uses for app analytics, SSO, 2FA, Corporate service bus api, etc. You statically link all those for your 50mb Swift UI app and bam, you’re in the 700mb range.
Also, one thing that annoyed me when I used iPhones is that you can't remove an app's cache without reinstalling it and losing all your data. And most modern applications think cache is free so they use a lot of it. Many times it will exceed even your installed apps or data size.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Static linking will do that. Imagine you have 400mb of binary objects your app depends on. Libraries your company uses for app analytics, SSO, 2FA, Corporate service bus api, etc. You statically link all those for your 50mb Swift UI app and bam, you’re in the 700mb range.
That's a lot of code, though. I can't imagine common libraries so big. The Linux kernel is less than 100mb.