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The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

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Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#161

Post by hakfoo »

hnlmorg wrote: post #41
bayindirh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this doesn't prevent you from being mindful and selecting the right tools with smaller memory footprint while providing the features you need. Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it ma…

> Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it matters. The savings there would be negligible (in modern terms) but the development cost would be significantly increased. > Of course more features an…

> Application theming

Software 30 years ago was more amenable to theming. The more system widgets you use, the more effective theming works by swapping them.

Now, we have grudging dark-mode toggles that aren't consistent or universal, not even rising to the level of configurabilty you got with Windows 3.1 themes, let alone things like libXaw3d or libneXtaw where the fundamental widget-drawing code could be swapped out silently.

I get the impression that since about 2005, theming has been on the downturn. Windows XP and OSX both were very close to having first class, user-facing theming systems, but both sort of chickened out at the last minute, and ever since, we've seen less and less control every release.

I think what you're describing as "theming" is more "custom UI". It used to be reserved for games, where stock Windows widgets broke immersion in a medieval fantasy strategy simulator and you were legally obliged to make the cursor a gauntlet or sword. But Electron said to the entire world "go to town, burn the system Human Interface Guidelines and make a branded nightmare!" when your application is a smart-bulb controller or a text editor that could perfectly well fit with native widgets.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#162

Post by tombert »

Not as small as The Last Ninja, but when I was a teenager first getting into emulation, I genuinely thought there was a mistake or my download got interrupted when I downloaded Super Mario Bros. 3, because it was only like 500kb [1], and I didn't think it was possible for a game that huge to be less than a megabyte.

It is still impressive to me how much game they could squeeze out of the NES ROM chips.

[1] Or something like that, I don't remember the exact number.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#163

Post by selimthegrim »

hakfoo wrote: post #161
hnlmorg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it matters. The savings there would be negligible (in modern terms) but the development cost would be significantly increased. > Of course more features an…

> Application theming Software 30 years ago was more amenable to theming. The more system widgets you use, the more effective theming works by swapping them. Now, we have grudging dark-mode toggles that aren't consistent or universal, not even rising to the level of configurabilty you got with Windows 3.1 themes, let alone things like libXaw3d or libneXtaw where the fundamental widget-drawing code could be swapped ou…

>But Electron said to the entire world "go to town, burn the system Human Interface Guidelines and make a branded nightmare!"

TBH this sounds pretty medieval too.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#164

Post by christkv »

the_af wrote: post #108
boptom wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loading music is exceptional and I enjoyed listening to it while waiting. I still occasionally listen to it.

Last Ninja has my favorite music from the C64 era. Have you listened to the live versions by the Fastloaders? They had Ben Daglish before he passed away.

I will now :D

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#165

Post by hnlmorg »

hakfoo wrote: post #161
hnlmorg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it matters. The savings there would be negligible (in modern terms) but the development cost would be significantly increased. > Of course more features an…

> Application theming Software 30 years ago was more amenable to theming. The more system widgets you use, the more effective theming works by swapping them. Now, we have grudging dark-mode toggles that aren't consistent or universal, not even rising to the level of configurabilty you got with Windows 3.1 themes, let alone things like libXaw3d or libneXtaw where the fundamental widget-drawing code could be swapped ou…

We are talking about software development not user configuration. So “theming” here clearly refers specifically to the applications shipping non-standard UIs.

This also isn’t a trend that Electron started. Software has been shipping with bespoke UIs for nearly as long as UI toolkits have been a thing.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#166

Post by miki123211 »

eleveriven wrote: post #134
YZF wrote: post #6

I was looking at a production service we run that was using a few GBs of memory. When I add up all the actual data needed in a naive compact representation I end up with a few MBs. So much waste. That's before thinking of clever ways to compress, or de-duplicate or rearrange that data. Back in the day getting the 16KB expansion pack for my 1KB RAM ZX81 was a big deal. And I also wrote code for PIC microcontrollers th…

I think you're right about the waste, but I'm not sure it's entirely "accidental"... a lot of it is traded for different kinds of efficiency

At some point, you just stop measuring the thing until the thing becomes a problem again. That lets you work a lot faster and make far more software for far less money.

It's the "fast fashion" of software. In the middle ages, a shirt used to cost about what a car does now, and was just as precious. Now, most people can just throw away clothes they no longer like.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#168

Post by okdidkwd »

rigonkulous wrote: post #75
bayindirh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this doesn't prevent you from being mindful and selecting the right tools with smaller memory footprint while providing the features you need. Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it ma…

Programming these days, in some realms, is a lot like shopping for food - some people just take the box off the shelf, don't bother with reading the ingredients, throw it in with some heat and fluid and serve it up as a 3-star meal. Others carefully select the ingredients, construct the parts they don't already have, spend the time to get the temperatures and oxygenation aligned, and then sit down to a humble meal fo…

[flagged]

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#169

Post by cindyllm »

okdidkwd wrote: post #168
rigonkulous wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming these days, in some realms, is a lot like shopping for food - some people just take the box off the shelf, don't bother with reading the ingredients, throw it in with some heat and fluid and serve it up as a 3-star meal. Others carefully select the ingredients, construct the parts they don't already have, spend the time to get the temperatures and oxygenation aligned, and then sit down to a humble meal fo…

[flagged]

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