Most software is bloated, meaning: it’s taking both a lot more space to store (both in memory and on disk) and more time to run than required. A

Software Bloat Makes me Sad

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2024-10-25 20:30:09

Most software is bloated, meaning: it’s taking both a lot more space to store (both in memory and on disk) and more time to run than required. A few examples:

The system requirements of the popular Linux distrubtion Ubuntu state that: “we all know that it is recommended to have 2048 MiB RAM to properly run a day to day Ubuntu” and its “Live CD” has grown so big as to no longer actually fit on a CD.

The “text editor we’ve always wanted” that’s currently being built at GitHub (atom.io) has no support for 20% of use-cases involving ‘large files’ (defined as files larger than a whopping 2MB).

Running the “lightweight” editor Vim, in combination with a few small extensions may lead to your machine locking up for a full minute

The above examples are in no way meant to single out certain pieces of software; them making it to this list is related only to my own personal recent experiences with them. Given that, rather than looking at the above examples in particular, the general point is: