Rethinking software bloat.

Information week.com ^ | 12/17/01 | Fred Langa

[damnlimey]

Bloatware could well be what is driving the rapid advance of todays hardware,
more resource hungry software calls for bigger faster hardware which in turn
leaves the door open for developers to add more bells and whistles to their
products and on and on ad infitum.
Hey,who knows ,maybe it's a good thing ;^)

[damnlimey]

infitum = infinitum,wheres that take it back button when you need it?

[VoiceOfBruck]

With 60G of hard drive space for less than $200 and 512 MB of RAM for about $100, who cares how large it is?

I do. Smaller is better.

Every line of code has a finite chance of having a defect. Every defect has a finite chance of remaining undetected in the released product. Every released defect has a finite chance of causing unintended operation. But you and Mr. Gates apparently aren't too worried about that.

[rdb3]

I'll stay on the list, please.

[Rain-maker]

Similiar to driving an SUV verses a compact.

Everyone wants behemoth sized and gadget packed goods, rather than efficient and simplistic wares.

Seems like more of status symbol than practicality. Get XP and brag in your hood today!

[Blood of Tyrants]

Reason for bloat? Jamming programs with little used features and lazy programmers who would rather patch than fix.

[CIB-173RDABN]

My first computer was a Vic20 with 2 (that is two, like in one, two) K of memory, expandable to 16K

Storage was a tape recorder

It had many useful (at the time) programs, and using basic I was able to write my own, well within the limits of the machine.

However I wanted more. Each new machine gave me more hard drive space, when I had my first computer with 4 MB of hard drive I wondered how I would ever fill the space. Well I did. My previous computer had 9 GB of harddrive, and when I got it I did not think it would be possible to ever fill the space, well I did.

My current computer has 80 GB, and I no longer wonder if I will ever fill the space, but wonder how long will it be before I have to start deleteing files.

I am looking forward to my first "80 Terabyte" hard drive.

The point is, as any project will expand for the time alloted it, and hard drive, no matter how big will get filled. As long as the price of hard drives falls as the size of the hard drive increases, I no longer worry about bloat ware.

:-}

[proxy_user]

I, tried it myself, and it's true in a way:

#include "iostream.h"

int main(int argc,char **argv) { cout << "Hello world"; }

The executable is 8800 bytes in Solaris 2.6. However, most of that is part of the necessary overhead to communicate with the OS via the linked-in library. If you wrote all the library code yourself, you'd be wasting a lot of time and introducing unnecessary bugs.

The whole point of OO is really the optimize the efficiency of writing code and the liklihood that it will work correctly. If you write clean C++, the executables might be somewhat larger, but they will run very fast.

[Bush2000]

[Bush2000]

This article is tripe. The fact of the matter is that hardware prices are constantly declining as products are replaced with better technology, so the cost per megabyte/gigabyte of storage is far, far less than in previous years. And frankly, it's unrealistic to think that Moore's Law applies to hardware. As hardware capabilities increase so, too, does software. And, really, when you're talking about less than 50 cents per megabyte of RAM and $2.65 per gigabyte of hard disk space, you're left wondering why the author has anything to complain about.

[Bush2000]

That should read:

"And frankly, it's unrealistic to think that Moore's Law applies solely to hardware."

[ctdonath2]

For all the anti-bloatware talk about svelt OSs and applications, and the invariable comments about "I did/do just as much on my Vic20 or 486 w/Win3.1", there's not enough comments about what was downright impossible with lesser, smaller systems.

Streaming video.
Quake III.
Video conferencing.
MP3s.
DVDs.
CD burning.
Video editing.
Pause/rewind live TV.
...and plenty more, all doable within minutes of unboxing a new PC.

Oh sure, there's plenty of bloat. You don't need a large percentage of what disk space gets allocated for. Pounding out a quick memo doesn't need more than the first word processor run on an Apple II. But...compare the size proportions between commonly used applications and the data files they handle. The music you're listening to is likely a 5MB .MP3 (out of a collection spanning gigabytes); the LotR trailer you'll watch during lunch is about 50MB; the Unreal Tournament session you'll play this evening chews up 500MB in maps & related data files ... and none of these apps could be reasonably, conveniently be run on the relatively svelt machines of the past.

Complaints of "bloat" have appeared with every upgrade. Sure it all gets bigger...yet there's no question that there's more functionality in the straining load in my 700MHz, 20GB laptop than the PS/2 collecting dust in my brother's basement - that's WHY the older machines are mostly collecting dust: the "bloatware" machines actually do more.

[Dominic Harr]

Thanks for the heads up.

I actually have one more thing to add to this discussion -- OO programming also can increase code size tremendously, in return for adding flexibility, stability and code reusability.

Tweaking a program for optimal speed always means doing serious damage to your OO architecture. Before about 2 or 3 years ago, good OO design was typically non-existent. The new languages, Java and C#, are forcing developers to begin to understand and use solid OO design. Which will be slightly slower code than pure optimized code. But the benefits are thru the roof!

So I would say that, in and of itself, code size isn't a very useful way to measure software quality.

Features, ease of use, stability, flexibility, scalability, solid componentize architecture . . . these are the 'measurements' of software quality.

If you just apply these to MS software, I think you find the *real* proof that their software is low quality.

But just being 'big' doesn't necessarily mean 'bad'. In good software, 'bigger' should mean more functional.

[stainlessbanner]

Pounding out a quick memo

Use vi...it works fine < /grin>

[MarkWar]

>What's Behind Today's Bloated Code?

Many people might not remember this, but one of the main reasons argued for graphical interfaces was that by building all that code into the OS, programs would be able to share & re-use code so effectively that programs would GET SMALLER!

Hmmm. Didn't seem to happen.

Mark W.

[dighton]

"What Grove giveth, Gates taketh away."

[Centurion2000]

bump

[Centurion2000]

This article is tripe. The fact of the matter is that hardware prices are constantly declining as products are replaced with better technology, so the cost per megabyte/gigabyte of storage is far, far less than in previous years. And frankly, it's unrealistic to think that Moore's Law applies to hardware. As hardware capabilities increase so, too, does software. And, really, when you're talking about less than 50 cents per megabyte of RAM and $2.65 per gigabyte of hard disk space, you're left wondering why the author has anything to complain about.

Serious question for you. Do you sell or market Microsoft products ?

[JoeSchem]

The interesting thing about Moore's Law is that it seems to have been suspended by bloatware.

I use the same word processor program I used ten years ago. The new machine is ten times faster and has ten times the memory and storage capacity of the old machine.

However, the new machine is not ten times faster, or ten times better. While I can certainly pick up 'obsolete' machines for the cheap, no one is making new machines that can do what my old one did for one-tenth the cost. Indeed, to do exactly what I do now with my current machine, I'd have to spend just as much -- though two or three Moore generations have passed since I bought my last machine.

Is this 'running twice as fast to stay in the same place' what Moore had in mind?

[ctdonath2]

You're not staying in place with the new machine. If you really want to buy a machine to run your old word processor, drop by the local used-computer store and pick up a complete system for $50. The new machine "for the same price" will do far more, like video editing and VCD burning - not possible on your 10-year-old box.

Just because you don't use new capabilities doesn't mean new machines are aren't more capable.