The Collapse of Good Development Practices
2 days ago: More Than a Million Bytes Should be Enough for Most Computer Programs
Hours ago:
Up until 2005 I had used a laptop with just 32 MB of RAM (for the whole system!). This was my only PC. I could run Firefox on it and I did live presentations on (or from) it. It's not about being frugal; it's just being practical and realistic. Moreover, it's wrong to assume that productivity is a function of the price one spends on hardware. Work smart, not hard. So goes the saying...
What has happened since then is a sheer travesty. As pointed out above, the simplest (and rather useless) editor from Microsoft uses up more memory than my entire computer system (operating system included) in 2005, just 2 decades ago.
How did we get there? Why are we here?
Well, library and dependency bloat is one notable factor. Over time, we should try to make software smaller (leaner), not bigger. But good luck explaining this to developers who use a PC with 32 GB (32,000 MB) of RAM and wrongly assume that everyone else uses the same (or should purchase the same).
It is conceited and foolish. IBM is like this.
GNU nano 5.4 on my Debian system does far more than Windows/Microsoft notepad can ever do, yet it takes more than 10 times less RAM. The bloat comes from KDE's Konsole, not nano. I could of course use xterm instead.
Software becoming bloated is not an inevitability. It can be altogether avoided. Adding Unicode support (latest stupid Emojis or whatever) isn't the reason for the bloat, the reason for the bloat is reckless programming, further exacerbated by "vibe coding".
We're digging our own graves with planned obsolescence and climate change. We prioritise consumption over the survival of human civilisation. █