Bloat

I’ve been on the internet for… the entirety of it, actually, and two unchanging constants are posts complaining that “kids these days are worse” and “computer programs are too bloated”.

Posts going all the way back to Usenet complain that programmers these days are using too many resources, including too many features, wasting processor cycles and RAM and disk space that could have been used more efficiently by the kinds of trim, svelte programs that existed in the years prior when developers could deliver twice as many features on three transistors held together by a twig and some gum.

Why, they finally proved that a computer could beat a human at chess in 1997 on a computer that’s a thousand times less powerful than a modern iPhone, and they got us to the moon with a bunch of computers that would’ve been put to shame by a TI-86+, and yet I still can’t have more than 38 youtube tabs open before my computer starts to get a little slow? I’m pretty sure the reason for this is exclusively programmer laziness and no other reasons.

You know you can still run Wordstar and Lotus Notes, if you really want. Zero bloat. They run unbelievably fast, on account of being carefully optimized for computers that you still had to start with a hand-crank and a starter engine.

It turns out that very few people actively prioritize “lack of features” when choosing which products to use. Most people are out there solving their problems using the first free tool that Google turned up and dealing with 18 layers of intrusive adware while attempting to dodge a $7/mo subscription payment for Frunglebunt Premium: Most of The Features You Actually Need, Good Luck Cancelling Your Account.

Nothing about that business model incentivizes small, fast, optimized software.

If you really, really want, there is absolutely a popular GitHub repo out there, half-maintained by one insane Rust developer who isn’t on speaking terms with the rest of his family:

It will do everything that you need to accomplish, for free, unbelievably fast, it runs entirely on the command line. You can use it if you simply learn how to install a complex language toolchain and invoke it with a command that looks like xsprt -vrflbrfl --o --dongly-mode.

It turns out, tools for professionals look a lot different from tools for consumers, and that is On Purpose and By Design.