Fast Software, the Best Software

Posted by nathanb
Jul 30, 2019 at 04:15 PM

>Andy Brice wrote:
>As a professional software developer for over 30 years, it shocks me how
>bloated a lot of modern software is. I would be ashamed to write
>bloatware like that. Do these developers know what a profiler is? Maybe
>their bosses don’t care?
>

As an end user, thank you!

It’s really frustrating to remember using software 15 years ago that was more responsive than today, knowing the hardware is infinitely faster. Now most ‘apps’ are slow to load and pause often…I assume they are phoning home to the mother ship for ads, tracking, software updates, syncing, whatever.

There seems to be a Moore’s law about software bloat that cancels out Moore’s law for CPU power. My Dad always told me that no matter how big of a tackle box you get, that your existing collection of fishing stuff WILL fill it up. Our wardrobe increases with our closet sizes, and our general stuff increases with home size as the ratio of how much of it is useful day-to-day decreases. Speed and storage increases are just more rooms in a house for software engineers to stash more crap that is only tangentially related to the core purpose of the software.

I will never forget my first smartphone, a Palm Treo 650. As an ‘extended brain’ where I want to QUICKLY jot a note, appointment, todo, grocery item etc….I’ve never used something faster or more reliable. Of course I wouldn’t trade my Android for it today, but I do miss that snappiness several times a day.