Timeline for Why are the sizes of programs so large?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
50 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2, 2017 at 9:34 | answer | added | Qwertie | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 16:08 | comment | added | Andreas | I won't even bother to write this as an answer, since it will be down voted faster than you can read. The reason is that the quality of programmers just got worse today. A good developer automatically writes nearly optimal code. He might save ~10% of development time when writing non-optimal code, but he'll usually just refuse. A bad developer on the other hand will always write non-optimal code. He might be able to write marginally better code, but that will increase the time needed by two orders of magnitude. Just open any large project and actually look for yourself. And it's getting worse. | |
| Sep 29, 2015 at 10:11 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | Many programs these days have large intermediate abstraction layers which make them easier portable, notably open source programs like browsers and office applications. Qt comes to mind. Probably also true for many mobile apps which target Android and iOS. These layers re-implement or at least wrap much of the native OS and graphics libs. [This should be an answer but I don't have enough rep.] | |
| Sep 28, 2015 at 18:52 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 30, 2015 at 2:54 | |||||
| Sep 28, 2015 at 15:41 | comment | added | Shawn | I once had a discussion about this with an old arcade developer. His response to why programs have become so much larger was essentially "because they can be". Modern developers don't have to be as concerned about every byte of code because in most instances, it's not really as much of a limitation any more. His philosophy: Make something that looks good, sounds good, is exciting and keeps people coming back, and do it in 4K. PacMan (or even Pong) may not look as good as any modern game, but I'd bet they've had more playtime than anything you'll see for a very long time. | |
| Sep 28, 2015 at 13:32 | answer | added | Paul J Abernathy | timeline score: -2 | |
| Sep 28, 2015 at 0:01 | comment | added | Chris O | Why is your definition of "resource hog" only limited to disk space? Usually a resource hog uses too much CPU and/or memory. | |
| Sep 27, 2015 at 23:57 | comment | added | Chris O | Moore's Law, computers get faster, humans expect their computers to do more stuff, therefore more features. | |
| Sep 27, 2015 at 16:35 | comment | added | Paul D. Waite | @IsmaelMiguel: yeah but Opera had everything first. | |
| Sep 27, 2015 at 16:18 | comment | added | Ismael Miguel | @PaulD.Waite Having tabs is irrelevant. Opera 4 had tabs, and that was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. Before that, Opera supported MDI forms (a window within a window) since it's early versions. | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 15:00 | comment | added | Kroltan | The Slack client is basically a browser that opens the Slack page. So it includes a lot of possibly redundant code. | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 14:42 | comment | added | ideasman42 | I think this question is good, but web browsers are a bad example since they increased significantly in functionality, It would be better to pick something which is functionally similar. | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 11:45 | comment | added | hyde | Netscape Navigator was 50 MB? Holy Cow, that was humongous back in the day... | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 11:18 | comment | added | skan | @ColeJohnson yes Photoshop is optimized in size and very good but Acrobat is not. | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 5:40 | comment | added | Cole Tobin | @skan Adobe Acrobat comes with Distiller, a PostScript "Printer" (PS is a turing-complete language for describing documents as opposed to PDF which isn't). That can't be small. But what do you mean bigger than many operating systems? IIRC, it's less than a gig. Photoshop, OTOH, that's a behemoth | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 20:54 | answer | added | daemondave | timeline score: -3 | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 17:18 | comment | added | el.pescado - нет войне | BTW. 50 MB in Netscape times was large, but, for the record, it included not only web browser but also mail client and HTML editor, and maybe even something else. | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 17:15 | comment | added | el.pescado - нет войне | Don't think it's that bad… Just downloaded, out of curiosity, Firefox (OSX version, for the record), and download clocked at 79,7 MB. | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 16:01 | comment | added | user186205 | @mustaccio: maybe we should go to 1-bit CPUs... I wrote a 3 byte .COM program once (return with success / fail result code - used in batch programs). | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 14:48 | comment | added | Alfred Armstrong | Ironically, this question was being asked even when Netscape Navigator was new. (When I started programming, sizes of 20-50K were common but that was for simple COBOL batch programs). | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 14:23 | comment | added | MonkeyZeus | @PaulD.Waite better check for updates then, mine seems to update weekly. Are you referring to major stable versions? | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 10:43 | comment | added | skan | I don't understand why Adobe Acrobat (that only creates pf documents) is bigger than many Operating Systems. And some CAD programs (such as Catia) take 30GB, it's just crazy. | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 7:24 | history | notice added | yannis | Needs detailed answers | |
| S Sep 25, 2015 at 7:03 | answer | added | Mike76 | timeline score: 6 | |
| S Sep 25, 2015 at 7:03 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Sep 25, 2015 at 6:40 | answer | added | neoedmund | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 4:54 | answer | added | andyb | timeline score: 5 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 22:29 | comment | added | Paul D. Waite | “The programs are not doing significantly more functions” — good lord man. Just take a look at the HTML 4 spec and the CSS 1 spec (don’t worry, I’ll wait — it won’t take you long even if you read them). Netscape 4 didn’t even manage to implement those properly. Just the amount of new and crazy HTML and CSS that Chrome supports is considerable. Plus it has tabs. And updates itself every six weeks. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 21:39 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/647163510082899968 | ||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 20:41 | history | reopened | svick CommunityBot yannis | ||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 18:54 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 20:45 | |||||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 18:03 | history | closed | CommunityBot gnat 17 of 26 Dan Pichelman | Needs more focus | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 16:50 | vote | accept | Niklas Rosencrantz | ||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 14:49 | answer | added | Phil Hannent | timeline score: -2 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 14:38 | comment | added | mustaccio | Don't forget that going from 16 bit to 64 bit architecture every integer constant in the program, every static pointer, and many processor instructions quadruple in size. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 14:21 | comment | added | Eric Lippert | So what you're saying is that a program that once took up $10 worth of hard disk space now takes up about 30 cents worth of hard disk space? I find this hard to worry about. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 14:09 | answer | added | Brian Knoblauch | timeline score: 11 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 14:08 | comment | added | usr | Programs often pull in lots of libraries. For example the .NET Framework is huge. Like 100MB of managed DLLs. Lots of coding monkeys have typed that in. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 13:45 | comment | added | Pavel | Although I'm not totally sure of it, I'd bet that the Slack you mentioned has a full-suited web-browser packed into it. Making the program so big saves the company money in that they have only one codebase for the UI, not two separate. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 13:40 | comment | added | James T | As a side note, i believe 'some rule that programs will take all available memory no matter how much it is but why?' probably refers to random access memory rather than physical disk space, at least that would be my interpretation of it. Could be wrong. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 13:31 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 18:03 | |||||
| Sep 24, 2015 at 12:06 | answer | added | l0b0 | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 11:41 | answer | added | sharptooth | timeline score: 13 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 11:37 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | Only 4 times the size?! That's amazing considering how much more a modern browser does | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 9:30 | answer | added | Mike Nakis | timeline score: 81 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 8:32 | answer | added | Eterm | timeline score: 17 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 8:11 | answer | added | user167772 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 7:46 | answer | added | JacquesB | timeline score: 109 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 7:33 | answer | added | Kilian Foth | timeline score: 265 | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 7:24 | history | asked | Niklas Rosencrantz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |