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Thread: Bloated Softwares: A Big No for me

  1. #1

    Default Bloated Softwares: A Big No for me

    I was doing some reading and came across this interesting article that how times have changed about writing software code and making it efficient based on user experience and response. Buying upgraded hardware with higher CPU power and more RAM is really not the solution. Here is the link, read, enjoy and contemplate.

    http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/

  2. #2
    Über Prodigy & Developer Razo[R]apiD's Avatar
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    Business wants features faster and faster, so there is no time to spend on eg. memory management or whatever, and because indeed computing power is cheaper than programmers time, business wants to cut time developer spends on the software, which is the reason why you get just "good enough" software (that runs just "good enough"), because all that matters is time to market.

    It also doesn't help that now everyone dreams to become a developer, because there is money. Even people who spitted on computer geeks at school. So you have an army of people that finished just some courses and are not really interested in mastering their craft but rather doing stuff that just works and getting paid.

  3. #3

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    Interesting article, I read it entirely and I totally agree with it.
    I also agree with RR by the fact that money is more important than the time taken in programming.
    "Oh, we don't have time to test the release today. Users report bugs instead!"
    "Let's make a giant software full of lazy features. Really big? Don't care, everyone is running 16GB of RAM and a Quad-Core today!"

    I think, the reason behind that is that developers are running high-end computers so they don't see how slow it is on a standard computer. Windows 10 for example, on a basic laptop computer, is HORRIBLE to use. The HDD keeps scratching, the telemetry keeps collecting data, Windows Update keeps checking for updates and the computer is barely unusable when WU installs update, just like the day we had a Pentium processor with XP installed, except that softwares performances become just even worse and they are more greedy. It's a shame today's business hasten to add features and things that tends to make the user lazy (Cortana + Automatic Translation) rather than optimizing their software for less consumption.

    And about CPUs/marketing, I can't even believe that Intel is already selling their 9th generation of i3-i5-i7-i9 CPUs with a little performance gain. I'm aware that complaining on a forum won't do anything, I have no idea on how to spread a feature called "optimization" across all companies.

  4. #4

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    Haven't read the article fully but IMHO, it's mostly about the misuses of programming languages.
    One quick example is JavaScript, the thing was made for web development, why bring it to desktop!!

    It will be naturally slower than any compiled language... BUT it also depends on programmers skills... There's one who could write an app in JS that is faster than the equivalent in C++. But I'm generally speaking about the "misuse" of a language...

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    Developer RyBack's Avatar
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    Totally agree. From my point of view I've only met this issue with python and c++.
    There's also something similar regarding electronjs. Although it makes it easy to create desktop applications using web technologies. It's completely bloated and uses alot of storage and memory. It's based in chromium so every electron based app has it's own browser. Usually it's around 100 mb in size or even more. And the rendering is not that good bcuz chromium is not that at good too.
    There are lots of lighter alternatives like sciter but that's hard to understand and use compared to electron.
    What caught my attention recently is ultralight. (www.ultralig.ht) which although uses cpp manages to make the process relatively easier and is waaay less resource intensive.

  6. #6
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    I'm at work right now as I'm reading the topic, and I only read about a quarter of it and I completely agree. Simply said... let's take MOHAA for example. We contacted the devs several time and showed interest in fixing up the game that we love. Why wouldn't they just give us the source, even if we had to sign a non-disclosure form? Why don't they just let us do it... Simple... Because what benefit is there for them? The game is old, even if we made it into the "perfect" un-hackable FPS that every FPS game should be like; EA has no benefit for them. Why spend more time into something when the end result will give you millions of dollars either way? Not to mention it'll only be a matter of time before that game is considered "outdated" and gamers will want to play something newer and better.

    I think when it comes down to it, a lot of people, half ass their stuff because there is no incentive for them to go beyond what's expected. I can't speak for everyone, but I work on a salary and even though I can just work my 40 hours a week and go home, I still average 60 hour work weeks (which technically means I work 20 hours for free).. Why on earth would I do that?? Simply because I love what I do and I rather get something done right the first time, than half ass it and have to go back to it down the road because I missed something.

    Anyway, in todays' world money speaks, and I would say only 30% of people truly "love" their jobs enough to not worry about the $$, the other 70% will only put in as much as they need to and nothing more, unless they benefit from it.

    My response may be a bit skewed to the topic, but the overall point is, that I agree software could\should be optimized to the hardware.

    Now in regards to bloatware this is one of the most frustrating things for me. Especially when I buy a $700 phone. If I spend that much money for a phone, the last thing I would want is someone loading a bunch of garbage on there and limiting me from being able to use my phone how I want to use it.
    A few years ago I bought the Samsung Galaxy S7. There is a US and a European version of the phone. The European version is actually much better. Anyway, I got the US version, and it ran slow as hell. After running a bunch of stuff on there to figure out what was making it so slow, to my surprise the Samsung phone had over 360 apps installed on there. Not only that, but some of the software I wasn't even able to remove or disable because the carrier built it into the custom rom.
    What's more... At the time I couldn't even load my own rom on the phone because it would get flagged by their KNOX security kernel and would completely void the warranty. You can imagine how angry I was when I found all this out the hard way after spending $500+.

    Now I have a OnePlus 5T, which is pretty nice, and it's all stock android for most part. Plus they're developer friendly, so even if you flash the rom or unlock the bootloader they still warrant their products.

    EDIT:
    I realized, I may have come off harsh insinuating people don't work "hard enough" to optimize systems, and I don't mean that in that way. I just know from personal experiences people sometimes that just do a job because it's their job instead of something they're passionate in; you can tell in the result. A lot of people are afraid to be different and stand out and especially go in "unknown" territory, because change is hard for people. I always try to analyze everything I do at work and ask myself how can I do this more efficiently or faster; without sacrificing something else?

    Just a simple "positive" example.... For those of you that are familiar with the muscle car the "Dodge Challenger Demon or Hellcat", this was a outside project among some engineers who worked for Dodge. They wanted to build a "super" muscle car, and they did. And Dodge saw what they did and decided to roll with it. Now the car is advertised as being the fastest production car PERIOD.... We're talking about a $120,000 (it's actually less, but let's assume it has custom mods) car that can outrun $300,000+ cars. Even cars that sell for over a million like the Bugatti.
    You have to admit that's pretty cool. And it all started as an "after work" project.

    Honestly speaking, when I first started this site xNULL, it was mostly focused towards Dev, but then slowly became all about MOHAA. My dream is to make a difference in some way. I'd like to think that we made a difference already in the MOH community, but I would love to go even bigger than that. To be able to design some sort of framework/library or some kind of concept that could make computing more awesome for everyone. That's one of my dreams.

  7. #7

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    Well said James and good to hear about your dream. Keep your dream alive because that's the first thing towards achieving goals. I shared that post solely to inspire developers so that they also give at least a little bit attention to efficiency and not just go after $$$.

    P.S. James, I had mistaken saved post without "L" in "Bloated" in the subject and it seems that subject can not be altered. Can you please fix the spellings

  8. #8
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    I knew what you meant. I was going to fix your thread, but forgot after my post. Haha.
    Fixed thread.

    I'm actually working on a corporate piece of software (POC) atm. It started out as a small side project, but I'm really happy with it and would like to turn it into something useful for other corporations to use. Anyway, I was talking to my cousin to see if he can help me out since he's a .NET developer. I sent him my code and about 3 mins after looking over my source he responds "Wow man! You have a comment explaining everything in every line of code you have. I have never seen anyone so meticulous with dev comments as you."
    I laughed about that and told him, I like my stuff to be well organized so that I can hand it to anyone and they'll know exactly what my thought process was when I coded that. He said very few devs these days comment as thoroughly as I do and he said it's sad because it causes a lot of mess sometimes especially when code gets shared across multiple users and everyone has a different style and thought process when developing.

    Anyway, I like this thread. Thanks for the share. If I become a big shot I'd like to see if I can get Ley0k and RR to work side by side with me.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Ancient Order's Avatar
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    I just wanted to express some contradictory facts i can observe in the worlwide financial company im working in as web dev.
    _ developpers are called the slaves and are located at the lowest hierachy level, including salary, though they all now come from ingeeneer schools.
    _ we develop only server deployed applications that anyone in the company can connect to as soon as the right authorizations have been given
    _ any project has a performance team to alert when response time is too much important, not talking about databases connections and queries performances that must be validated with the DB ingeneers
    _ our apps can run on medium computers and are compiled at least every day during dev phases with and deliveries get ranked depending on a catalog of good practices regarding the code
    _ JS is hughly used client side to avoid server access for "surface controls" and is not considered as a dev language but a dev help tool
    So our main problem is not developping but network speed and server performances, once certificates, security protocols and proxy rules are applied correctly. Only aspects that could/will turn our apps bloated is the multiplicity of logical stripes managing tons of specialized webservices.
    Not sure this post is useful for the thread but i only wanted to say bloated sofwares are not the norm in business computing.

  10. #10
    Administrator James's Avatar
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    I think what this post is mostly referring to is bloated software or rather under developed software that is distributed publicly.
    I can't imagine and company would be purposely bloating their own proprietary software that they use.

    The somewhat humorous thing is... Even with hardware; the hardware is a bunch of tangible "stuff" and it only knows what to do and how to do it based on the instructions that are programmed into the firmware.
    The CPU should be one of the most important (if not the most important) component in a computer; yet when it comes to processing/calculating, I think the GPU is much more powerful. Odd how that works.

    Also, let's assume you have top of the line servers and network equipment, but the NIC that is used is limited to 100mb. If you have a gigabit connection, it doesn't matter because your throttle will be at your weakest link; the NIC.
    Same with PC's. If you have a great Graphics card, but a crappy motherboard the constraint will be at the motherboard. Also with SSD. There is a huge different between SATA SSD, and PCIE SSD. Let's not forget PCIEx2 SSD vs PCI-E x3 SSD.

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