"I literally timed it on my M2 Air."

I bet it opens faster on a Surface Pro

▲ justsid 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It does not. In fact, it crashes roughly every 4th or so startup.

	▲	1vuio0pswjnm7 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yikes. I'm glad I do not use Windows anymore

▲ 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲ godelski 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean we're talking about a fucking text editor here. A second to load is a long time even if it was on an intel i3 from 10 years ago. Because... it is a text editor... Plugins and all the fancy stuff is nice, but those can be loaded asynchronously and do not need to prevent you from jumping into a blank document.

But the god damn program is over 2GB in size... like what the fuck... There's no reason for an app I open a few times a year and have zero plugins and ONLY does text editing should even be a gig.

Seriously, get some context before you act high and mighty.

I don't know how anyone can look at Word and think it is anything but the accumulation of bloat and tech debt piling up. With decades of "it's good enough" compounding and shifting the bar lower as time goes on.

▲ versteegen 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

As a long time emacs user, all of that criticism hits uncomfortably close to home, much as I would like to diss Word...

	▲	sintax 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Try doom emacs, that loads super fast.

▲ fkyoureadthedoc 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nobody gives a shit because apparently MS is the only company that can make a "fucking text editor" that people actually want to use.

	▲	godelski 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		`> people actually want to use` I think this is an incorrect assumption. Just because people use it doesn't mean they want to use it. We're in a bubble here and most people are pretty tech illiterate. Most people don't even know there are other options. Besides, it also misses a lot. Like how there's a lot of people that use Google Docs. Probably the only alternative an average person is aware of. But in the scientific/academic community nearly everyone uses LaTeX. They might bemoan and complain but there's a reason they're using it over Word and TeX isn't 2.5GB...

▲ 1vuio0pswjnm7 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In earlier times, before Google or OS X even existed, long before "automatic updates", it used to be own experience that Microsoft's pre-installed Windows programs would run generally faster and with fewer issues (read: none) than third party software that a Windows user would install. This was also the case with software downloaded from Microsoft that a Windows user might install. Hence I thought perhaps MS Word today might run smoother on a Microsoft laptop than an Apple laptop. I'm not a Windows user anymore so I have no idea.

For reading, editing, creating Word documents, the TextMaker Android app seems to work. Size of recent version I tried was 111MB, startup is quick. Paid features are non-essential IMHO.

https://www.softmaker.net/down/tm2024manual_en.pdf

A personal favourite program for me is spitbol, a SNOBOL interpreter written in a portable assembly language^3 called MINIMAL. I'm using a 779k static binary. SNOBOL is referenced here:

1. https://borretti.me/article/you-can-choose-tools-that-make-y...

The Almquist shell is another favourite of mine. It's both the "UI" and the language I use everyday to get stuff done on the computer. Like Microsoft Word makes some HN commenters unhappy, it seems that the UNIX shell makes some "developers" unhappy.^2

But the shell is everywhere and it is not going away.

IME, old software from an era before so-called "tech" companies funded by VC and "ad services", still works and I like it. For example, sed is still the favourite editor for me despite its limitations, and it is close to the shell in terms of ubiquity. Following current trends requires devoting more and more storage, memory and CPU in order to wait for today's programs to compile, start, or "update". As a hobbyist who generally ignores the trends I am experiencing no such resource drains and delays.

For every rare software user complaining about bloat, there is at the same time a "developer", e.g., maybe one writing a Javascript engine for a massive web browser controlled by an advertising company, who is complaining about the UNIX shell.

Developers like to frame software as a popularity contest. The most popular software is declared to have "won". (Not sure what that means about all the other software. Maybe not all software authors are interested in this contest.) To me, ubiquity is more important than "popularity":

2. https://borretti.me//article/shells-are-two-things

"There are 5,635 shell scripts on my humble Ubuntu box."

This makes me happy.

On Linux, I use vim 4.6 from 1997, a 541k static-pie binary. I use ired, bvi and toybox hexedit as hex editors, 62k, 324k and 779k static-pie binaries, respectively. If I dislike something I can change it in the source code. If I find other software I like better I can switch. No closed source and proprietary file formats like MS Word. The most entertaining aspect of the cult of Microsoft is that the company is so protective of software that it tells the public is "obsolete" or otherwise not worth using anymore, old versions of software or minimal versions that have few "features".

https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/vim/unix/vim-4.6.tar.gz

https://codeload.github.com/radare/ired/zip/refs/heads/maste...

https://codeload.github.com/johnsonjh/bvi-lf/zip/refs/heads/...

https://www.landley.net/toybox/downloads/toybox-0.8.9.tar.gz

https://www.landley.net/toybox/downloads/binaries/latest/toy...

3. The topic of this thread is assembly language. Makes me happy

The appeal of smaller, faster software to me is not that this stuff is so _good_. It is that the alternatives, software like MS Word, is so _bad_.

	▲	1vuio0pswjnm7 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The character editor TECO-C is another program I like that was originally written in assembly. This is a 153k static-pie binary ("non-video") https://codeload.github.com/blakemcbride/tecoc/zip/refs/head... Also forgot to mention that TextMaker on Android contains networking code and will try to connect to the internet. This is can be blocked with Netguard app, GrapheneOS, netfilter/pf/etc. on a gateway controlled by the user, or whatever other solution for blocking connections that the user prefers.