I know this may sound ridiculous, but m-maybe... maybe it's time for us to make software... less bloated?

Maybe... just maybe, a TODO list app shouldn't run 4 processes, and consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM?

guardian5x 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Let me be the devils advocate here. Ok, let's say you optimize that TODO list app to only use 16 mb of RAM. What did you gain by that? Would you buy a smartphone that has less RAM now?

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elevation 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

16MB still seems massive for this kind of app. I ran Visual Studio 4, not an app, but an entire app factory, on a 66MHz 486 with 16MB RAM. And it was snappy. A TODO list app that uses system UI elements could be significantly smaller.

What do I gain if more developers take this approach? Lightning fast performance. Faster backups. Decreased battery drain => longer battery service lifetime => more time in between hardware refreshes. Improved security posture due to orders of magnitude less SLOC. Improved reliability from decreased complexity.

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cheschire 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s the upgrade treadmill you would stop using, and stick to the initial entry device.

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TeMPOraL 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If only there wasn't a security update treadmill forcing everyone to do regular hardware upgrades.

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3form 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Of course, as long as we're in the dreamland, most of these security upgrades do not actually require a hardware upgrade.

	▲	TeMPOraL an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Technically no (except for the gradual performance drop they introduce, + occasional TPM bullshit), but of course in practice, companies see this as a choice of spending money on back-porting security fixes to a growing range of hardware, vs. making money by not doing that and forcing everyone to buy new hardware instead.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m running Windows 10 ESU on a 13 year old PC without issues. While it’s admittedly near the end of its life (mostly just due to Windows 11, though I might repurpose it for Linux), I’m expecting the next one to also last a decade or longer.

	▲	TeMPOraL an hour ago \| parent [-]
		So is my wife, her laptop is still decent today, but doesn't support Win 11. I'm not worried about Microsoft as much as certain other competitors killing it - similarly to how she was forced to update to Windows 10 in the first place because, one day, out of the sudden, her web browser decided to refuse running on Windows 7.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would be nice for browser tabs and apps to reload less often.

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TeMPOraL 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We can't ever escape the market forces? You're right, of course if software gets less bloated, vendors will "value-optimize" hardware so in the end, computers keep being barely usable as they are today.

	▲	robinsonb5 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This year's average phone is already going to have less RAM than last year's average phone - so anything that reduces the footprint of the apps (and even more importantly, websites) we're using can only be a good thing. Plus it extends the usable life of current hardware.
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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TeMPOraL 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's crazy talk. What will you ask for next? Add functionality to make apps at least as good/capable as they were in the 1990s and early 2000s? And then? Apps that interoperate? Insane.

More seriously and more ironically, at the same time, we've now reached a strange time where even non-programmers can vibe-code better software than they can buy/subscribe to - not because models are that good, or programming isn't hard, but because enshittification that has this industry rotten to the core and unable to deliver useful tools anymore.

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rvz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tell that to those who are still using Electron, TypeScript to create bloated desktop apps.