On the nature of bloat

On the nature of bloat

The same old whinning. Todays GPU are bigger than the CPU. Just look at the specs for playstation3, 1.8TFlops!!! http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050516_223209.html And if that isn't enough then there is always the possibility of joing several GPU togheter !!! http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050520_153522.html

Totally irrelevant to my complaint!

Actual graphics performance has almost never been a factor in the software I find bloated. They feel about equally bloated when running on Xvesa or on X with proper graphics acceleration. It is what happends in the data structures and code behind the visible elements that is problem. Unnecessary window repaints, operations that are O(n^2) when they could be O(log n), or O(n), too much memory used due to lazily-designed data structures and so on.

The problem is not bloat, but complexity. ...

Complexity is certainly part of the problem but not in the way you think. A word-processor from 2005 certainly has more features than a word processor from 1985, but not a hundred times more features. Yet it seems to use a hundred times more resources! Our field seems to delight in doing the same old thing using ever more resources, and calling it progress. Probably the only field of technology that does so.

One reason for this is that it is the user that supplies the required computing power, not the software author. Therefore the author has less incentive to save resources. In embedded device development where the software and hardware is often by the same vendor, you see less bloat, because the vendor has to balance the costs of both.

As to speed, the Mozilla interface with which i'm righting this comment, is not slow.

I, too, use Mozilla. Yes, it is tolerable on >500Mhz >128Mb machines, but still often feels sluggish at times on 600Mhz (as does Gnome and KDE). Given that kind of computing power, a browser should load and should operate instantly, with the only delays caused by network waits. Now imagine all GUI software written in XUL-like techniques. The memory footprint in everything on the desktop would grow, as would the CPU usage. The user upgrading to that system would find he has to get something like a twice more capable computer to retain the same facilities...

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