3 ms·

What's an instance where people say a project is bloated but it doesn't meet some of these criteria?

smitherfield 11y ago
I don't think there's any non-trivial software that completely unambiguously passes all my tests (and a lot depends on how strictly one interprets "is more than one person able to read and understand the entire codebase" – I'd allow the proviso that the reader has access to the documentation, tests and commit history, and that inherently high-complexity software like an operating system can be broken down into its components); the question is more whether it clearly fails one.[0] Software that's prone to be subject to (arguably!) unfair charges of bloat includes old standbys that have lately been challenged by upstarts (e.g. jQuery, Apache), or that developers already dislike for reasons other than quality (e.g. Oracle, Microsoft products). --- [0] I'll demonstrate by applying my tests as I see it to everyone's favorite poster child for bloat – the C++ programming language. Has the project grown so large that it's starting to run into real-world performance issues? Compilers have, and how. The binaries they produce mostly haven't, although certain language features, particularly amongst those that didn't come from C, compare unfavorably to their equivalents in "slower" languages. And the language has become complex enough as to be pretty slow on the meta level of writing or learning it. I'll say ambiguous, leaning fail. Has the project grown so large that bugs are popping up faster than the developers can do maintenance? Well, the invalid pointer access meta-bug has been around for (CURRENT_YEAR - 1972) years... Personal view is it doesn't matter if the reason for failing this test is because the maintainers place artificial restrictions on their ability to fix stuff, so I'd say fail on this one, although others might disagree. Is there no or only one person who can read and understand the entire codebase? Hard to define in this case. Is it the standard? The most popular compiler? Every popular compiler? I'll say ambiguous, leaning pass. But few programming languages would pass this completely unambiguously. Are there many undocumented/poorly-documented features? "undefined behavior" FAIL Are there features that are both undocumented/poorly-documented and dangerous? "undefined behavior" FAIL Are there many deprecated or outdated features that have yet to be removed? FFFFF AAAAA I L !! F A A I L !! FFFF AAAAA I L !! F A A I L F A A I LLLL !! Are there many features that both duplicate and do not improve on functionality found elsewhere? [Dig trenches, commence C vs. C++ flamewar] --- In conclusion, yes, C++ is bloated.

I don't think there's any non-trivial software that completely unambiguously passes all my tests (and a lot depends on how strictly one interprets "is more than one person able to read and understand the entire codebase" – I'd allow the proviso that the reader has access to the documentation, tests and commit history, and that inherently high-complexity software like an operating system can be broken down into its components); the question is more whether it clearly fails one.[0] Software that's prone to be subject to (arguably!) unfair charges of bloat includes old standbys that have lately been challenged by upstarts (e.g. jQuery, Apache), or that developers already dislike for reasons other than quality (e.g. Oracle, Microsoft products). --- [0] I'll demonstrate by applying my tests as I see it to everyone's favorite poster child for bloat – the C++ programming language. Has the project grown so large that it's starting to run into real-world performance issues? Compilers have, and how. The binaries they produce mostly haven't, although certain language features, particularly amongst those that didn't come from C, compare unfavorably to their equivalents in "slower" languages. And the language has become complex enough as to be pretty slow on the meta level of writing or learning it. I'll say ambiguous, leaning fail. Has the project grown so large that bugs are popping up faster than the developers can do maintenance? Well, the invalid pointer access meta-bug has been around for (CURRENT_YEAR - 1972) years... Personal view is it doesn't matter if the reason for failing this test is because the maintainers place artificial restrictions on their ability to fix stuff, so I'd say fail on this one, although others might disagree. Is there no or only one person who can read and understand the entire codebase? Hard to define in this case. Is it the standard? The most popular compiler? Every popular compiler? I'll say ambiguous, leaning pass. But few programming languages would pass this completely unambiguously. Are there many undocumented/poorly-documented features? "undefined behavior" FAIL Are there features that are both undocumented/poorly-documented and dangerous? "undefined behavior" FAIL Are there many deprecated or outdated features that have yet to be removed? FFFFF AAAAA I L !! F A A I L !! FFFF AAAAA I L !! F A A I L F A A I LLLL !! Are there many features that both duplicate and do not improve on functionality found elsewhere? [Dig trenches, commence C vs. C++ flamewar] --- In conclusion, yes, C++ is bloated.