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To quote Joel Spolsky [1]: > For review: Bloatware and the 80/20 myth. No matter how much it bothers you neat freaks, the market always votes for bloatware. S

To quote Joel Spolsky [1]: > For review: Bloatware and the 80/20 myth. No matter how much it bothers you neat freaks, the market always votes for bloatware. See also [2]. Basically, one peron's bloat is another person's necessary features. Hell, I should have posted this on the Electron rant thread the other day. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/04/07/20020407/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/04/07/20020407/ [2]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html https://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

xs 10y ago
I think if there are two sites with the same content and functionality, people would hands down prefer the faster page.
- always_good 10y ago
  The thing is that, there aren't. Only in our wet dreams exists a competitive edge where you copy a website 1:1 but use vanilla JS over their jQuery so things load a tiny bit faster and their users flock over to your website, chanting your name.
  - candiodari 10y ago
    Really ? https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/ https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-late... http://glinden.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html http://glinden.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-... I'm sure I read essentially the same from ebay as well at some point. It's worse than being a competitive advantage : extra milliseconds seem to matter a lot for the size of the market in the first place.
    - always_good 10y ago
      Nowhere upstream did someone say "smaller isn't better".
    - paulcole 10y ago
      If Amazon loads .1 second slower, are users not buying from Amazon or not buying at all? Until you know the answer to that you're not really making a convincing point.
      - yellowbeard 10y ago
        From Amazon's perspective it's the same and worth optimizing
        huac 10y ago
        No, it's not. If a user chooses a 'no purchase' option then it means that the product assortment offered was not worth it for the price. That means Amazon needs to change the assortments of products it offers users. If a user chooses to purchase elsewhere, it means Amazon needs to improve the website.
        castellar 10y ago
        That's assuming a consumer decides to purchase something solely based on price/product assortment and there's no impulse factor. One could very well be willing to purchase something at one moment but 30 seconds later be unwilling. I wonder if anyone has any data on time spent on a website vs. likelihood of making a purchase.
      - xs 10y ago
        Whoa whoa whoa. Amazon has focused on page speed load and user experience for over a decade. Their core business is their website. They have refined and improved thousands of times. You should ask "What would happen to Amazon's sales if they suddenly stopped caring about page speed?" The answer is over time they will add additional bloaty libraries and it will eventually slow down to a horrible crawl. This will likely start turning customers away who want a better user experience. On a daily basis I have to interact with HPE's website. Now THAT's a company that could care less about their user's experience on their website. Pages take on average 20 seconds to load and sometimes up to 3 minutes! They are lucky that it's not their website that is their business but it's their products or else they'd lose business so fast. I absolutely HATE interacting with their site because of how slow it is. I can deal with bad UX if the site is quick to load, but I can't deal with bad UX if the site is extremely slow. Another thing to think about is simple single content pages, like ones that just tell you the time, or tell you what your IP address is. The ones at the top of Google searches pay extremely close attention to page speed load times. There is so much competition in their space that they know they need to be the best and that is just another way to do that.
  - benologist 10y ago
    https://lite.twitter.com https://lite.twitter.com just launched, eventually that may show a preference either way.
    - Radle 10y ago
      Twitter is a page with only one feature. Lite.Twitter is a version of that feature for a very specific subset of mobile users. In 99,9% of cases it's not worth it to go ultra lightweight.
matwood 10y ago
This is the old argument about replacing Excel. No one uses all the features offered by Excel, but every feature offered is used by someone.
- jakewins 10y ago
  And a nice illustration for why startups often do well focusing on very specific use cases first. Replacing Excel for the general population is a moon-shot project; replacing it for a well selected set of use cases hard but, as history showed, possible.
- bobbytherobot 10y ago
  Not only that, often the when Excel users are asked what features they desire, the desired feature is already in Excel.
curun1r 10y ago
Counterpoint...For years, Google's search page was famously minimal/unbloated. That lack of bloat and overall search speed was a big part of them winning.
jonahx 10y ago
The market votes for bloatware because people are lazy. If you are someone who cares about speed and simplicity and generally doing things right, I don't see how this fact relevant to the current discussion. Sure, frameworks like mini won't be as popular as bootstrap. But there are plenty of people, myself included, who'd rather use them.
- Radle 10y ago
  Mini is 7kb; Bootstrap 20kb Your users simply won't notice the difference. If you for whatever reason need to include a picture on your page it's going to be bigger than the ultra lightweight bootstrap page.
- Radle 10y ago
  Mini is 7kb; Bootstrap 20kb Your users simply won't notice the difference. If you for whatever reason need to include a picture on your page it's going to be bigger than the ultra lightweight bootstrap page.
onion2k 10y ago
Basically, one person's bloat is another person's necessary features. And that is why I like modules.
- mwcampbell 10y ago
  > And that is why I like modules. Just be careful that you don't remove too many of them in your efforts to eliminate bloat. For example, last time I checked, the Qt toolkit implements accessibility (e.g. for blind users) in a plugin. How many Qt-based applications are completely, utterly inaccessible to some users just because they didn't ship that plugin? Again, one person's bloat is another persons' necessary feature. Yes, I made a typo the first time; I noticed it too late.

xs 10y ago

I think if there are two sites with the same content and functionality, people would hands down prefer the faster page.

always_good 10y ago
The thing is that, there aren't. Only in our wet dreams exists a competitive edge where you copy a website 1:1 but use vanilla JS over their jQuery so things load a tiny bit faster and their users flock over to your website, chanting your name.
- candiodari 10y ago
  Really ? https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/ https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-late... http://glinden.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html http://glinden.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-... I'm sure I read essentially the same from ebay as well at some point. It's worse than being a competitive advantage : extra milliseconds seem to matter a lot for the size of the market in the first place.
  - always_good 10y ago
    Nowhere upstream did someone say "smaller isn't better".
  - paulcole 10y ago
    If Amazon loads .1 second slower, are users not buying from Amazon or not buying at all? Until you know the answer to that you're not really making a convincing point.
    - yellowbeard 10y ago
      From Amazon's perspective it's the same and worth optimizing
      - huac 10y ago
        No, it's not. If a user chooses a 'no purchase' option then it means that the product assortment offered was not worth it for the price. That means Amazon needs to change the assortments of products it offers users. If a user chooses to purchase elsewhere, it means Amazon needs to improve the website.
        castellar 10y ago
        That's assuming a consumer decides to purchase something solely based on price/product assortment and there's no impulse factor. One could very well be willing to purchase something at one moment but 30 seconds later be unwilling. I wonder if anyone has any data on time spent on a website vs. likelihood of making a purchase.
    - xs 10y ago
      Whoa whoa whoa. Amazon has focused on page speed load and user experience for over a decade. Their core business is their website. They have refined and improved thousands of times. You should ask "What would happen to Amazon's sales if they suddenly stopped caring about page speed?" The answer is over time they will add additional bloaty libraries and it will eventually slow down to a horrible crawl. This will likely start turning customers away who want a better user experience. On a daily basis I have to interact with HPE's website. Now THAT's a company that could care less about their user's experience on their website. Pages take on average 20 seconds to load and sometimes up to 3 minutes! They are lucky that it's not their website that is their business but it's their products or else they'd lose business so fast. I absolutely HATE interacting with their site because of how slow it is. I can deal with bad UX if the site is quick to load, but I can't deal with bad UX if the site is extremely slow. Another thing to think about is simple single content pages, like ones that just tell you the time, or tell you what your IP address is. The ones at the top of Google searches pay extremely close attention to page speed load times. There is so much competition in their space that they know they need to be the best and that is just another way to do that.
- benologist 10y ago
  https://lite.twitter.com https://lite.twitter.com just launched, eventually that may show a preference either way.
  - Radle 10y ago
    Twitter is a page with only one feature. Lite.Twitter is a version of that feature for a very specific subset of mobile users. In 99,9% of cases it's not worth it to go ultra lightweight.

matwood 10y ago

This is the old argument about replacing Excel. No one uses all the features offered by Excel, but every feature offered is used by someone.

jakewins 10y ago
And a nice illustration for why startups often do well focusing on very specific use cases first. Replacing Excel for the general population is a moon-shot project; replacing it for a well selected set of use cases hard but, as history showed, possible.
bobbytherobot 10y ago
Not only that, often the when Excel users are asked what features they desire, the desired feature is already in Excel.

curun1r 10y ago

Counterpoint...For years, Google's search page was famously minimal/unbloated. That lack of bloat and overall search speed was a big part of them winning.

jonahx 10y ago

The market votes for bloatware because people are lazy. If you are someone who cares about speed and simplicity and generally doing things right, I don't see how this fact relevant to the current discussion. Sure, frameworks like mini won't be as popular as bootstrap. But there are plenty of people, myself included, who'd rather use them.

Radle 10y ago
Mini is 7kb; Bootstrap 20kb Your users simply won't notice the difference. If you for whatever reason need to include a picture on your page it's going to be bigger than the ultra lightweight bootstrap page.
Radle 10y ago
Mini is 7kb; Bootstrap 20kb Your users simply won't notice the difference. If you for whatever reason need to include a picture on your page it's going to be bigger than the ultra lightweight bootstrap page.

onion2k 10y ago

Basically, one person's bloat is another person's necessary features. And that is why I like modules.

mwcampbell 10y ago
> And that is why I like modules. Just be careful that you don't remove too many of them in your efforts to eliminate bloat. For example, last time I checked, the Qt toolkit implements accessibility (e.g. for blind users) in a plugin. How many Qt-based applications are completely, utterly inaccessible to some users just because they didn't ship that plugin? Again, one person's bloat is another persons' necessary feature. Yes, I made a typo the first time; I noticed it too late.