5 ms·

Your standards are unfortunately warped by modern trends. Almost all popular apps are hugely bloated because the developers just don't care, the focus is on UI

Your standards are unfortunately warped by modern trends. Almost all popular apps are hugely bloated because the developers just don't care, the focus is on UI re-design and feature churn and the illusion of ease of development. Some counter examples (compressed installer size for convenience): 7-zip for 64-bit windows: 1.4 MiB Winamp 5.8: 7.8 MiB mpc-hc: 13.5 MiB (open source media player with many built-in codecs) irfan-view: 3.4 MiB (image viewer/utility) uTorrent: 2.3 MiB Sysinternals Process Monitor: 1 MiB For a truly native application, which doesn't pack a huge run-time or dependency tree, that's the expected size range. Now, it's true, it seems no one does that anymore ...

kumarharsh 7y ago
I agree to those points, and really happy that 7-Zip still fits on a floppy (when the floppy itself is dead). The bloat is real, but it's not something specific to Windows. All three platforms, plus the web, have become bloated. But picking the 50mb size as a stick to beat an app which is still maturing is too harsh, IMO.
- ploxiln 7y ago
  True - and reports seem to be that the actual compiled code is like 18 MiB. It's the comparison to these huge android apps that got me. I could do this for android too: keepassdroid is 4 MiB, zxing barcode scanner is 0.7 MiB ... So many people just don't understand the scale of these things.
- mysterydip 7y ago
  If it was just a regular app I'd agree, but file explorer is pretty integral to the OS experience. Any bloat there cascades as multiple instances are launched or called from other applications. As a counterexample, here's XYplorer, another file explorer alternative: https://www.xyplorer.com/ https://www.xyplorer.com/ which weighs in at 7MB.
64738 7y ago
Thank you for mentioning IrfanView. Back in the day I used to have a cracked copy of LviewPro that was always one of the 1st programs to be installed whenever I started working on a new system. It was small, fast, and I could easily flip through all the image files in a directory. I stopped using LviewPro probably 8, or 10 years ago, but always wished I knew of a replacement that was so efficient. I see that IrfanView also does quite a bit more. I think I have a new favorite! Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to drop the author a kind note. :)
- chronogram 7y ago
  Wow one of the lucky 10 000! I can understand your happiness, I think I felt the same way probably over 15 years ago when I first found it.
- hestefisk 7y ago
  ACDSee was thee shit, mate
- Boulth 7y ago
  Yep, IrfanView is fantastic, I gladly paid the license. Sadly it's not available on Linux.
- gsich 7y ago
  Fastpictureviewer? I haven't found a program (on Linux too) that comes close to the performance.
legends2k 7y ago
It's probably not OP's code itself but usage of UWP. The apps you mentioned here are all written in pure Win32 API. HWND, HANDLE, HPEN, HDC, anyone? Just pure C (or pure C++) and some functions... Those were the days!
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Our hardware tooling is all written in C++/Win32 and some MFC; it’s all tiny and light. Because factory controlling computers are (unfortunately imho but what can I do) older Windows versions (for us that is due to certification etc mostly) on weak but robust systems with little memory that need to run for years without issues/crashes. So lean, fast software, tested for memory leaks which can be restarted in very short times (downtime of the production line is expensive) is important.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Unfortunately those APIs seems to be kind of obsolete nowadays. All the nice things are with UWP. I think that WinAPI is not even hardware accelerated. That's a pity, but what can we expect, when Microsoft themselves botched WinAPI in their own products long ago. Windows could be so better with their old Windows 2000 style, without all those design jumps around.
  - legends2k 7y ago
    You can do hardware accelerated stuff atop WinAPI; many, sadly, don't seem to know it. WinRT, is exactly for that; it's the distillation of UWP, which can be used in a simple Win32 app [1] e.g. The modern, hardware-accelerated API for compositing on Windows is Visual Layer (available under `ABI::Windows::UI::Composition`) [2]; it can be used from a Win32 app written in pure C++ [3] and the C++/CX language extension is unneeded. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/WinRT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/WinRT [2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/visual-layer-in-desktop-apps https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modern... [3]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/using-the-visual-layer-with-win32 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modern...
  - 7y ago
sansnomme 7y ago
But..but..RICH UI!!
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Rich, as in "loaded with fat".
gsich 7y ago
"modern" UI is backwards. A lot of space wasting, hiding essential stuff, animations that are not necessary.
awinder 7y ago
So it’s 4x the size of mpc-hc, did the sky really fall here? I’m not on a computer but quickly scanning the repo there’s a fair number of image assets, so I don’t really know that that’s a good proxy for “bloat”
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  why image assets are necessary with modern application? We should be using vector images by now. And vector images are tiny.
  - awinder 7y ago
    Yeah sounds like a great PR for someone to make who truly thinks this is a major issue
chx 7y ago
And then there's https://www.nirsoft.net/ https://www.nirsoft.net/ full of useful utilities measured in tens of kilobytes... it's insane. The largest 64 bit exe is 249 232 bytes.
sp332 7y ago
Yeah but 7-zip's UI is small enough to be just about unusable on my 4k monitor. Sometimes drag-and-drop is broken and sometimes windows don't resize right. Maybe if they had used a good UI library instead of rolling their own stuff, they would have to spend less time chasing a bunch of little bugs and the users wouldn't have to deal with them either.

kumarharsh 7y ago

I agree to those points, and really happy that 7-Zip still fits on a floppy (when the floppy itself is dead). The bloat is real, but it's not something specific to Windows. All three platforms, plus the web, have become bloated. But picking the 50mb size as a stick to beat an app which is still maturing is too harsh, IMO.

ploxiln 7y ago
True - and reports seem to be that the actual compiled code is like 18 MiB. It's the comparison to these huge android apps that got me. I could do this for android too: keepassdroid is 4 MiB, zxing barcode scanner is 0.7 MiB ... So many people just don't understand the scale of these things.
mysterydip 7y ago
If it was just a regular app I'd agree, but file explorer is pretty integral to the OS experience. Any bloat there cascades as multiple instances are launched or called from other applications. As a counterexample, here's XYplorer, another file explorer alternative: https://www.xyplorer.com/ https://www.xyplorer.com/ which weighs in at 7MB.

64738 7y ago

Thank you for mentioning IrfanView. Back in the day I used to have a cracked copy of LviewPro that was always one of the 1st programs to be installed whenever I started working on a new system. It was small, fast, and I could easily flip through all the image files in a directory. I stopped using LviewPro probably 8, or 10 years ago, but always wished I knew of a replacement that was so efficient. I see that IrfanView also does quite a bit more. I think I have a new favorite! Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to drop the author a kind note. :)

chronogram 7y ago
Wow one of the lucky 10 000! I can understand your happiness, I think I felt the same way probably over 15 years ago when I first found it.
hestefisk 7y ago
ACDSee was thee shit, mate
Boulth 7y ago
Yep, IrfanView is fantastic, I gladly paid the license. Sadly it's not available on Linux.
gsich 7y ago
Fastpictureviewer? I haven't found a program (on Linux too) that comes close to the performance.

legends2k 7y ago

It's probably not OP's code itself but usage of UWP. The apps you mentioned here are all written in pure Win32 API. HWND, HANDLE, HPEN, HDC, anyone? Just pure C (or pure C++) and some functions... Those were the days!

tluyben2 7y ago
Our hardware tooling is all written in C++/Win32 and some MFC; it’s all tiny and light. Because factory controlling computers are (unfortunately imho but what can I do) older Windows versions (for us that is due to certification etc mostly) on weak but robust systems with little memory that need to run for years without issues/crashes. So lean, fast software, tested for memory leaks which can be restarted in very short times (downtime of the production line is expensive) is important.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Unfortunately those APIs seems to be kind of obsolete nowadays. All the nice things are with UWP. I think that WinAPI is not even hardware accelerated. That's a pity, but what can we expect, when Microsoft themselves botched WinAPI in their own products long ago. Windows could be so better with their old Windows 2000 style, without all those design jumps around.
- legends2k 7y ago
  You can do hardware accelerated stuff atop WinAPI; many, sadly, don't seem to know it. WinRT, is exactly for that; it's the distillation of UWP, which can be used in a simple Win32 app [1] e.g. The modern, hardware-accelerated API for compositing on Windows is Visual Layer (available under `ABI::Windows::UI::Composition`) [2]; it can be used from a Win32 app written in pure C++ [3] and the C++/CX language extension is unneeded. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/WinRT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/WinRT [2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/visual-layer-in-desktop-apps https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modern... [3]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/using-the-visual-layer-with-win32 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modern...
- 7y ago

sansnomme 7y ago

But..but..RICH UI!!

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Rich, as in "loaded with fat".

gsich 7y ago

"modern" UI is backwards. A lot of space wasting, hiding essential stuff, animations that are not necessary.

awinder 7y ago

So it’s 4x the size of mpc-hc, did the sky really fall here? I’m not on a computer but quickly scanning the repo there’s a fair number of image assets, so I don’t really know that that’s a good proxy for “bloat”

vbezhenar 7y ago
why image assets are necessary with modern application? We should be using vector images by now. And vector images are tiny.
- awinder 7y ago
  Yeah sounds like a great PR for someone to make who truly thinks this is a major issue

chx 7y ago

And then there's https://www.nirsoft.net/ https://www.nirsoft.net/ full of useful utilities measured in tens of kilobytes... it's insane. The largest 64 bit exe is 249 232 bytes.

sp332 7y ago

Yeah but 7-zip's UI is small enough to be just about unusable on my 4k monitor. Sometimes drag-and-drop is broken and sometimes windows don't resize right. Maybe if they had used a good UI library instead of rolling their own stuff, they would have to spend less time chasing a bunch of little bugs and the users wouldn't have to deal with them either.