3 ms·

"Software is Terrible and Getting Worse" I wonder if increasing bloat is a permanent thing? Will software ever transition to a cycle of simplification? Has it

"Software is Terrible and Getting Worse" I wonder if increasing bloat is a permanent thing? Will software ever transition to a cycle of simplification? Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Physical engineering has some limits that push back on complexity. You can only cram so many gears into a Swiss watch. An item can only have so many parts before manfacturing becomes a nightmare. What will push back on the complexity of software? Will it ever "break" in a way that we just do things differently? And it would be strange to think that something like haskell could save us, when the compiler itself is such a beast. If something saves us, it will probably look more like FORTH or lisp or Prolog.

kazinator 6y ago
> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Yes; whenever smaller, but less powerful hardware replaced larger, entire bloated old platforms were discarded or ignored by a generation of new users. Mainframe to micro to mini. Desktop Windows to Android.
yiyus 6y ago
> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Not as a whole, but there have been some significant attempts. Maybe the most radical one I can think of is Chuck Moore's Forth systems. Every new version is simpler than the previous one. Arthur Whitney has done something similar with APL, A+ and k, constantly trying to remove non-essential features. A more mainstream example is Unix and Plan 9, the 7th version of Unix was simpler than previous ones, and Plan 9 was much simpler than Unix. There are also initiatives like suckless, which try to write simpler software. I am sure there are many more similar examples. Trying to remove bloat and complexity is a very important goal for many developers. Unfortunately, the real world usually gets in the way (colorForth has quite limited hardware support, Plan 9 never included a full-featured web browser, suckless software is not too friendly for novice users...).
platz 6y ago
Prolog isn't going to save anyone - it's too hard to control the search strategy.

kazinator 6y ago

> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Yes; whenever smaller, but less powerful hardware replaced larger, entire bloated old platforms were discarded or ignored by a generation of new users. Mainframe to micro to mini. Desktop Windows to Android.

yiyus 6y ago

> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Not as a whole, but there have been some significant attempts. Maybe the most radical one I can think of is Chuck Moore's Forth systems. Every new version is simpler than the previous one. Arthur Whitney has done something similar with APL, A+ and k, constantly trying to remove non-essential features. A more mainstream example is Unix and Plan 9, the 7th version of Unix was simpler than previous ones, and Plan 9 was much simpler than Unix. There are also initiatives like suckless, which try to write simpler software. I am sure there are many more similar examples. Trying to remove bloat and complexity is a very important goal for many developers. Unfortunately, the real world usually gets in the way (colorForth has quite limited hardware support, Plan 9 never included a full-featured web browser, suckless software is not too friendly for novice users...).

platz 6y ago

Prolog isn't going to save anyone - it's too hard to control the search strategy.