5 ms·

Storage is free. RAM isn't. And even if it were, the size of an application in relation to its purpose is a relevant metric.

sneak 5y ago
The overton window of "acceptable program size" has shifted so many times as technology advances, surely you can recognize that your own personal attachments to a given SI suffix are irrelevant? Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. Our children will complain about 1000GB bundles. The programs, of course, do vastly different things as the realm of what is possible with technology inexorably advances. Comparing a complete bundle for an advanced graphical application framework with a TUI application is apples to oranges, and the curmudgeons who are shaking their collective canes at the kids on their lawn are actually technically competent and can recognize this if they choose. There are legitimate technical criticisms to doing things with JS and Electron and whatnot; but "the bundle is hundreds of megabytes" isn't that.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Just because that window shifts over time doesn't mean that we need to push our boundaries for acceptable program size, nor is it an excuse not to optimize our software. This kind of mindset is how we end up with terminal emulators that take more than 500ms to launch, and how we end up with systems that take on unconscionable amounts of bloat. I use Konsole as my terminal, which is a 50kb binary. If your replacement is orders of magnitude larger than my current option, it had better brew my coffee and have bacon ready by the time I wake up every morning. Instead, all we got was a lousy authy sync.
  - novok 5y ago
    Konsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. What is going on here is tabby is the equivalent of statically linked + a virtual machine OS called a browser, while konsole is not. To properly compare the two, you need to compare source code size, as if you downloaded tabby and ran it an browser. To really compare them properly, you'd also need to make the typescript compiled into equivalent JS VM assembly. There you'll find them probably to be significantly closer in size
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Sharing libraries with other apps is a feature.
    - usrbinbash 5y ago
      >Konsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. No, we really don't, because these libraries are available to other programs as well, whereas a huge packaged application is availabe to nothing than itself.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Correct, shipping the equivalent of an entire full-featured GUI OS just to provide a terminal emulator is crazy.
    - jstimpfle 5y ago
      Konsole itself could probably be considered bloated. You can easily write a super functional and performant terminal emulator in 50-100K by only using the external dependencies that are absolutely required - i.e. on Linux, the POSIX/Linux syscall interface and Xlib. You shouldn't even need libc, but AFAIK on Linux it's extremely hard to not use it, for stupid reasons. > To really compare them properly, you'd also need to make the typescript compiled into equivalent JS VM assembly. That's like saying, to compare Usain Bolt and myself in terms of sprinting performance, you should consider the fact that I'm chubby for a fair comparison.
      - pittmajp 5y ago
        http://st.suckless.org http://st.suckless.org
        jstimpfle 5y ago
        More text? :-) (I know of the suckless community and of st in particular (I've never tried it)).
  - sneak 5y ago
    See, this is what I mean by a legitimate criticism. I agree that a new version of a critical tool like this should do a bit more than have tabs and sync. "It is 250MB" alone isn't.
- jstimpfle 5y ago
  This attitude is exactly why Wirth's law is a thing - software is getting slower, faster than hardware is getting faster. That is not in all metrics, of course, but in some - like typically in response latency to user inputs. This slowness costs users so many hairs pulled out. Programmers who think that "this is acceptable" lack the awareness that they haven't even tested the software under only slightly unusual conditions which is when everything is already crawling to a halt. When that "bundle" is 1000MB while technically there is no reason it should be more than ~1MB, many operations that you might want to do as a developer / trying-outer of the bundle take 1000x longer (no shit). Not unlikely, in some cases that even applies to runtime performance. Why in the world would you accept that when it takes only a little discipline to get it down to a "reasonable" overhead of say, 10x???
  - sneak 5y ago
    Alacrity would like a word. In my experience, software is generally getting faster these days, after a period of UI latencies getting worse for a while. Not all software is getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster. It has always been possible to write slow software.
    - jstimpfle 5y ago
      It's funny, while I've never tried Alacritty (and I'm not likely given the posts I'm reading about it around here), I'm still stuck with xterm, which in some ways has a terrible UX. But it's the fastest I've used, has the most correct VT-100 emulation (or at least programs do work), and it has by far the crispest fonts - if you're using bitmap fonts, which most modern terminals don't support anymore. But to your actual point, of course you can write software that runs not slower, or even runs much faster, than the software of 30 years ago that ran on machines of the time. The exception proves the rule (while I feel it's always been so obvious that there was never a proof needed).
    - jstimpfle 5y ago
      Also, Casey Muratori would like to have a word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U
- hbn 5y ago
  > Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. And no one listened, so now -- despite our computers being thousands of times faster -- basic applications are hundreds of times slower to open. And we're junking a bunch of "old" machines that are considered too slow even though they're technically capable of performing rapid operations at levels our brains can barely comprehend.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. They still do, thank you very much.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  >Our children will complain about 1000GB bundles. Our children will still complain about a 10MB application, if it does something that could be done by a 500KB solution. >Comparing a complete bundle for an advanced graphical application framework with a TUI application is apples to oranges, And what do I need a "advanced graphical application framework" for if the intended use case is displaying text in a grid?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

sneak 5y ago

The overton window of "acceptable program size" has shifted so many times as technology advances, surely you can recognize that your own personal attachments to a given SI suffix are irrelevant? Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. Our children will complain about 1000GB bundles. The programs, of course, do vastly different things as the realm of what is possible with technology inexorably advances. Comparing a complete bundle for an advanced graphical application framework with a TUI application is apples to oranges, and the curmudgeons who are shaking their collective canes at the kids on their lawn are actually technically competent and can recognize this if they choose. There are legitimate technical criticisms to doing things with JS and Electron and whatnot; but "the bundle is hundreds of megabytes" isn't that.

smoldesu 5y ago
Just because that window shifts over time doesn't mean that we need to push our boundaries for acceptable program size, nor is it an excuse not to optimize our software. This kind of mindset is how we end up with terminal emulators that take more than 500ms to launch, and how we end up with systems that take on unconscionable amounts of bloat. I use Konsole as my terminal, which is a 50kb binary. If your replacement is orders of magnitude larger than my current option, it had better brew my coffee and have bacon ready by the time I wake up every morning. Instead, all we got was a lousy authy sync.
- novok 5y ago
  Konsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. What is going on here is tabby is the equivalent of statically linked + a virtual machine OS called a browser, while konsole is not. To properly compare the two, you need to compare source code size, as if you downloaded tabby and ran it an browser. To really compare them properly, you'd also need to make the typescript compiled into equivalent JS VM assembly. There you'll find them probably to be significantly closer in size
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Sharing libraries with other apps is a feature.
  - usrbinbash 5y ago
    >Konsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. No, we really don't, because these libraries are available to other programs as well, whereas a huge packaged application is availabe to nothing than itself.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Correct, shipping the equivalent of an entire full-featured GUI OS just to provide a terminal emulator is crazy.
  - jstimpfle 5y ago
    Konsole itself could probably be considered bloated. You can easily write a super functional and performant terminal emulator in 50-100K by only using the external dependencies that are absolutely required - i.e. on Linux, the POSIX/Linux syscall interface and Xlib. You shouldn't even need libc, but AFAIK on Linux it's extremely hard to not use it, for stupid reasons. > To really compare them properly, you'd also need to make the typescript compiled into equivalent JS VM assembly. That's like saying, to compare Usain Bolt and myself in terms of sprinting performance, you should consider the fact that I'm chubby for a fair comparison.
    - pittmajp 5y ago
      http://st.suckless.org http://st.suckless.org
      - jstimpfle 5y ago
        More text? :-) (I know of the suckless community and of st in particular (I've never tried it)).
- sneak 5y ago
  See, this is what I mean by a legitimate criticism. I agree that a new version of a critical tool like this should do a bit more than have tabs and sync. "It is 250MB" alone isn't.
jstimpfle 5y ago
This attitude is exactly why Wirth's law is a thing - software is getting slower, faster than hardware is getting faster. That is not in all metrics, of course, but in some - like typically in response latency to user inputs. This slowness costs users so many hairs pulled out. Programmers who think that "this is acceptable" lack the awareness that they haven't even tested the software under only slightly unusual conditions which is when everything is already crawling to a halt. When that "bundle" is 1000MB while technically there is no reason it should be more than ~1MB, many operations that you might want to do as a developer / trying-outer of the bundle take 1000x longer (no shit). Not unlikely, in some cases that even applies to runtime performance. Why in the world would you accept that when it takes only a little discipline to get it down to a "reasonable" overhead of say, 10x???
- sneak 5y ago
  Alacrity would like a word. In my experience, software is generally getting faster these days, after a period of UI latencies getting worse for a while. Not all software is getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster. It has always been possible to write slow software.
  - jstimpfle 5y ago
    It's funny, while I've never tried Alacritty (and I'm not likely given the posts I'm reading about it around here), I'm still stuck with xterm, which in some ways has a terrible UX. But it's the fastest I've used, has the most correct VT-100 emulation (or at least programs do work), and it has by far the crispest fonts - if you're using bitmap fonts, which most modern terminals don't support anymore. But to your actual point, of course you can write software that runs not slower, or even runs much faster, than the software of 30 years ago that ran on machines of the time. The exception proves the rule (while I feel it's always been so obvious that there was never a proof needed).
  - jstimpfle 5y ago
    Also, Casey Muratori would like to have a word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U
hbn 5y ago
> Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. And no one listened, so now -- despite our computers being thousands of times faster -- basic applications are hundreds of times slower to open. And we're junking a bunch of "old" machines that are considered too slow even though they're technically capable of performing rapid operations at levels our brains can barely comprehend.
ur-whale 5y ago
> Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. They still do, thank you very much.
usrbinbash 5y ago
>Our children will complain about 1000GB bundles. Our children will still complain about a 10MB application, if it does something that could be done by a 500KB solution. >Comparing a complete bundle for an advanced graphical application framework with a TUI application is apples to oranges, And what do I need a "advanced graphical application framework" for if the intended use case is displaying text in a grid?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]