"Ohhh. It eats up all your memory. I see. Actually, well, no, it doesn't. Ever since Windows 1.0, in 1987, the operating system only loads pages as they are use

"Ohhh. It eats up all your memory. I see. Actually, well, no, it doesn't. Ever since Windows 1.0, in 1987, the operating system only loads pages as they are used. If you have a 15MB executable and you only use code that spans 2MB worth of pages, you will only ever load 2MB from disk to RAM." This is such a bullshitty argument. The chance that the pages that you need to load to accomplish a simple task (say, adding up 20 numbers) with a program capable of doing many many things (say, excel) will be comparable to the number of pages that you need to load to perform the task in a far more limited program (say, `dc`) is infinitesimal. In practice, it just isn't going to happen. Using small programs to accomplish small tasks is what Linus Åkerlund was arguing in that post (https://web.archive.org/web/20000305231633/http://user.tninet.se/~uxm165t/bloatware.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000305231633/http://user.tnine...). Now, there are very obvious reasons why "the UNIX way" is not for everybody, and why monolithic featureful programs have their place, but Joel is delusional if he thinks that Linus is incorrect in practice on the memory usage point. I bet I can start and close 'dc' several thousand times in the time it takes Excel to start once. Not a fair comparison by any measure, but nevertheless one that Joel invites by attacking Linus' article.