4 ms·

> Crystal is 1MB in size. Yes, one megabyte. Is this notable because it's little or because it's a lot? Zelda III for the SNES was 1MB. Pokemon Red and Blue w

by ginko 12y ago

> Crystal is 1MB in size. Yes, one megabyte. Is this notable because it's little or because it's a lot? Zelda III for the SNES was 1MB. Pokemon Red and Blue was 512KB, which is also quite a lot for a Gameboy game.

jrockway 12y ago
Considering busybox (statically-linked ls, etc.) is 2MB, 1MB is pretty impressive.
- pdw 12y ago
  There was an interesting talk on this at Linux.conf.au a couple of years ago, trying to figure out why modern binaries are so large. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbv9L-WIu0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbv9L-WIu0s > Bloat: How and Why UNIX Grew Up (and Out) - Rusty Russell, Matt Evans > The 'ls' binary on the original release of Unix (version 6) was 4920 bytes long. Thirty six years later, 'ls' on Ubuntu is 105776 bytes. Is this the laziness of modern coders? Increasing features? Does 'cat' really now do 313 times more stuff, or is there something else going on?
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    OT: I find it slightly disturbing to read people's Google+ conversations that were imported to extend the YouTube thread. I hope YouTube/Google isn't really buying Twitch, despite the return that would mean for the Twitch investors.
- userbinator 12y ago
  As the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769456 notes, these games were written in Asm while busybox is C. It depends on the exact proficiency of the programmers involved and the compiler/platform/etc., but it's not unusual to have an order of magnitude difference or more between the same application written in Asm vs. a high-level language like C. People have tried to rewrite standard *nix utilities in Asm; one example is Asmutils[1][2] which certainly illustrates the "order of magnitude or more" size difference. If you're curious about extreme size optimisation there are many cool examples of that in the demoscene, like 96KB games[3] and all the 4k/64k intros. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmutils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmutils [2] http://asm.sourceforge.net/asmutils.html http://asm.sourceforge.net/asmutils.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger
cubo 12y ago
That seems pretty small by today's mega sized binaries. But for an assembly program that seems very big. It is impressive that a large part of my childhood was written in assembly

by ginko 12y ago

jrockway 12y ago

Considering busybox (statically-linked ls, etc.) is 2MB, 1MB is pretty impressive.

pdw 12y ago
There was an interesting talk on this at Linux.conf.au a couple of years ago, trying to figure out why modern binaries are so large. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbv9L-WIu0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbv9L-WIu0s > Bloat: How and Why UNIX Grew Up (and Out) - Rusty Russell, Matt Evans > The 'ls' binary on the original release of Unix (version 6) was 4920 bytes long. Thirty six years later, 'ls' on Ubuntu is 105776 bytes. Is this the laziness of modern coders? Increasing features? Does 'cat' really now do 313 times more stuff, or is there something else going on?
- nitrogen 12y ago
  OT: I find it slightly disturbing to read people's Google+ conversations that were imported to extend the YouTube thread. I hope YouTube/Google isn't really buying Twitch, despite the return that would mean for the Twitch investors.
userbinator 12y ago
As the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769456 notes, these games were written in Asm while busybox is C. It depends on the exact proficiency of the programmers involved and the compiler/platform/etc., but it's not unusual to have an order of magnitude difference or more between the same application written in Asm vs. a high-level language like C. People have tried to rewrite standard *nix utilities in Asm; one example is Asmutils[1][2] which certainly illustrates the "order of magnitude or more" size difference. If you're curious about extreme size optimisation there are many cool examples of that in the demoscene, like 96KB games[3] and all the 4k/64k intros. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmutils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmutils [2] http://asm.sourceforge.net/asmutils.html http://asm.sourceforge.net/asmutils.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

cubo 12y ago

That seems pretty small by today's mega sized binaries. But for an assembly program that seems very big. It is impressive that a large part of my childhood was written in assembly