Code Bloat 3

I'm going to start with a tip before I rant. The Acrobat Reader speedup tool available here ( )really works. It disables loading a unnecessary plug-ins at startup.

<rant>
Why is this tool even necessary? This proves that code bloat exists everywhere, not just at MS. Why in the world would you need to load 75 plug-ins by default at startup - in a simple reader? This is just pure lazy progamming.

I understand the pressures of time-to-market quick delivery. I also understand that there is a lot of overhead involved when you are trying to develop re-usable OO code versus hand-crafting an application. This type of thing is inexcusable however. IMHO Adobe is worse than Microsoft lately in producing applications that give you time for a beer break while you're waiting for them to load. AutoCad and other are not necessarily speed demons either.

I've read estimates that the final Longhorn, running full Aero, Indigo and WinFS will need a base machine with 1GB of RAM to run decently.

Linux may be cleaner and more stable , but if you go look at recommended systems, the requirements aren't that much different than Windows.

There's got to be a better way.
</rant>

Oops, I have to start a program up - might as well go have a beer....


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

Uh oh, you brought up Linux vs Windows

I'd argue the point on requirements but I am sure someone else will bring it up.

I agree on insane bloat though, I'm noticing it everywhere. Load the new ATI hardware drivers and the .Net-based control panel will eat up some more windows loading time as well as huge chunks of memory...it's a settings util, why would a settings util be forced to load on startup? Obviously I need the drivers, but please, I shouldn't be forced to hack my registray just to make the settings console stop eating my memory...

Firefox: I love the browser, I hate the fact that is is sitting on 67Mb of RAM right now...

STEAM: (for half-life players) Choke, cough cough...the release version wasn't even adequate to call a beta version but that aside, we have hidden loadup when the system starts and 23-24Mb while running in the taskbar (dunno about normal background, I killed that reg entry )

MS Word...Outlook still takes foever to start up, word takes a litle while, so what is MS Word doing with 22Mb of my memory?

MS Outlook: Apparently not everything is covered by MS Words 22Mb, so here's another 13Mb for my mail program...

WinVNC: Now this is what I'm talking about...4Mb. VNC is running as a server and using less then 1/5th of the memory that MS Word is....and I haven't opened anything since rebooting except Outlook, Editplus (1mb), and Firefox...


So yeah, I agree that bloat is everywhere...but machines keep getting faster and RAM keeps getting cheaper so companies feel justified in cutting corners to bang out bloated software, the bloating probably isn't even an effect of time limits anymore, probably bloated by design (or lack thereof)...

I'm not a programmer but I do love what did for Acrobat! I wonder if they can fix PELMICED.exe. My mouse uses more memory than APPLO 13!

Windows vs Linux: old story and both have issues and I'm sure one day soon Linux will be as blotted and buggy as MS.

SF18C
CCNP, MCSE, A+, N+ & HPCC
Tis better to die on your feet than live on your knees!

There's a lovely paragraph in one of Michael Abrash's books where he explains how his 5-year old thinks that his old word-processor is more powerful than his super-work-PC because it only takes a few secs to boot, while the PC takes minutes. There's a lesson in that.

And there's another lesson in traditional engineering: simpler things go wrong less often and are easier to fix.

I have to agree with all the above. I'm no programmer, but I do use the equipment in the course of work and find in many, if not nearly all, cases the most recent versions of software are the slowest to load and use the most system resources, and often these later versions are simply 'debugged' versions of the versions before them, with few true enhancements - I therefore now use the earliest versions of software I can, consistent with having the features I require, simply to improve performance.

One point for discussion:
Regarding the eternal vicious circle of bloated software > faster processors > even more bloated software > even faster processors, do any of you honestly suspect there might be some kind of liason between the parties concerned in order to perpetuate these largely unnecessary upgrades?

Regards, Andy.
**************************************
My pathetic attempts at learning HTML can be laughed at here:

I'm another one agreeing with the code bloat here. Task manager reports Notepad taking 4.5Mb, with only a text file of under 1Kb in size loaded.

Thinking about hotfusion's comments, I have 2 PC's: PC A runs Win2000 / Office XP and is 3.5 years old.
PC B runs WinXP and Office 97. Apart from Access (I am an Access developer), I don't have any problems moving data between the two systems at all and opening / editing in each equivalent application.
There may be a conspiracy between the hardware manufacturs and software designers in order to design software to use up these CPU cycles and eat RAM like there's no tomorrow, but the only applications these days that can use these CPU cycles are those doing huge amounts of number crunching such as statisticians or games players/multimedia developers who can use the power for graphics rendering.
There's only so much that Office type applications can use (or maybe this is asking for trouble, how about Word 2005 with in built feature to search for a cure for some disease to soak up all the excess cycles). On second thoughts, maybe not.

John

On conspiracies, I've often wondered about why all web-pages, when printed, take a whole number of pages plus one extra page with a single line, usually containing a few unimportant buttons or graphics. A conspiracy between web designers and paper suppliers? A specially built-in feature of printer drivers, paid for by the paper people? I dunno. One day when I'm really bored I'll test the hypothesis properly.

I think there's two parts to code bloat:

Poor programming - if the system resources are there, why bother to take the time to write efficient code?

Excess features - who needs all of the bells and whistles in most standard desktop applications?

If the programmers who write these applications had to work on a really low spec PC, maybe they'd do better.

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

Ayup, Rosie. Also, many of those manufacturers seem to be programming as if their product is the only one that will be running in any particular PC at any given time.

We have another chance at this one, dont know if you have seen it or not but there is a Free Dos, i obtained a copy recently (havent had time to "play" yet) but as this project developes we may see a nice new operating system on the horizon. if executables are responsible for there own graphics, hardware drivers, the operating system doesnt suffer from code blote.
of course development is a lot slower.

if it is to be it's up to me

Dimandja
Ayup, midook!
<aside> this is probably a comment for a different forum, but as we're here, somehow I doubt you're familiar with UK midlands argot where "midook" means "My duck" and "Ayup midook" is a common friendly greeting, so I just couldn't resist. (If I'm wrong,and you are familiar with the term, apologies.) </aside>

I think you're right, so maybe as well as low spec PC, developers should also have to test with a variety of other software running.

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

When designing software for the PC, we usually try to develop and test on PCs that have minimum resources. But, I think some of these developers prefer to work on the latest super duper multi processing PC. I mean, the stuff can usually barely fit into an average machine.

You're right, Rosie, UK argot befuddles me every time - let alone midlands'.

Thank you for the fix for Acrobat. It has been driving me crazy with how slow it is load, especially when someone puts a stupid Acrobat file on a web page and I'm stuck before I even know it.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

>Excess features - who needs all of the bells and whistles in most standard desktop applications?

The problem with this is that, whilst it is probably true that no single user needs all the bells and whistles, it also true that no two single users require the same bells and whistles. So you either develop and sell - say - 200 slightly different versions of your software, or you develop and sell a bloated version that incorporates those 200 slightly different versions

>So you either develop and sell - say - 200 slightly different versions of your software, or you develop and sell a bloated version that incorporates those 200 slightly different versions...

All 200 bells shoved down your PC all at once? In this age of software development, I would think that all those features do not have to be loaded every time - a la Acrobat.

I think it's a sign of crude software design - some would say laziness.

Jeff,

Thanks for that link!! I can't believe the start up difference! My office mate & I are thrilled not to have all the excess bells and whistles in Reader!!

les

Yeah, the difference in startup time is amazing.

Dimandja's hitting the right point. I love having 1000 features available. I don't even mind having all 1000 go onto my disk at setup since disk space is cheap. I do object to 800 of the 1000 loading into RAM at startup.

The standard argument is that this is driven by marketing. The program aoppears to run faster becuase you don't get a delay during runtime while it goes out and gets a feature you're using for the first time this session. There's some merit to this, but I would also agree that a lot of this is either pure laziness or too much quick time-to-market pressure driving quick hacks.

In an ideal world, large applications would have a user configurable auto-tuning system that would watch the features you use most often and gradually add or remove them from your default startup list. It would have to be more cleanly implemented than MS's personalized menus however.

The trick is adding this kind of functionality without driving up cost.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

Another argument in favour of code bloat is that todays RAD tools don't generally create optimised code.

Programmers wrote efficient code because CPU cycles were more expensive than programmers time. Now processing power is so cheap, it's swung the other way - it's cheaper to let the processor bear the brunt whilst the programmer does the job as quickly as possible.

Capitalist corporates

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please tell us if our suggestion has helped[/li][li]need some help? faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

MasterRacker
You may love having 1000 features available, so do I. But in reality, most of my users use less than 5% of the features available in WORD and EXCEL, and I doubt I use much more.

It's not even 80:20 more like 99:1, if 99% (however you measure this) of the features were removed ffom most general desktop applications (ie MS Office) 99% of my users would not even notice. But it would probably run much faster.

<Thinks>That way Office Professional, could be just that. (Tho I wouldn't want to sell the users on Office Incompetent)</thinks>

You're right on it being marketing, but I think it's more a case that when a new version is released, they have to include new features to justify the cost of the upgrade, somehow "buy it or else" just isn't seen as user-friendly.

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

(1) Ah, now you get on to upgrading! This is something I really get worked-up about. If you just want to read documents you've received electronically, and type the odd letter, you still have to upgrade your software regularly, because people send you stuff in a new format, and the old software won't read it. But every time you upgrade your software, you also need to upgrade the hardware, because the new software won't run on the old hardware (it's got too big, or needs a better OS, which does all sorts of whizzy things I don't need, and therefore itself needs a bigger, better processor...).

Therefore we're all getting through hardware at an outrageously unenvironmentally-friendly rate.

(2) giving application developers low spec machines: Yup, I've long agreed! There's a nice bit in the preface to "Numerical methods in C" where the authors suggest that most scientists are solving tomorrow's problems with yesterday's tools, while computer scientists sometimes have it the other way round...