Code Bloat

FrostCodes said:
I thought I was the only one
Click to expand...
remember the conversation here the other day about Agile Systems ( or something like that ). my take on code bloat is that its agile business processes that causes this. i have a buddy who says that if he has to maintain a bit of his software that has been in service for two years - he rewrites the whole thing from scratch,. so TwitFace and that crowd are agile in the manner of filling in useless fancy luxuries dreamt up in Agile Sessions and "slotted in" between a bazillion other lines of code. (i wonder how much time they spend trying to locate the correct slot to use? no wonder we users experience what we do when the broken "update" arrives and breaks working stuff.)

just imagine if someone said : Hey guys we need to rewrite the OS from scratch - lets talk about what to leave out this time. now that would soak up a bunch of comsci graduates working as bar keepers currently.

my current phone has MS Word and the Spreadsheet thingy - both update as about 60MB each on android - and if I ever (heaven forbid) do use either of them - they are perfectly functional - the same things on any computer (ie Cliffski's and mine) are - - - - - - how big?
 
rabbitBUSH said:
remember the conversation here the other day about Agile Systems ( or something like that ). my take on code bloat is that its agile business processes that causes this. i have a buddy who says that if he has to maintain a bit of his software that has been in service for two years - he rewrites the whole thing from scratch,. so TwitFace and that crowd are agile in the manner of filling in useless fancy luxuries dreamt up in Agile Sessions and "slotted in" between a bazillion other lines of code. (i wonder how much time they spend trying to locate the correct slot to use? no wonder we users experience what we do when the broken "update" arrives and breaks working stuff.)

just imagine if someone said : Hey guys we need to rewrite the OS from scratch - lets talk about what to leave out this time. now that would soak up a bunch of comsci graduates working as bar keepers currently.

my current phone has MS Word and the Spreadsheet thingy - both update as about 60MB each on android - and if I ever (heaven forbid) do use either of them - they are perfectly functional - the same things on any computer (ie Cliffski's and mine) are - - - - - - how big?
Click to expand...
Yes I understand.. I feel a lot is not needed in this modern tech era but keeps getting forced on everyone simply because of the big tech guys(fb, Google etc) says so...

I remember the era of programs been 10mb and having lots of functionalities but this days you download a software that is 1GB and you still need some magical additional update of 2.5GB to make it run...

For my personal projects or company projects, if the client doesn't specify, I don't use frameworks again.. They are slow and breaks on every version update.

I use core code or oop to achieve what I need and it runs perfectly, my app was made by me alone(100k downloads now) and it works perfectly compared to similar apps made by a 20 team members company and I still can't wrap my head around how this is possible... Like don't they test it at all?? I used B4a and Vue js and it has been awesome.

Crazy times in Tech.
 
FrostCodes said:
I remember the era of programs been 10mb
Click to expand...
Wow - you must be young! I remember us being awed by having our first hard disk of 10MB and wondering how we would ever fill it in the days when most programs would run in 32K or 64K of RAM. Turbo Pascal and dBase II on a Z80 with 64K RAM and running LDOS/TRSDOS or CP/M were amazing for their functionality
 
agraham said:
Wow - you must be young! I remember us being awed by having our first hard disk of 10MB and wondering how we would ever fill it in the days when most programs would run in 32K or 64K of RAM. Turbo Pascal and dBase II on a Z80 with 64K RAM and running LDOS/TRSDOS or CP/M were amazing for their functionality
Click to expand...
??? actually I grew up in the diskette era a bit but kind of wanted to give an example of a memory that is easy to relate to but yes I am young. ??

But it's so amazing how much power we have access to and yet everything is so slow... I started real coding on a cheap China knockoff phone years ago... And I built real websites and uploaded via ftp...

This days I hear my younger cousins complaining that they can't seem to code web apps(not even mobile or desktop apps) on their 4gb Ram laptops (some even 8gb) and I feel confused... For years I coded with 256M Ram then 512M desktop before I finally got a 1gb Ram laptop and it was perfectly ok for Vb6, Vb.net, Dbase, Logo and Co...

On my 8gb laptop with some good default graphics, it still freezes sometimes, it feels weird as I thought everything was going to be faster. This days, it's just people reinventing html in different formats I see everywhere.
 
Last edited:
agraham said:
Wow - you must be young! I remember us being awed by having our first hard disk of 10MB and wondering how we would ever fill it in the days when most programs would run in 32K or 64K of RAM. Turbo Pascal and dBase II on a Z80 with 64K RAM and running LDOS/TRSDOS or CP/M were amazing for their functionality
Click to expand...
I remember running a big spreadsheet on a Sharp PC3201 with CP/M board and Supercalc. I had to manually daisy-chain 3 spreadsheets together to get the result. CP/M + Supercalc + spreadsheet in 64K (admittedly with overlays).

First hard-disk machine I sold was an Apricot with 5Mb hard drive!
 
FrostCodes said:
This days, it's just people reinventing html in different formats I see everywhere.
Click to expand...
I recall finding a page some time go - an A to Z of - living half-dead and dead programming languages. It's quite long. It proved a comment I once heard - Why learn multiple code languages? They all do the same thing/s! Let's rather learn to code well - we can always learn new languages when we get bored.

I love it when we have these conversations and they turn into a competition to see who remembers the vaguest of equipment and configurations. (hêhê proves we're all getting older - have you noticed @Sandman 's avatar is getting grayer and grayer? )
 
I agree also that it's more important to learn how to code properly than learning a million languages, unfortunately this modern coding world doesn't seem to like this idea.

I believe that it's every 3 to 6 months that a new framework or language or system comes out and the whole tech ecosystem goes crazy and the learning process restarts. Sometimes it feels tiring not because one can't learn it but because you know that another one is coming out again in a few months.

To be honest while android sometimes breaks things, b4a does a great job at making your code run well, so big thanks to @Erel and the wonderful forum members.
 
agraham said:
Wow - you must be young! I remember us being awed by having our first hard disk of 10MB and wondering how we would ever fill it in the days when most programs would run in 32K or 64K of RAM. Turbo Pascal and dBase II on a Z80 with 64K RAM and running LDOS/TRSDOS or CP/M were amazing for their functionality
Click to expand...

I have you all beaten. My first computer (and first computer on campus) was a Sinclair ZX-80 with 1K RAM. The "OS" interface was an integer Basic that fit in a 4K ROM. Data storage was analog audio recorded onto a cassette tape. It had no discreet video processor, so every time you tapped a key the screen would blink. You couldn't do much with it, but it was the coolest thing ever.

I also used to work with the guy who found the first computer bug, the moth stuck in Grace Hopper's Mark II vacuum tubes.

All in all, I'd rather use B4X.
 
copanut said:
I have you all beaten
Click to expand...
Sorry but you haven't. My 'first computer' in 1968 was a Ferranti Argus 350 built with individual germanium transistors. It had a massive magnetic core store memory of 12K 24bit words and the only bulk storage was 5 hole paper tape.
 
My 'first computer' in 1968 was a Ferranti Argus 350
Click to expand...
WOW!. From a Ferranti to a Cray .. and now what do you use, a quantum computer? :)
Energy costs will be overwhelming, I guess..

Next October it will be exactly 40 years since I turned on my first computer (yes, I still have it with me..I'm planning to turn it on on its birthday and try to recall how to make it do something..anything..heheh)
 
Now that there's some sort of competition going on, I kind of think this is fitting. It's about editors, but the sentiment is there. :-)

1656943544104.png


Source: https://xkcd.com/378/

If one go to the source page and place the mouse pointer over the image, an alt-text shows up:
”Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.”

I can already see the incoming posts about real programmers use B4X. Yes, yes, we all know it. It's a comic, it doesn't accurately describe everybodys reality. :)
 
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