Software Obesity (was Re: Jargon file v2.1.5)

[The Grey Wolf]

In article <1990Dec2.202402.21977 at decuac.dec.com> mjr at hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes:
>pst at ir.Stanford.EDU (Paul Traina) writes:
>
>>[...] It's natural
>>that sofware will grow and become more complex.  CPU's have done a
>>good job of keeping up.
>
>	I never could understand this attitude.
>
>	*WHY* is it natural that software will grow? *WHY* is it natural
>that it become more complex? *WHY* does it have to have ever more
>expensive processors to run on?

If for no other reason, *it will run FASTER*!  Eliminating the
features will make it do so, but think what the response time will be
if we take the stripped down version and run it on a faster processor!


>
>	Because the idea of eliminating old "features" has never been
>considered. If cars were designed the same way as software is today,
>they'd all have buggy-whip holders (from "Car V1.0") and starter cranks
>(from "Car V2.1") and electric ignitions (from "Car V3.0") and so on.

Or, worse yet, the idea of feeping creaturism seems to have truly per-
vaded our working environment (I'm guilty -- I use my own feature-laden
version of csh (which still runs faster than ksh!, but that's another
soapbox)).

>
>				 What I mean by *within its problem area* is
>to study text editors, for example, only in terms of their functionality
>as text editors - rather than as LISP interpreters or news readers. :)

Agreed!  (EMACS is *way* too klunky to justify its existence, even on
a fast machine.)

>			The fallacy here is the pursuit of the
>"integrated environment" - users are unwilling to have to exit
>their text editor to read news (for example) - but it's chicken
>and egg - possibly their unwillingness is a result of the incredible
>startup time their bloated text editor requires. :)

We have a solution to this which, even on windowing workstations, works
quite well.  It's called "job control".  (You don't have it?  Implement it --
it's a great exercise in programming!)

>	I don't quite know how it happened this way. Software,
>being unreal, is probably better able to fit together in modular
>components than just about anything else - yet I can walk to
>the hardware store, and buy a light switch that doesn't have an
>integrated timer/thermostat/LISP interpreter, and I can still
>build simple, elegant systems with only the functionality I
>need - at a reasonable cost. The designers of UNIX had it right,
>UNIX' modularity and simplicity made it ideal for handling just
>about anything except commercial success.

How about a reasonable archiver which provides a table of contents at
the beginning of the tape instead of making one read through the entire
tape to find out what's there, and without having to dump an entire
filesystem...?  (and make it tar compatible! :-)

(it's in the works!)

>
>mjr.
>-- 
>	If your windowing system is placing undue demands on your hardware
>and operating system, don't ask yourself what can be done to improve the
>operating system or hardware - ask yourself why you are using that windowing
>system.		[from the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990]

Because all the ones that run faster don't provide a suitably flexible
interface for my tastes.
-- 
On the 'Net:  Why are more and more fourth-level wizard(-wannabe)s trying to
invoke ninth-level magic, instead of taking the time to climb the other
(quite essential) thirteen levels so they can do this properly?
...!{ucbvax,acad,uunet,amdahl,pyramid}!unisoft!greywolf