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Fallacies that advocate software bloat (Miscellaneous)

posted by bencollver Homepage, 25.12.2025, 16:28

> On UNIX, ed would read the whole file into memory. Thus, sed was born to
> only read a line at a time (for bigger files). Gone are the days when slim
> software was valuable. Gone are the days of trying to cram something useful
> into CP/M (or DOS 640k or IA-32's 4 GB of RAM). Firefox doesn't even make
> 32-bit builds on Linux anymore.
>
> I'm not really raging, but it's sad how bloated we've gotten. Optimization
> takes time, and some people just aren't willing to do it.
I enjoyed your "not rant". Regarding UNIX ed(1) reading the whole file into memory, i imagine one could use mmap(2) on newer hardware to let the OS manage which parts of the file are in memory or not.

Optimization is a response to constraints. Severe constraints force "rationing" of resources, similar to fiscal responsibility. There can be a zen-like beauty in choosing what to omit, versus Everything Everywhere All Of The Time!!@!

Under a minimalist philosophy that appreciates zen-like beauty, ed(1) might be seen as a tool intended for editing source code. Having a single source file larger than total memory might be taken as a sign that the code needs to be re-factored into a more modular design. :-P

"Did it break when you did that? Don't do that then."

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