27 Oct
2017
27 Oct
'17
11:51 p.m.
On Friday, October 27, 2017, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Oct 2017, Clem Cole wrote:
And to simplify that ... s/operating systems/SW/
Well, yeah. Has M$ Word even really gotten much in the way of new
features since version 6 in the early 1990s? But it's sure gotten
bigger... And that seems the way of software in general.
We don't even have to look at M$. We can look at our own backyard and find
the same pattern. UNIX in the 70s was small and simple, the same way Linux
kernel was small and simple in the early 90s. Now it is a bloated,
fat monster.
It seems that it is very hard to avoid bloat in the software world in the
long run. Most people don't care, but the original UNIX and C, Plan 9 and
Go projects could be one of the few I can think of that really cared about
minimalism. It is interesting to note that they were built by the
very same group of people.
Minimalism is the main word here. If you read personal website of Charles
Forsyth then you will notice he mentions it explicitly as his "overarching
theme". That is the secret key to beauty and elegance in the software
world.
--Andy