COMPUTER SPEED GAINS ERASED BY MODERN SOFTWARE

[moniss]

5. Back in the late '90's and

early 2000's I used to read articles by Steve Gibson and other independent software developers who talked about how needlessly clumsy, bloated and inefficient software in general was becoming. Much of it seemed to revolve around whether people were writing their own code or just copying other code and more or less hammering it together for their "new wrinkle" and to make it work. I guess where they were coming from was that you can end up with programming that is needlessly bloated with things that have nothing to do with what you need for your "app" so to speak but the stuff is still consuming resources and interacting.

Good Lord just look at the size of the current Windows package versus XP for example. Yes I know about all of the changes but for a vast majority of computer users who are just browsing and using an occasional productivity program Windows 95 or XP was more than sufficient. Now we have the equivalent of gargantuan capability and consumption of resources even though most people are not using what's there.

It's somewhat similar to when I see people buying four wheel drive vehicles with high horsepower and torque when all of their driving is going to be on paved city streets in Miami. You get some car dealers who won't even stock a 2wd version any longer although it can be ordered. I read an article some years ago that surveyed purchasers of 4wd vehicles and asked them about their use of the feature and only a tiny fraction had used the feature even after 3 years or so of ownership.

So Microsoft is still mostly calling the tune and we end up paying gobs of money for gobs of capability that most of us will never need or use.