[geeks] Software Bloat

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, December 17, 2001 at 15:37:39 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Software Bloat
>
> I fail to see how wide scale forcing is going on.

read what Judge Jackson had to say on this issue (at least I think it
was him who also made these conclusions).

>  My home machines work just
> fine with a minimum of MS Ware, and the one completely MS notebook I use 
> doesn't have a single line of MS code newer than 5 years old.

Sure I know people still running M$-Win-3.x, but they're not "mainstream"

Try building any sized IT department on M$ products and staying with
5-year old M$ products do to it.  You'd be laughed out of the boardroom
by your users, if not fired on the spot.  If an IT person is going to
play it safe by buying from a mega-corp then they really do have to buy
the current stuff and update it _before_ their users complain.

> If by forcing, you are refering to people trying to send you new Word files,
> then try to use your local word processor to open them, and if that doesn't 
> word, log onto the companies conversion server.  (cluster of IIS machines 
> running the latest version of Office for converting documents out to saner 
> formats).

There you go, case closed -- someone had to buy that new software, right?

> > The other more tangible (i.e. measurable, monitarily) problem with
> > software bloat is that it makes software complex and hard to use.
> 
> I maintain that the chief cause of software being hard to use is 
> maintainability.

Nope.  You're using a circular argument.

you can write a brand new program, right from scratch, with the most
beautiful and maintainable internals, and it can still be bloated and
thus it'll still be too complex and too hard to use effectively.

Of course part of what's meant by the word "bloat" is a change in size,
and that's the real problem -- bloat usualy affects both the internals
and the usability, making software both hard to maintain and hard to use.

> I have a 10mbit switched lan, and I never have had trouble with streaming MP3s
> off the server using XMMS.  I'm sure experiences vary.  I really mainly use
> gcd since XMMS's CDaudio driver has a bug that cause loud pops between tracks.

You're not understanding what I'm doing -- I'm not streaming MP3's off
the server.  I'm playing MP3s to an Xterm with the Xterm also displaying
all the fancy graphics.

Try running xmms on that server instead of on your workstation.

> Microsoft does not have a warehouse full of monkeys.  They give those monkeys
> nicer offices than most of us get.

	:-)

> As to emacs, perhaps I was mistaken about it's maintainability.  Sometimes I 
> think emacs tries to do too much.  Specifically, it sets itself up as an editor
> and builds its UI around that, but for some tasks more is needed.

Emacs doesn't try to do too much -- it's about at the right level.

Emacs users do try to do too much with it though.  Some idiots live
their entire online life in emacs!  (even I, who reads and writes my
e-mail, does usenet, IRC, etc. all in emacs, still refuses to use that
bloody stupid shell window!  I don't even use dired very much! :-)

>  For one 
> thing, it is extremely usefull to be able to be more graphical than emacs is
> meant to be.

Perhaps you don't use a modern Emacs under X11?  I have full graphical
menus and mouse support, image support (eg. for MIME attachments), etc.,
etc., etc.

>  Plus, it is very complex and hard to use

It's not hard at all to use emacs as a text editor -- much easier than
most any other editor around!

>, and the help system 
> isn't easy to use.

that's one part of emacs that's getting easier to use, especially with
mouse support.....

>  The documentation is readable enough to me, but I always
> find it difficult to remeber how to navigate.  I think that Help should in 
> general be GUI based if possible, and if not, well, I don't know.

It is!  ;-)

> Still haven't had a chance to look at Ruby.  Aside from better library support
> (such as GTK and GNOME), what makes Ruby better for you than scheme?  Python?

Ruby is a really nice and proper object oriented language (though it's
not quite as deeply OO as smalltalk)

It beats the snot out of python for syntax and beauty, and it's
infinitely easier for non-lisp programmers to use than scheme.

> Also, is the superior libraries for Ruby because Ruby makes it unusually easy
> to create, or some other reason?

Ruby code is really easy to read and write (except for a few silly
tricks that some programmers like to use).

> I hack some with smalltalk.  I like it's purity, especially in the case of
> squeak, but I don't find it the most readable

Once upon a time smalltalk was more readable than most other languages
of the day, but it looks a little baroque to some people these days.

>, nor do I find squeak to be
> navigatable.

Squeak as opposed to.....?????

All smalltalks have much better navigation ability than almost any other
integrated development environment I've ever even heard of!

You do need to read a good guide to the programming environment though
before you can get comfortable with the paradigms.

>  If the squeak people could hack in a manor to write and execute
> machine code from inside the system (IE, so that every little extension doesn't
> require a recompile of the VM), then it could make a pretty cool little OS.

Either you're confused, or you don't know about dynamic loading.....

There's also already a Squeak that runs on bare metal....

There are some things that you just don't want to touch though, and some
of what you seem to suggest would be so damn dangerous that it would be
too insecure to even consider.....

> Now, one interesting thing I keep hearing about python is that it has fully 
> formed s-expressions underneith, and that it is possible to access them from
> python code.

Does that really mean anything in Python's case?  It's certainly not the
degree of freedom afforded by lisp or smalltalk!

>  Further, it has first class functions, although I should probably
> verify that this means what I think it means before I blather too much more.

Ruby's better.  :-)

> It has been suggested that python is what lisp was intended to be.

Oh no, that could never be.....

That might be what people caught up in python's details might like to
think, but they're sadly mistaken...   :-)

>  In 
> particular, reportedly McCarthy didn't mean for people to be typing 
> s-expressions forever, he meant to have an actuall syntax on top that then got
> parsed into the lisp s-expressions before execution.  This could be just 
> heresay though.

>From what I recall there's something to what you say.  I think smalltalk
did a much better job of doing that extra level though.  If you look
deeply enough into smalltalk you'll find it's syntax is just a layer of
messages sent to objects.

> I also would be interested in having someone explain to me why they feel that
> Smalltalk is superior to python someday.

Well for one Python's syntax sucks dead bears through drinking straws.
The only thing worse (other than perl, of course) is TCL.

For another there's this god-awful opaque interpreter and internal
magic.  You might be able to write the Python interpreter in Python, but
it would be a hack, as opposed to writing a smalltalk VM in smalltalk,
which is actually quite a beautiful thing.

> But, not all users can or want to do with less.  What is needed is to teach 
> people to make do with what they can handle, then tackle new things as they can
> use them.  My father is a good example of someone who would have been hard 
> pressed to try to make do with much less in Excel (I don't think he used the
> charting tool though) at his previous job.  And physics people use a whole 
> different set of features.

You're partly there -- what's necessary is to break out of this "market
share" madness that the big software vendors have forced upon themselves.

> With my extensible idea, I would ship a barebones spreadsheet.  It would have
> a fully programmable scripting language, and easy methods for calling external
> code, but other than that, little more than a grid, some basic calculation 
> tools, and some super simple charting options. 

Yes, exactly.  Unfortunately the M$'s of the world don't see it that
way.  They want to gain market share for everything and they see the way
to do that is to bundle everything up into one godawful gargantuan
bloated mess.

> I started reading that, but only got to the part where they discussed having
> the old corporation be a majority partner in the limited liability partnership,
> with all the founders as minority partners, so that the IRS wouldn't tax them
> like a corportation, but if things went wrong, the corporation would take the
> legal fall rather than the individuals.  Very interesting stuff.  I should dig
> it up and read more.

I stared reading it because of the reference to lisp (I always knew it
was there in AutoCAD, but not why), and then back-tracked to read the
bits about forming the corporation, and finally read the bits about
where it's come to more recently, and why.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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