Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Well, not always bloated necessarily. Sometimes it's just poorly designed. I know from personal experience being a part time programmer that you can have two different one line commands, and one can crush the processor, and the other can give you an almost instant result. It just depends on how well written the app is, and how lazy the programmer is. Sure, I tend to write my apps a bit heavy to start with, but at least I go back and tighten them up before I release them.
The problem is, optimization has become a lost art. Too many programmers have become far too used to being able to cheat and fall back on the processors superior processing capabilities. Why do you think some apps from 10 years ago run lightning fast on today's machines, and do nearly the same job as the brand new apps just released yesterday?
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That's a side effect of what you wouldn't expect: copyright and patents. Once you've sold X units of your device/software, you know that you have two alternatives: either you keep optimizing and improving the design of your current device (which is mainly costs with no big profits) or you just shove a new thing to the market, with the same bloated points than before, but with some new features which are enough to copyright it anew and win some profit. I.E copyright and patents oversubsidize innovation. Open source projects, not driven by this regime, tend to be updated, not scrapped and substituted with something "new".