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RE: Bloatware (OT)



On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Chen Shapira wrote:

>
> BTW. I never saw a word processor that could pipe. They all read filesand
> output files from UI.

Here's one that sort-of pipes:

http://siag.nu/index.shtml

see:

http://siag.nu/online-docs/common/plugins.html

[Ilya: So this post is not entirely off-topic ;) ]

>
> > Feature bloat is very annoying, because you can't just take out the 80%
> > of the software that you don't need. You have cluttered menus (and the
> > Microsoft evil which is menus that change according to frequency of use
> > [shudder]), key combinations you have no chance of remembering, and a
> > huge total load time.

Oh, and you forgot the extra feature of configuring the menus and the key
bindings. Configurability usually requires some extra bloat :(

> > I think good software should be built from slim building blocks, of
> > which you can use only the ones you need. Another important factor is
> > integration between the various blocks.
>
> I think this is a basic programming dogma:
> "Every program is part of a larger program (and rarely fits)
>
> Modern software engneering is built around this concept, and all modern OS
> are trying to be a bunch of small building blocks,

Then why is it that I can't use a simple kedit of kde2 without a couple of
"helper" processes helping it?
Why is MS-Word such a big software? Isn't it a product of a
component-based model (where every seperate functionality is in its
seperate class, etc.)?
And mozilla fits in here just as well.

Building something out of small components does not necessarily mean that
you can use those components in a slim way.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir


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