Posted on 12/17/2001 4:33:52 AM PST by damnlimey
Rethinking 'Software Bloat' |
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Fred Langa takes a trip into his software archives and finds some surprises--at two orders of magnitude. By Fred Langa |
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Reader Randy King recently performed an unusual experiment that provided some really good end-of-the-year food for thought: I have an old Gateway here (120 MHz, 32 Mbytes RAM) that I "beefed up" to 128 Mbytes and loaded with--get ready--Win 95 OSR2. OMIGOD! This thing screams. I was in tears laughing at how darn fast that old operating system is. When you really look at it, there's not a whole lot missing from later operating systems that you can't add through some free or low-cost tools (such as an Advanced Launcher toolbar). Of course, Win95 is years before all the slop and bloat was added. I am saddened that more engineering for good solutions isn't performed in Redmond. Instead, it seems to be "code fast, make it work, hardware will catch up with anything we do" mentality.It was interesting to read about Randy's experiment, but it started an itch somewhere in the back of my mind. Something about it nagged at me, and I concluded there might be more to this than meets the eye. So, in search of an answer, I went digging in the closet where I store old software. Factors Of 100 When Windows 3.0 shipped, systems typically operated at around 25 MHz or so. Consider that today's top-of-the-line systems run at about 2 GHz. That's two orders of magnitude--100 times--faster. But today's software doesn't feel 100 times faster. Some things are faster than I remember in Windows 3.0, yes, but little (if anything) in the routine operations seems to echo the speed gains of the underlying hardware. Why? The answer--on the surface, no surprise--is in the size and complexity of the software. The complete Windows 3.0 operating system was a little less than 5 Mbytes total; it fit on four 1.2-Mbyte floppies. Compare that to current software. Today's Windows XP Professional comes on a setup CD filled with roughly 100 times as much code, a little less than 500 Mbytes total. That's an amazing symmetry. Today, we have a new operating system with roughly 100 times as much code as a decade ago, running on systems roughly 100 times as fast as a decade ago. By itself, those "factors of 100" are worthy of note, but they beg the question: Are we 100 times more productive than a decade ago? Are our systems 100 times more stable? Are we 100 times better off? While I believe that today's software is indeed better than that of a decade ago, I can't see how it's anywhere near 100 times better. Mostly, that two-orders-of-magnitude increase in code quantity is not matched by anything close to an equal increase in code quality. And software growth without obvious benefit is the very definition of "code bloat." What's Behind Today's Bloated Code? Instead, most of today's software is produced with high-level programming languages that often include code-automation tools, debugging routines, the ability to support projects of arbitrary scale, and so on. These tools can add an astonishing amount of baggage to the final code. This real-life example from the Association for Computing Machinery clearly shows the effects of bloat: A simple "Hello, World" program written in assembly comprises just 408 bytes. But the same "Hello, World" program written in Visual C++ takes fully 10,369 bytes--that's 25 times as much code! (For many more examples, see http://www.latech.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml. Or, for a more humorous but less-accurate look at the same phenomenon, see http://www.infiltec.com/j-h-wrld.htm. And, if you want to dive into Assembly language programming in any depth, you'll find this list of links helpful.) Human skill also affects bloat. Programming is wonderfully open-ended, with a multitude of ways to accomplish any given task. All the programming solutions may work, but some are far more efficient than others. A true master programmer may be able to accomplish in a couple lines of Zen-pure code what a less-skillful programmer might take dozens of lines to do. But true master programmers are also few and far between. The result is that code libraries get loaded with routines that work, but are less than optimal. The software produced with these libraries then institutionalizes and propagates these inefficiencies. You And I Are To Blame, Too! Take Windows. That lean 5-Mbyte version of Windows 3.0 was small, all right, but it couldn't even play a CD without add-on third-party software. Today's Windows can play data and music CDs, and even burn new ones. Windows 3.0 could only make primitive noises (bleeps and bloops) through the system speaker; today's Windows handles all manner of audio and video with relative ease. Early Windows had no built-in networking support; today's version natively supports a wide range of networking types and protocols. These--and many more built-in tools and capabilities we've come to expect--all help bulk up the operating system. What's more, as each version of Windows gained new features, we insisted that it also retain compatibility with most of the hardware and software that had gone before. This never-ending aggregation of new code atop old eventually resulted in Windows 98, by far the most generally compatible operating system ever--able to run a huge range of software on a vast array of hardware. But what Windows 98 delivered in utility and compatibility came at the expense of simplicity, efficiency, and stability. It's not just Windows. No operating system is immune to this kind of featuritis. Take Linux, for example. Although Linux can do more with less hardware than can Windows, a full-blown, general-purpose Linux workstation installation (complete with graphical interface and an array of the same kinds of tools and features that we've come to expect on our desktops) is hardly what you'd call "svelte." The current mainstream Red Hat 7.2 distribution, for example, calls for 64 Mbytes of RAM and 1.5-2 Gbytes of disk space, which also happens to be the rock-bottom minimum requirement for Windows XP. Other Linux distributions ship on as many as seven CDs. That's right: Seven! If that's not rampant featuritis, I don't know what is. Is The Future Fat Or Lean? But there are signs that we may have reached some kind of plateau with the simpler forms of code bloat. For example, with Windows XP, Microsoft has abandoned portions of its legacy support. With fewer variables to contend with, the result is a more stable, reliable operating system. And over time, with fewer and fewer legacy products to support, there's at least the potential for Windows bloat to slow or even stop. Linux tends to be self-correcting. If code-bloat becomes an issue within the Linux community, someone will develop some kind of a "skinny penguin" distribution that will pare away the needless code. (Indeed, there already are special-purpose Linux distributions that fit on just a floppy or two.) While it's way too soon to declare that we've seen the end of code bloat, I believe the signs are hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, the "code fast, make it work, hardware will catch up" mentality will die out, and our hardware can finally get ahead of the curve. Maybe, just maybe, software inefficiency won't consume the next couple orders of magnitude of hardware horsepower. What's your take? What's the worst example of bloat you know of? Are any companies producing lean, tight code anymore? Do you think code bloat is the result of the forces Fred outlines, or it more a matter of institutional sloppiness on the part of Microsoft and other software vendors? Do you think code bloat will reach a plateau, or will it continue indefinitely? Join in the discussion! |
I do. Smaller is better.
Every line of code has a finite chance of having a defect. Every defect has a finite chance of remaining undetected in the released product. Every released defect has a finite chance of causing unintended operation. But you and Mr. Gates apparently aren't too worried about that.
Everyone wants behemoth sized and gadget packed goods, rather than efficient and simplistic wares.
Seems like more of status symbol than practicality. Get XP and brag in your hood today!
Storage was a tape recorder
It had many useful (at the time) programs, and using basic I was able to write my own, well within the limits of the machine.
However I wanted more. Each new machine gave me more hard drive space, when I had my first computer with 4 MB of hard drive I wondered how I would ever fill the space. Well I did. My previous computer had 9 GB of harddrive, and when I got it I did not think it would be possible to ever fill the space, well I did.
My current computer has 80 GB, and I no longer wonder if I will ever fill the space, but wonder how long will it be before I have to start deleteing files.
I am looking forward to my first "80 Terabyte" hard drive.
The point is, as any project will expand for the time alloted it, and hard drive, no matter how big will get filled. As long as the price of hard drives falls as the size of the hard drive increases, I no longer worry about bloat ware.
:-}
#include "iostream.h"
int main(int argc,char **argv) { cout << "Hello world"; }
The executable is 8800 bytes in Solaris 2.6. However, most of that is part of the necessary overhead to communicate with the OS via the linked-in library. If you wrote all the library code yourself, you'd be wasting a lot of time and introducing unnecessary bugs.
The whole point of OO is really the optimize the efficiency of writing code and the liklihood that it will work correctly. If you write clean C++, the executables might be somewhat larger, but they will run very fast.
Streaming video.
Quake III.
Video conferencing.
MP3s.
DVDs.
CD burning.
Video editing.
Pause/rewind live TV.
...and plenty more, all doable within minutes of unboxing a new PC.
Oh sure, there's plenty of bloat. You don't need a large percentage of what disk space gets allocated for. Pounding out a quick memo doesn't need more than the first word processor run on an Apple II. But...compare the size proportions between commonly used applications and the data files they handle. The music you're listening to is likely a 5MB .MP3 (out of a collection spanning gigabytes); the LotR trailer you'll watch during lunch is about 50MB; the Unreal Tournament session you'll play this evening chews up 500MB in maps & related data files ... and none of these apps could be reasonably, conveniently be run on the relatively svelt machines of the past.
Complaints of "bloat" have appeared with every upgrade. Sure it all gets bigger...yet there's no question that there's more functionality in the straining load in my 700MHz, 20GB laptop than the PS/2 collecting dust in my brother's basement - that's WHY the older machines are mostly collecting dust: the "bloatware" machines actually do more.
I actually have one more thing to add to this discussion -- OO programming also can increase code size tremendously, in return for adding flexibility, stability and code reusability.
Tweaking a program for optimal speed always means doing serious damage to your OO architecture. Before about 2 or 3 years ago, good OO design was typically non-existent. The new languages, Java and C#, are forcing developers to begin to understand and use solid OO design. Which will be slightly slower code than pure optimized code. But the benefits are thru the roof!
So I would say that, in and of itself, code size isn't a very useful way to measure software quality.
Features, ease of use, stability, flexibility, scalability, solid componentize architecture . . . these are the 'measurements' of software quality.
If you just apply these to MS software, I think you find the *real* proof that their software is low quality.
But just being 'big' doesn't necessarily mean 'bad'. In good software, 'bigger' should mean more functional.
Use vi...it works fine < /grin>
Many people might not remember this, but one of the main reasons argued for graphical interfaces was that by building all that code into the OS, programs would be able to share & re-use code so effectively that programs would GET SMALLER!
Hmmm. Didn't seem to happen.
Mark W.
Serious question for you. Do you sell or market Microsoft products ?
I use the same word processor program I used ten years ago. The new machine is ten times faster and has ten times the memory and storage capacity of the old machine.
However, the new machine is not ten times faster, or ten times better. While I can certainly pick up 'obsolete' machines for the cheap, no one is making new machines that can do what my old one did for one-tenth the cost. Indeed, to do exactly what I do now with my current machine, I'd have to spend just as much -- though two or three Moore generations have passed since I bought my last machine.
Is this 'running twice as fast to stay in the same place' what Moore had in mind?
Just because you don't use new capabilities doesn't mean new machines are aren't more capable.
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