Comment by to11mtm
4 years ago
> However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage).
I'll give a counterpoint to this example; MineSweeper on the Windows Store.
Last time I took a look, the installation size of this app was more than a 'functional' install of the entire Windows 98 OS, including a slightly-less-colorful version of the same game.
Or, for a more 'Business' example. Autocad 2013+; it became bloated, frustrating to work with, and expensive.
> Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve?
In a 'happy path' fusion scenario, the best refrigerator design would be one with the lowest ozone depleting and/or greenhouse gas emitting setup, so long as the energy consumption was overall sustainable on the grid a lot of them were hooked up to.
Another example: Hacker News website vs. other websites.
It has perfect functionality but doesn't waste your time by loading bloatware for 10 seconds.
I have to question "perfect functionality".
Even 25 years ago, on Slashdot I could tell it not to show comments with less than a certain number of upvotes, and thus filter out a lot of the dross from busy conversations.
I can't do that on HN. I can do something like it on Reddit, although I know of no "expand all" functionality, but on HN it's all or nothing.
That is imperfect to say the least.