hardware vs. software

I have recently reinstalled OS, and i was once again reminded how most of the software development companies suck donkey balls by making stupid oversized and bulky software. Over time simple software grew in size and (unwanted) capabilities and is cluttering memory and everything else on the computer. First versions of, for example, Winamp and Nero Burning Rom, were awesome. Winamp played my MP3s and Nero burned my CDs. They loaded lightning fast, took no memory space whatsoever, and were non obtrusive. Today, after i reinstall my OS, i postpone as much as it is possible installation of such software.

New version of Nero has so much stupid features that my head hurts when i double click the install file, and i would rather use Winamp 2.0 then this “next generation” crap. And the core functionality of them is the same, they still play MP3s and burn CDs. Percentage-wise, old Winamp took about 2% of my RAM when my memory was measured in few megabytes. Today, when my RAM measures gigabytes, Winamp still takes about 2% of my RAM. Hello? Where is the progress in that? One good example is Photoshop’s “Batch” ability. Photoshop can save an action (for example, resizing image to 50% of original size), and then you can apply that action to an entire folder of images. Photoshop opens each image, resizes it, saves, closes that image, and opens up new one, until all the images are processed. I swear that 6 years ago, running hardware that is at least 50 times inferior than my box today and running up to date Photoshop (then and now), it took SAME amount of time to do that as it does today.

Software developers will defend their point of view by saying “Well, we got more hardware resources (memory, disk space, CPU), so we are using it”. I say – NO dudes, NO, we got more hardware resources so we can run things FASTER, not run them at the same speed we were running them 10 years ago just because new crappy features were added. What is the point of upgrading hardware, when new software instantly kills your computer?

Daemon, out.