Software bloat
Encyclopedia
Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program
include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.
s involved in the industry during the 1970s had severe limitations on disk space and memory. Every byte
and clock cycle counted, and much work went into fitting the programs into available resources. Achieving this efficiency was one of the highest values of computer programmers, and the best programs were often called "elegant;" —seen as a form of high art.
This situation has now reversed. Resources are perceived as cheap, and rapidity of coding and headline features for marketing are seen as priorities. In part, this is because technological advances have since increased processing capacity and storage density by orders of magnitude, while reducing the relative costs by similar orders of magnitude (see Moore's Law
). Additionally, the spread of computers through all levels of business and home life has produced a software industry many times larger than it was in the 1970s. Programs are now usually churned out by teams, directed by committees in software factories where each programmer works on only a part of the whole, on one or more subroutine
. Thus today; the highest value is often the adherence to a predetermined structure that makes it compliant, —with subroutines as interchangeable as piston rods. Inelegant, even sloppy code is to some degree hidden from the end users by the increasing brute force and speed of modern computers. (There is little payoff to say, ...increase the speed of a sloppy five-millisecond subroutine —even by a factor of 100.)
Finally, software development tools and approaches often result in changes throughout a program to accommodate each feature, leading to a large-scale inclusion of code which affects the main operation of the software, and is required in order to support functions that themselves may be only rarely used. In particular, the advances in resources available have led to tools which allow easier development of code, again; with less priority given to end efficiency.
Another cause of bloat is independently competing standards and products, which can create a demand for integration. There are now more operating systems, browsers, protocols, and storage formats than there were before, causing bloat in programs due to interoperability issues. For example, a program that once could only save in text format is now demanded to save in HTML, XML, XLS, CSV, PDF, DOC, and other formats.
Niklaus Wirth
has summed up the situation in Wirth's Law
, which states that software speed is decreasing more quickly than hardware speed is increasing.
In his 2001 essay Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth, Joel Spolsky
argues that while 80% of the users only use 20% of the features (a variant on the Pareto principle
), each one uses different features. Thus, "lite" software editions turn out to be useless for most, as they miss the one or two special features that are present in the "bloated" version. Spolsky sums the article with a quote by Jamie Zawinski
referring to the Mozilla Application Suite (which later became Netscape
):
Software bloat may also be a symptom of the second-system effect
, described by Fred Brooks
in The Mythical Man-Month
.
Apple's iTunes
has been accused of being bloated as part of its efforts to turn it from a program that plays media to an e-commerce and advertising platform, with former PC World editor Ed Bott, author of 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, accusing the company of hypocrisy in its advertising attacks on Windows for similar practices.
Microsoft Windows
has also been criticized as being bloated - with reference to Windows Vista
, Microsoft engineer Eric Traut
commented that "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that's maybe a fair characterization, I have to admit. ... But at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined." Former PC World editor Ed Bott has expressed skepticism, noting that almost every single operating system that Microsoft has ever sold had been criticized as 'bloated' when it first came out; even those now regarded as the exact opposite, such as MS-DOS
.
CD- and DVD-burning applications such as Nero Burning ROM
have become criticized for being bloated.
Superfluous features not specifically tailored to the end user are sometimes installed by default through express setups.
A number of technology blogs have also covered the issue of increased bloatware on cell phones. However, they refer to a different issue, specifically that of wireless carriers loading phones with software that, in many cases, cannot be easily deleted, if at all. This has been most frequently cited with respect to Android devices, although this phenomenon exists on phones running many other operating systems.
and Winamp
, package additional functionality in plug-ins, extensions or add-ons which are downloaded separately from the main application. These can be created by the software developer and often by third parties. Plug-ins enable extra functionality which might have otherwise been packaged in the main program.
Allowing extensions reduces the space used on any one machine, because even though the application plus the "plug-in interface" plus all the plug-ins is larger than the same functionality compiled into one monolithic application, it allows each user to install only the particular add-on features required by that user, rather than force every user to install a much larger monolithic application that includes 100% of the available features.
Open source software may use a similar technique using preprocessor directives to selectively include features at compile time. This is easier to implement than a plugin system, but has the disadvantage that a user who wants a specific set of features must compile the program from source.
Sometimes software becomes bloated because of "creeping featurism" (Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment), also called bullet-point engineering
. One way to reduce that kind of bloat is described by the Unix philosophy
: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well".
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...
include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.
Causes
Software developerSoftware developer
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
s involved in the industry during the 1970s had severe limitations on disk space and memory. Every byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
and clock cycle counted, and much work went into fitting the programs into available resources. Achieving this efficiency was one of the highest values of computer programmers, and the best programs were often called "elegant;" —seen as a form of high art.
This situation has now reversed. Resources are perceived as cheap, and rapidity of coding and headline features for marketing are seen as priorities. In part, this is because technological advances have since increased processing capacity and storage density by orders of magnitude, while reducing the relative costs by similar orders of magnitude (see Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
). Additionally, the spread of computers through all levels of business and home life has produced a software industry many times larger than it was in the 1970s. Programs are now usually churned out by teams, directed by committees in software factories where each programmer works on only a part of the whole, on one or more subroutine
Subroutine
In computer science, a subroutine is a portion of code within a larger program that performs a specific task and is relatively independent of the remaining code....
. Thus today; the highest value is often the adherence to a predetermined structure that makes it compliant, —with subroutines as interchangeable as piston rods. Inelegant, even sloppy code is to some degree hidden from the end users by the increasing brute force and speed of modern computers. (There is little payoff to say, ...increase the speed of a sloppy five-millisecond subroutine —even by a factor of 100.)
Finally, software development tools and approaches often result in changes throughout a program to accommodate each feature, leading to a large-scale inclusion of code which affects the main operation of the software, and is required in order to support functions that themselves may be only rarely used. In particular, the advances in resources available have led to tools which allow easier development of code, again; with less priority given to end efficiency.
Another cause of bloat is independently competing standards and products, which can create a demand for integration. There are now more operating systems, browsers, protocols, and storage formats than there were before, causing bloat in programs due to interoperability issues. For example, a program that once could only save in text format is now demanded to save in HTML, XML, XLS, CSV, PDF, DOC, and other formats.
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth...
has summed up the situation in Wirth's Law
Wirth's law
Wirth's law is a computing adage made popular by Niklaus Wirth in 1995:Wirth attributed the saying to Martin Reiser, who, in the preface to his book on the Oberon System, wrote: The hope is that the progress in hardware will cure all software ills...
, which states that software speed is decreasing more quickly than hardware speed is increasing.
In his 2001 essay Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth, Joel Spolsky
Joel Spolsky
Avram Joel Spolsky is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of Joel on Software, a blog on software development. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team between 1991 and 1994. He later founded Fog Creek Software in 2000 and launched the Joel on Software blog...
argues that while 80% of the users only use 20% of the features (a variant on the Pareto principle
Pareto principle
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.Business-management consultant Joseph M...
), each one uses different features. Thus, "lite" software editions turn out to be useless for most, as they miss the one or two special features that are present in the "bloated" version. Spolsky sums the article with a quote by Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski , commonly known as jwz, is a former professional American computer programmer responsible for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser...
referring to the Mozilla Application Suite (which later became Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
):
"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal when we wrote Mozilla."
Software bloat may also be a symptom of the second-system effect
Second-system effect
The second-system effect refers to the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors. The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical Man-Month...
, described by Fred Brooks
Fred Brooks
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. is a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month...
in The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"...
.
Examples
| Windows version | Processor | Memory | Hard disk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 95 Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products... |
25 MHz | 4 MB | ~50 MB |
| Windows 98 Windows 98 Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid... |
66 MHz | 16 MB | ~200 MB |
| Windows 2000 Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the... |
133 MHz | 32 MB | 650 MB |
| Windows XP Windows XP Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base... (2001) |
233 MHz | 64 MB | 1.5 GB |
| Windows Vista Windows Vista Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs... (2007) |
800 MHz | 512 MB | 15 GB |
| Windows 7 (2009) | 1 GHz | 1 GB | 16 GB |
Apple's iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
has been accused of being bloated as part of its efforts to turn it from a program that plays media to an e-commerce and advertising platform, with former PC World editor Ed Bott, author of 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, accusing the company of hypocrisy in its advertising attacks on Windows for similar practices.
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
has also been criticized as being bloated - with reference to Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
, Microsoft engineer Eric Traut
Eric Traut
Eric Traut is an American software engineer and software emulation pioneer. Traut graduated from Stanford University in 1992. From 1993 to 1995 he worked for Apple Computer, creating a Mac 68K emulator to be used in PowerPC-based Macintoshes...
commented that "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that's maybe a fair characterization, I have to admit. ... But at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined." Former PC World editor Ed Bott has expressed skepticism, noting that almost every single operating system that Microsoft has ever sold had been criticized as 'bloated' when it first came out; even those now regarded as the exact opposite, such as MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
.
CD- and DVD-burning applications such as Nero Burning ROM
Nero Burning ROM
Nero Multimedia Suite is a popular software suite for Microsoft Windows by Nero AG . Version 10 of this product was released in April 2010.- Included products :The following applications are included in Nero 11 :Disc authoring...
have become criticized for being bloated.
Superfluous features not specifically tailored to the end user are sometimes installed by default through express setups.
A number of technology blogs have also covered the issue of increased bloatware on cell phones. However, they refer to a different issue, specifically that of wireless carriers loading phones with software that, in many cases, cannot be easily deleted, if at all. This has been most frequently cited with respect to Android devices, although this phenomenon exists on phones running many other operating systems.
Alternatives to software bloat
Some applications, such as Mozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and Winamp
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
, package additional functionality in plug-ins, extensions or add-ons which are downloaded separately from the main application. These can be created by the software developer and often by third parties. Plug-ins enable extra functionality which might have otherwise been packaged in the main program.
Allowing extensions reduces the space used on any one machine, because even though the application plus the "plug-in interface" plus all the plug-ins is larger than the same functionality compiled into one monolithic application, it allows each user to install only the particular add-on features required by that user, rather than force every user to install a much larger monolithic application that includes 100% of the available features.
Open source software may use a similar technique using preprocessor directives to selectively include features at compile time. This is easier to implement than a plugin system, but has the disadvantage that a user who wants a specific set of features must compile the program from source.
Sometimes software becomes bloated because of "creeping featurism" (Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment), also called bullet-point engineering
Bullet-point engineering
Bullet-point engineering is a software design anti-pattern where developers use the features of competing software packages as checklists of features to implement in their own product. These features are often implemented poorly and haphazardly, without any real design, merely so they can be added...
. One way to reduce that kind of bloat is described by the Unix philosophy
Unix philosophy
The Unix philosophy is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to developing software based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system.-McIlroy: A Quarter Century of Unix:...
: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well".
See also
- Code bloatCode bloatCode bloat is the production of code that is perceived as unnecessarily long, slow, or otherwise wasteful of resources. Code bloat can be caused by inadequacies in the language in which the code is written, inadequacies in the compiler used to compile the code, or by a programmer...
- Computing minimalismComputing minimalismIn computing, minimalism refers to the application of minimalist philosophies and principles in hardware and software design and usage.-History:...
- Feature creep
- Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment
- Bullet-point engineeringBullet-point engineeringBullet-point engineering is a software design anti-pattern where developers use the features of competing software packages as checklists of features to implement in their own product. These features are often implemented poorly and haphazardly, without any real design, merely so they can be added...
- Enhanced remakeEnhanced remakeA video game remake is a game closely adapted from an earlier title, usually for the purpose of modernizing a game for newer hardware and contemporary audiences. Typically, a remake shares essentially the same title, fundamental gameplay concepts, and story elements of the original game...