Is the era of "fat" software coming to an end?

Please do not treat the post too demanding, it was created soon for discussion in the comments and from personal interest.



The essence of the topic and the "news" is already clear to many from the title. Almost all of us have seen the development of operating systems, both Windows and * NIX. Development of application software. You did not have to be an expert to see that the software swells. The most simple comedic examples of course are the well-known NERO and ACDSee.



It concerns literally all software. And OS, and applied graphic and office, and sites. Almost all of us thought that this would happen forever, because the computing power of computers is growing, the memory, and the operational and disk becomes very cheap.

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But look what happens in the last couple of years. The latest versions of a lot of very popular software have become “lose weight”. Efficiency, speed of operation, minimalism of functions and simplicity, including the interface, have become new trends. The software is simplified. New development methods, new algorithms for garbage collection from code came. Cost-effective in the context of the two thousand years began to write small, laconic, concise applications. The KISS method prevailed, combines are no longer in vogue. Minimalistic applications that are understandable after a couple of minutes after installation are fashionable.



As for the Windows line, I remember this process. Old OSes will not be remembered, let's start with Vista. It was a swollen system with essentially sane ideas, which failed because it was clumsy on the Pentium 4 that was common at that time. Then there was a small revolution in the form of netbooks, and Microsoft even had to extend the life of Windows XP, because on weak computers with a minimum of memory and space, only she was possible. And the incredible happened to Windows 7. It was optimized. She worked slightly faster and more responsive than Vista. For the first time in history, the next version of the OS has become easier and faster. Togo demanded competition OSes with its predecessor. Microsoft has optimized the kernel, reduced memory consumption, download speed. Then there was Windows 8, which continued this trend. The era of tablet computers was approaching and again effective, including energy efficient and fast software was required.



Windows 10 requires and basically works well on 1 gigabyte of memory (version 32 bits). Fits on a 16 gigabyte partition. It's great.



Another important point. The software has become much better than it was in the 90s and 2000s. The number of critical bugs has decreased. Yes, the systems themselves are much more complicated, and constantly something does not work on trifles, but our computers can already work for a month without perazagruzki. Remember Windows 98. It could be rebooted every two hours. Hangs, friezes - it all goes away. Even browsers have stopped growing and are pretty smart. In simple terms - our computers are less buggy and freeze.



There are sites left. They continue to grow monstrously in the code, inefficient greasy frameworks are still used here, but the trend towards minimalism has begun in the fight for the visitor. Even here, Habr relatively recently has become more concise on the scale of its history, removing unnecessary elements. In design of sites the unnecessary heavy design graphics disappears. The era of text design, typography on the web is coming.



I specifically described only one software product, because the example makes it clear for what reasons this change occurs.



There are still any "heavy monsters" in professional software, for example, in financial, in DBMS, development tools. But there is a tendency to reduce the "weight" of programs and to simplify interfaces.



Actually I repeat, the post is quite banal. But in the comments I would like to know how things are with your used software, what you think about this, how you changed the programming style. And so on.



Sergey Mikhailov



PS Wonderful article from the comments habrahabr.ru/post/278655



- A small addition after the fact. Yes, I have described the highest trend. As you know, almost always the most innovative trends occur at the level of industry giants, developers of software technologies themselves, gradually penetrating lower levels, developers for small businesses, etc. That is, now on the Windows platform and, for example, Android, we can see a slightly noticeable fashion for software optimization. Also this is true for a separate popular software. So there is a trend. But there remains a question mark, which is placed in the title of the article.