What does it mean to inflate an application?

Question

I myself blamed the bloating claims, but is this really a problem with the app? A few years ago, I blamed Microsoft for producing "bloated code" without actually having that code. Minor, I know.

Now I feel that the challenge of something “bloated” without concrete constructive criticism comes down to a child’s name. This is how to say: “You - the application is stupid”, but not understanding how it can be made non-stupid.

Even when the stack overflows, I sometimes see criticism like: "This application is so bloated and I hate it," blah, blah ...

Is the "bloated" label valid, constructive, or useful in the smallest bit? I think that "bloating" is really an imaginary problem, especially if you apply criticism to the application, and not the source code.

I understand that the code itself can be bloated and written in a way that can be verbose and even slower to execute. But is it possible to characterize the application as bloated? No matter what happens, saying that the application is slow or has too many features or is confusing ... Specific criticisms seem more useful and helpful in the discussion.

What does it mean to be bloated or why do people insist on using this vague adjective to describe the application?

Answer 1

I think a common understanding of a bloated application is one that includes many features that the "I" do not want or do not use, which makes the application use more of my memory and disk space than necessary.

In this definition, the code itself does not matter. However, if you were talking about bloated code, the definition is likely to be changed to "use more code than necessary to do the job."

In any case, you will need to at least refer to a function or code that is not needed if you want to have a productive discussion.

Answer 2

IMHO, a bloated application typically refers to one that deviates far beyond the original goal. For example, if you have an email program that suddenly begins to want to handle things like playing music and video, it is probably "bloated." People get upset about things like usual because it slows down the use of people who just want to receive emails and usually complicate the interface.

Answer 3

Violation of KISS and DRY principles

Answer 4

I am "bloated" = "creep function". those. when the main functionality is lost behind all the added tricks, etc.

Answer 5

Jamie Zawinski of Netscape's fame said this, which is much more clear than anything I could think of. ( full text )

Conveniently, if that were true, Mozilla is small because he is full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the internet is big. There are many small, poor network browsers that, by the way, have almost nothing useful. If this is what you need, you have options ...

Bloat is a derogatory term that is often used in a meaningless way to describe the reaction to software. The reason I'm talking about is not objective, because the utility of the application is relative to the software user .

However, not everything is relative, and inflation, of course, is not imaginary. If most of the users you plan to target find your software overwhelmingly complex, a "bloated" tag would be appropriate.

IMHO, there are two things to keep in mind: firstly, developers! = Users. What we consider bloated almost always does not matter (unless it is an IDE or other programming tool). Secondly, what some consider inflating, others consider necessary.

Answer 6

I do not think that there is one definition - there are at least 2 well-understood definitions of software bloat that are both active and often used simultaneously. The definition of what is used is a matter of context.

I would define them as:

"Microsoft Word Bloat"
In which part of the software provides more functions, then any user can ever expect to use it.

To a lesser extent, it is software that requires this functionality (in Word, everyone uses only 20% of the functions, but these are different 20%). The software often tries to counteract the effects of bloat by only revealing functionality selectively - older versions of Word used a customization toolbar that allowed users to place 20% in a convenient place, while Microsoft has recently pursued the concept of tape helping manage large volumes of functionality.

On the bad side, it is software that simply dumps additional features because it seemed tidy for a few seconds, due to the general usability of the system. A common symptom of this is a mega-dialog filled with various options and configurations (which makes Word both a smaller and a worse example). It can also prove to be an application with many new products, but it is noticeably devoid of key or obvious functions (for example, XO-1 and its acoustic tape)

"Adobe Reader Bloat"
In which part of the software consumes a large number of quantitative computing resources (memory, processor time, hard disk space) to perform a task that can be implemented in a functionally identical way using a less resource-intensive application.

On a smaller scale, this application is simply not skinny - programmers have chosen reliability and maintainability, only optmizing when there is a clear gain (for example, reducing the hard disk area from 10.4 MB to 10.3 MB with a high cost of code, complexity will not be a positive compromise )

On the downside, there is software that is simply poorly written - the uber example is typical in a VB home application, which takes 10 minutes to complete a database operation because it draws each record at a time (each time using a new connection!) Instead of issuing one UPDATE statement.

Answer 7

"Swollen" for an application usually means "has more features than I personally will use." That applications like Microsoft Word hit him all the time. For those who will never use their word processor to create a web page, the ability to do so is bloat. For those who use only a word processor to create web pages, the ability to merge can be "bloated."

There is an argument to be made for smaller, more modular applications. But, for the most part, "bloated" = "multifunctional."

Answer 8

I'm starting to think that the application is bloated when it is difficult for him to find his way through the menu system, or the performance starts to deteriorate due to new interesting functions.

Another way to say that when I start to think that “it should be part of the addin / plugin”, the application starts to bloat.

Answer 9

For me, a bloated application is full of courageous functions that do not actually belong (as I see) to the application, which cannot be disabled (or at least hidden), and would be better as a plugin / add-on,

And / or that the application is generally created / encoded inefficiently, wasting resources or something else.

Answer 10

I am really working to inflate a project right now. It is not that any encoding was incorrect or even redundant. It’s just that people who solved all the functions were absent in the architecture. This means that what the programmers originally intended to do with the method that took one parameter, they had to change to allow 3, 4, and then 5 arguments.

Generally, bloated, for me, can mean a few things:

• Designed with an inconsistent philosophy, poorly designed, or not developed at all. (Most blow-ups can be summed up with these three.
• Too complicated.
• Any slower than absolutely necessary.
• Excessive cost of non-essential functions.
• Poor function mapping (unorganized interface)

Answer 11

A sufficiently specific definition may be

Bloat: a piece of software that performs an action that is in some way not valuable to the user.

A frequently tied feature is the ability of a web page to generate words. There may be a few people who want this feature. But in the general case, either the user wants to use the word, but does not use it to create web pages, otherwise they need to create web pages, but there are not enough opportunities for reasonable use, because it does not integrate well with some kind of template engine or generates CSS-friendly output.

The function, therefore, serves mainly as a marker point on the box, and does not help some users to do what they want or need more easily.

Answer 12

I personally don’t think that the definition of bloating is “too many functions that I don’t need,” I think this is: “too many functions that I don’t need, but which clutter my user interface, reduce the responsiveness of the application and increase memory consumption / drive. "

I think "multifunctional" is not necessarily synonymous with "bloated."

Answer 13

The scope itself is not a useful criticism. To be useful, you will need to indicate what makes you say that it is bloated.

General perception of bloating by users:

When adding new features, less than 1 percent of users will ever use or want to use it so that the company can sell the new version.

When users need to buy a new computer to launch your new version of software in order to do the same thing as now, with the old version.

They cannot understand how to do something general and simple (see Office 2007!), Because the interface has become too complicated to understand.

When a user has to turn off too many automatic junk files in order to be able to do what she really wanted to do (no, I don’t want him to select the whole word by default when I only want to select two characters).

When something stupid is cutey (think of the dumb paper clip that Microsoft used to have) When a user can take a nap and wake up before he delays what he asked him to do.

General perception of bloating by programmers:

When they don’t like that they are asked to work on this application because they are so complex and messy.

When they add features that they know users will not use, but for reasons that exceed the understanding they requested anyway.

When it takes more time to manage project management software for a project than it takes to complete an entire project!

At simliar vein, have you all noticed that with each subsequent version of the piece of Help software is becoming less and less useful? Talk about bloating, you can find all kinds of obscure things, but when you look for something that should be the main feature of the program, it is in the 357th entry, where it shows you, not the first.

Answer 14

This is a description of how the "guts" of the developer are needed to maintain a sense of confusion every time a new problem is recorded ...

Answer 15

I think this is more like being too big and slow for the features that it provides ... few people will complain if there is functionality that they don't use if it doesn't start crawling.

Remember OpenOffice.org 1.x? Xd

Answer 16

An inflated app is one that seems to consume more resources than you intuitively expected.

For example, World of Warcraft takes about 10 GB on a clean install (if you get to the Wrath of the Lich King). Given what WoW is and what it does, some may assume that it has a bloated setup. Moreover, patches end with duplication two or three times in the installation folder.

Other people see that Firefox is bloating because it develops more memory than people consider necessary.

Some people see apps as bloated when they provide features that seem useless or redundant. See Saving as HTML in Word.

Answer 17

A diluted application is a program with unnecessary features for most users and most problems in hand. He openly ignores the principle of YAGNI .

An application can have problems both in its code (which makes it longer and slower to start) and its interface (which makes it difficult to navigate its functions and commands). This is the main reason why “bloated” can be ambiguous as an adjective characterizing applications.

However, the connotation is always negative, and most programmers / users get an image.

Answer 18

nero Burning was created for burning CDs. It was about 10 mb. Now it's over 200 MB with “features” such as managing DVD collections and watching movies.

The HP drivers for my printer come with a 150mb installer, which adds software for editing photos, managing photo albums, etc.

It swells when you want something simple, but you cannot get around the uber complex, not a very useful thing. I will use Photoshop for editing photos, I will use errr ... notepad to manage the dvd collection!