Why So Simple?
Computers should be running faster than ever on lower resources than ever.
– Luke Smith
That’s a quote from Luke Smith. Think about it for a second. We are advancing with the technology. As we move forward, shouldn’t we be able to do more with less resources.
Look at every other field. When Edison made his light bulb, at that time, they were hard to make. They were expensive. As time passes by, light bulb manufacturing technology developed allowing it to be resource efficient, reducing manufacturing costs and mass produce light bulb.
Light bulbs are one of the first items to have “planned obsolescence,” but that’s out of this story.
Another example is semiconductors. In the very first era of semiconductor manufacturing, during William Sockley’s era, it was expensive and difficult to manufacture them. But soon, lithography technology came out and then companies started mass manufacturing of semiconductors. It drew the prices down.
At this point, it should be clear why Luke’s quote is valid. As time passes by, technology should improve. Therefore, efficiency should increase. So the quote stands valid, “computers should be able to do more with less resources.”
Unfortunately, exactly opposite of that is happening. Hardware cost goes down, but software? Take Windows OS for example. In early days, 2GB of RAM is enough for the OS to run. Time passes by, technology develops (backwards, lol) and here we are, Windows requiring 4GB of RAM as minimum requirement. Consider the task of printing an article on a piece of paper. Just about 10 years ago, typesetting and printing cost lower system resources than now.
To do the same task, as just 10 years ago, it costs less resources than now. To do the same task!
So who eats all those resources now?!
Bloat! useless junk!
Compare windows 10 and 11. What you get in return to the high system resource requirements? Well, round cornered windows, some animations, hidden out options for basic tasks, improved data mining algorithms (not for your profit) and some nonsense AI bots. Keep in mind that in 2023, there are still many people using Windows 10, and they live fine doing their daily computing tasks without any issues, but spending less resources than people using Windows 11.
This is the bloat I’m fighting against. Software industry as a whole has a trend of making software more bloated with time than making them efficient. That’s what I’m opposing and that’s my philosophical ideology in software development.
In previous times, people had their personal websites written simply with html and some styling. Now, most developers don’t even think that it’s possible to write a landing page with html, css and a little bit of js. To do a simple task like that, modern devs need react, angular, vue and stuff.
“Resource efficient website? Ha haa lol, I only know
yarn create vite random-app --template react. Here’s your js bundle sir.”
If it’s a fully featured application like WhatsApp web, Instagram, Office online, it makes sense to use tons of JS libraries including React etc. Because you know, it’s an application, not content. Applications need code to run, not like content. But why a big js bundle to simply serve content.
Websites serving song lyrics don’t need to load several Megabytes of JS just to render out 600 characters of lyrics.
Other than that, most junk js are tracking scripts and ads. If you are to argue ads are good for creators, it may be true, but the privacy invasion and intensive they give for junk content writers* is not good.
My personal website never had tracking and ad scripts. My website is not written on js libraries (because I write content, not an app. You code apps, not content). This is because since the begining of my site, I prefered simplicity. When my website loads on a laptop browser, it should not make the cooling fans go crazy. It should not heat up the reader’s mobile phone. It should not waste system resources and CPU cycles.
My website had a pink color theme, which I don’t like much and also some other useless content, and an animation too (I still think that matrix animation is so cool btw). I started feeling like those stuff are also useless bloat.
That’s why I redesigned the site removing them. Now my site is mostly html and little amount of css. No js yet, if I add some later, I’ll be responsible not to bloat up the site. However, my site is very readable and rich with content. It’s my personal website hence filled with my opinions, ideas and writing. Real human written organic content. Not some AI generated marketing content.
So, that’s it. That’s why my website focuses more on content. My website may look classic, but functional and have organic content. I have my opinions to present than doing marketing here.
Thanks for reading, and, I’ve defined the word “junk content writers” below.
Junk content writers: people who write fake content only for financial motives. Search on youtube “how to be a good blogger” and I’m very sure you’ll find junk content writer within the first 10 results.
These people don’t know what they are going to write about. They just look into search trends, catch up hot keywords and plagiarize content from other websites matching those hot keywords. In their mind it goes like, “I don’t what I’m writing, but I gather content from other sites and optimize them better so I can earn more.” Their complete motive is to earn money. If their content is good, that’s because they are afraid of getting penalize by the search engines.
Also, do a search on some common programming problems. You’ll find a good, human-written stackoverflow answer, and then, some junk; web pages with the same title (which confirms they are stolen content) and reworded the same content, often times stolen from stackoverflow.