> People want your software to have more features, be more secure, and be more performant
I think it's worth noting that one reason hardware rots is because software seems to become slower and slower while still doing the same thing it did 15 years ago.
The core issue, in my humble opinion, is that it's not doing the same thing. But from a thousand miles away it looks like that, because everyone uses 20% of functionality, but everyone in aggregate uses 100% of functionality.
> I think it's worth noting that one reason hardware rots is because software seems to become slower and slower while still doing the same thing it did 15 years ago.
I'd like to see some actual proof of (/thoughts on) this. Like if you didn't patch any security issues/bugs, or add any features, or fixed any dependencies, how is the code getting slower?
Like I understand some people care about performance, but I've seen many non-performant solutions (from Unity, to Photoshop to Rider, being prefered over custom C# engine, Paint, Notepad++) being used nearly universally, which leads me to believe there is more than one value in play.
Well Slack may have a few more features over IRC but none of them should cause my laptop fans to start spinning. Many of the slowdowns in modern web are because of trackers. Software may be more efficient but all that is neglected by software trying to do more. But so much of that "more" isn't resulting in more features for the user.
And yes convenience, social adoption and flashy modern appearance are major factors in the decision making. Whether it contributes to obsolescence or is fast isn't a factor at all.
> Well Slack may have a few more features over IRC but none of them should cause my laptop fans to start spinning. Many of the slowdowns in modern web are because of trackers. Software may be more efficient but all that is neglected by software trying to do more. But so much of that "more" isn't resulting in more features for the user.
It's literally Electron based. Trackers are a rounding error in the ocean that is Chrome + Node.
Got one idling in memory on my Intel mac rn. Let's see. 341 MB or Slack renderer, 198 MB of Slack Helper GPU, 72 MB for Slack itself + 50MB for Slack Helper stuff. Literally eating 661 MB of memory doing practically nothing. Which means a huge web tracker (circa 10MB) is 1.5% of that.
Electron itself is the culprit, more than any tracker. And reason Electron is used is that: HTML/CSS/JS is the only cross platform GUI that looks similar on all platforms, has enough docs/tutorials, and has enough of frontend developers available.
I think it's worth noting that one reason hardware rots is because software seems to become slower and slower while still doing the same thing it did 15 years ago.