Editing Software bloat (section)

{{Short description|Situation of degraded computer performance}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}}

{{More footnotes|date=November 2024}}

'''Software bloat''' is a process whereby successive versions of a [[computer program]] become perceptibly slower, use more memory, [[Computer data storage|disk space]] or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version, while making only dubious user-perceptible improvements or suffering from [[feature creep]]. The term is not applied consistently; it is often used as a pejorative by [[end user]]s, including to describe undesired [[user interface]] changes even if those changes had little or no effect on the hardware requirements. In long-lived software, bloat can occur from the software servicing a large, diverse marketplace with many differing requirements. Most end users will feel they only need some limited subset of the available functions, and will regard the others as unnecessary bloat, even if end users with different requirements require those functions.

Actual (measurable) bloat can occur due to de-emphasising [[algorithmic efficiency]] in favour of other concerns like developer productivity, or possibly through the introduction of new layers of abstraction like a [[virtual machine]] or other [[scripting engine]] for the purposes of convenience when developer constraints are reduced. The perception of improved developer productivity, in the case of practising development within virtual machine environments, comes from the developers no longer taking resource constraints and usage into consideration during design and development; this allows the product to be completed faster but it results in increases to the end user's hardware requirements and/or compromised performance as a result.

The term "bloatware" is also used to describe unwanted [[pre-installed software]] or [[Potentially unwanted program|bundled programs]].<ref>whatisbloatware.com</ref>