Editing Software bloat (section)

===Software inefficiency===
[[Programmer|Software developers]] involved in the industry during the 1970s had severe limitations on processing power, disk space and memory. Every [[byte]] and [[clock cycle]] was taken into account, and much work went into fitting the programs into available resources. Achieving this efficiency was one of the highest values of computer programmers, and the best programs were often called "[[elegant]]", a term used by mathematicians to describe a proof which is tidy, parsimonious and powerful.

By the 21st century, the situation had reversed. Resources were perceived as cheap, and rapidity of coding and headline features for marketing seen as priorities.<ref>{{cite book |first=Eric S. |last=Raymond |title=The Art of Unix Programming |publisher=Addison-Wesley Professional |edition=1 |date=17 September 2003 |url=http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/why_not_c.html |isbn=0131429019| access-date=16 June 2007}} (See also: [[The Art of Unix Programming]])</ref> In part, this is because technological advances have since increased processing capacity and storage density by orders of magnitude, while reducing the relative costs by similar orders of magnitude (see [[Moore's law]]). Additionally, the spread of computers through all levels of business and home life has produced a software industry many times larger than it was in the 1970s.  Programs are now usually churned out by teams, directed by committees in software development studios (also known as software houses or software factories) where each programmer works on only a part of the whole, on one or more [[subroutine]]s.{{Citation needed|date=May 2015}}

Finally, software development tools and approaches often result in changes throughout a program to accommodate each feature, leading to a large-scale inclusion of code which affects the main operation of the software, and is required in order to support functions that themselves may be only rarely used. In particular, the advances in resources available have led to tools which allow easier development of code, again with less priority given to end efficiency.

Another cause of bloat is independently competing standards and products, which can create a demand for integration. There are now more operating systems, browsers, protocols, and storage formats than there were before, causing bloat in programs due to interoperability issues. For example, a program that once could only save in text format is now required to save in HTML, XML, XLS, CSV, PDF, DOC, and other formats.

[[Niklaus Wirth]] has summed up the situation in [[Wirth's law]], which states that software speed is decreasing more quickly than hardware speed is increasing.

In his 2001 essay ''Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth'',<ref name="Spolsky">{{cite web |url=http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html |title=Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth - Joel on Software |first=Joel |last=Spolsky |author-link=Joel Spolsky |year=2001 |access-date=2 October 2006}}</ref> [[Joel Spolsky]] argues that while 80% of the users only use 20% of the features (a variant on the [[Pareto principle]]), each one uses different features. Thus, "lite" software editions turn out to be useless for most, as they miss the one or two special features that are present in the "bloated" version. Spolsky sums the article with a quote by [[Jamie Zawinski]] referring to the [[Mozilla Application Suite]] (ultimately debloated as separate apps, of which the [[Firefox]] web browser is the only significant survivor):

<blockquote>"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. [...] But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal when we wrote Mozilla."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jwz.org/doc/easter-eggs.html |title=easter eggs. |year=1998 |first=Jamie |last=Zawinski |access-date=9 January 2008}}</ref></blockquote>

Software bloat may also be a symptom of the [[second-system effect]], described by [[Fred Brooks]] in ''[[The Mythical Man-Month]].''