small packges

i never was a fan of code bloat. i've written programs for dos in x86 assembler and for the palm os in c. i've had to deal with some pretty tight constraints, but i don't take space, memory or cpu cycles for granted. and i guess that's what bothers me about the current conventional coding wisdom that seems to be, "if you've got the space, use it." i think it unfortunate that what passes for acceptable code these days is poor planning and laziness on the part of some visual studio jockey who has no clue how a compiler even works—heaven forbid they ever have to compile and link by hand. i guess this is where i talk about having to write code in hex using only the dos debugger uphill both ways in the snow.

i'm glad i'm not the only one that appreciates a dainty code footprint. analogx is the creator of some great and useful (and free) programs that pack heavyweight features into featherweight packages. in my classrooms, for instance, i don't waste time with microsoft's iis: the anaolgx simpleserver:www web server supports mime, logging, server-side scripting and multi-hosting, and it runs on any version of windows from win95 up. did i mention that the whole program is 630k? that's kilobytes, my friend. i've long believed that a web site should be capable of fitting on a 1.44mb floppy disk. how 'bout the server, as well?

the point is, there is no need for all this bloat. there is no reason an os should require a gigabyte of ram and 15 gigs of hard drive space. today's programmers are a lazy lot, it seems, but there are a few artisans out there who still know how to make good things come in small packages.