[simondotau]

It's kind of horrifying to open my /Applications folder and realise that it contains probably twenty web browsers, eighteen of which are disguised as stand-alone applications. Often very simple ones.

BalenaEtcher, a pretty front-end for a bunch of drive-copying terminal commands, is over 200 megabytes. A competent developer could probably recreate its functionality with 20 kilobytes of shell script. Yes, this script probably wouldn't be cross-platform, but I dare say that there's more than 20 kilobytes of platform-specific code in the current BalenaEtcher app already...

[ubidefeo]

>Yes, this script probably wouldn't be cross-platform, but I dare say that there's more than 20 kilobytes of platform-specific code in the current BalenaEtcher app already.

I can do what BalenaEtcher needs to be done in a shell, but how many can/want to? When you say "probably wouldn't be cross-platform" you have already given a reason for this to exist. "20KB of platform-specific code", you clearly know what you're talking about. You should write cross-platform applications.

[simondotau]

I don't understand the point of your snark. If you're trying to pointing out that writing cross-platform applications isn't trivial, you're agreeing with me.

[joemi]

For better or worse, it doesn't really need to be smaller.

[snypher]

Of course it does. It's really a giant waste of bandwidth for a program that is probably 50% 'dd if of bs'.

[curryst]

Sure, and your house might look a smidgen better if it were painted a slightly different shade of the same color. It's a lot of work for very little gain.

Bandwidth is cheap. Human time is not. There are better ways to spend development time than shaving 2 seconds off the download of a utility app.

[joemi]

And yet loads of people still use it, and loads of people still recommend it... That’s what I mean by it doesn’t need to be smaller. It’s already hugely popular at the size it is, even though it’s a waste of bandwidth.