Funny, but I’m saying it seriously as a countermeasure to the bloat epidemic. An SMS parking app doesn’t even need Internet and works fine. Use the simplest technology to achieve a goal and enhance.
You forget the fact that bloat is driven by many stakeholders, not just developers. Bloat is the consequence of ever increasing demand for bells and whistles, the pressure to release something (case in point: github projects that don't get updates every other month are considered dead) amongst other factors.
An SMS parking app works fine as long as you limit it to the very specific use case. As soon as the "enhance"-part enters the picture, chances are simplicity leaves the scene at the same moment. Complexity can only be avoided by keeping the problem simple.
As someone who travels a lot, SMS based app stuff is one of the most annoying common problems.
It’s easy to find a way to get internet anywhere, but getting an sms message at a phone number is way harder (or easy but expensive); bonus points if you restrict it to local phone numbers only. Lots of countries require ID checks to get a local number and the system breaks with foreign IDs.
An SMS parking app works fine as long as you limit it to the very specific use case. As soon as the "enhance"-part enters the picture, chances are simplicity leaves the scene at the same moment. Complexity can only be avoided by keeping the problem simple.