[lmm]

> Why would you default to the biggest, slowest option?

Because it's not very big, nor very slow. Why wouldn't you default to the most full-featured option when its performance and space usage is adequate for the overwhelming majority of cases?

[csnover]

> Why wouldn't you default to the most full-featured option when its performance and space usage is adequate for the overwhelming majority of cases?

This is the logic of buying a Ford F-150 to drive your kids to school and to commute to the office because you might someday need to maybe haul some wood from the home improvement store once. The compact sedan is the obviously practical choice, but it can’t haul the wood, and you can afford the giant truck, so why not?

[lmm]

> This is the logic of buying a Ford F-150 to drive your kids to school and to commute to the office because you might someday need to maybe haul some wood from the home improvement store once.

No, it's like buying the standard off the shelf $5 backpack instead of the special handmade tiny backpack that you can just barely squeeze your current netbook into. Yes, maybe it's a little bigger than you need, maybe you're wasting some space. But it's really not worth the time worrying about it.

If using clap would take up a significant fraction of your memory/disk/whatever budget then of course investigate alternatives. But sacrificing usability to switch to something that takes up 0.000000001% of available disk space instead of 0.0000001% is a false economy, the opposite of practical; it feels like a sister phenomenon to https://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html .

[solatic]

Well you hit the nail on the proverbial head. The compact will handle 99% of people's use-cases, the truck will handle 100%. People don't want the hassle of renting something or paying for help for the 1% of cases their compact wouldn't handle.

Believe it or not, I'm with you; I live somewhere where it's sunny all year round, so I get around with a motorcycle as my primary transportation year-round and evangelize them as the cheap alternative to people struggling with car-related payments. But no, my motorcycle isn't going to carry a 2x4. Someone who cares about supporting that, even if they only need to do so exceptionally rarely, is gonna buy a truck. And then they won't have the money to buy a motorcycle on the side.

[dijit]

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I also don’t like oversized motor vehicles but I think the parable is sound;

If the effort of switching out when you need the last 1% is higher than whatever premium you will pay (compilation time/fuel cost) - especially as a small ongoing cost, people will likely choose it.

I’m not saying this as if its wisdom into the future, only in that we can observe it today with at least a handful of examples.

[justinrubek]

These are not even remotely equivalent scenarios. If I want to remove clap as a library, I just remove it. If I buy an F150 I now have spent a lot of money and it's mostly gone so replacing it is significantly more expensive. It also burns more fuel.

[tonyedgecombe]

These decisions accumulate then all of a sudden you have a project that takes ten minutes to build for almost no benefit.

[lmm]

Maybe. If your build is too slow, fix it. But pre-emptively microoptimising your build time is as bad as pre-emptively microoptimising anything else. Set a build time budget and don't worry about it unless and until you see a risk of exceeding that budget.

[justinrubek]

This is an incredible exaggeration. The vast majority of these projects don't even approach it. I use clap in a number of projects and they compile in just seconds.