Fallacies advocating software bloat
"New computers are more efficient than old ones; therefore we need to make all software so bloated that it does not run on old computers, to make sure that those old computer become obsolete and people stop using them."
This one is often used by environmentalists, and it is wrong in so many obvious ways.
- New computers generally consume more power than old ones. Of x86 CPUs anything older than Pentium II uses only a single-digit amount of watts.
- Bloated code causes also new computers to use more electricity than would otherwise be required for the task.
- Most importantly, when we create non-bloated computer programs, we are not necessarily targeting old CPUs - we are targeting old INSTRUCTION SETS. The patents of those old instruction sets are already expired and CPUs that use them can be freely produced by anyone. They are also widely supported by compilers and other existing software. Making software that works on old and/or patent-free instruction sets is necessary to preserve our digital freedoms.
- If those old computers end up not being used, they are thrown to landfills, causing more environmental damage that way.
"Everything new is always more secure than the old; therefore we need to make all software so bloated that it does not run on old computers, to force people to use new computers that are so much more secure than the old ones."
This one is often used by corporate security experts.
- Everything new is NOT always more secure. In fact the opposite is often true - mindlessly changing stuff just for the sake of novelty creates an infrastructure that will never become properly battle-tested. Typically the pieces of software that are assumed to be the most secure programs in existence have been around for a long time, and their current form is the result of decades of small, incremental and carefully thought changes to their codebase.
- Because general purpose computers are Turing-complete, there is not a single reason why an old computer would be somehow less secure than a new one. Encryption is mathematics, and the exact same encryption can be performed on any two machines with the same levels of Turing-powerfulness. If anything, new computers are actually often less Turing-powerful than the old ones, thanks to various firmware- and hardware-level restrictions (firmware signing, UEFI Secure Boot etc.) that have been implemented to them because Microsoft has demanded the hardware manufacturers to do so.
- What corporate security experts usually mean with "old computers" is actually "old operating systems" (or more specifically "old versions of Windows"), because they somehow associate the individual computers with the operating system that was originally installed to them in the factory. But the operating system is not an integrated part of the computer itself - instead it is just a bootable program that can be easily changed.
"Monitors nowadays use less power than the CRTs of old; therefore, to save power, we must make bloated user interfaces that don't work with small resolutions."
This one is often used by HD/4K/8K enthusiasts.
- Old CRTs don't really use that much power at all - a typical 15" color CRT uses less than most lightbulbs. Monochrome CRTs are even less power hungry, usually consuming something between 15 to 30 watts of power. The CRT itself doesn't actually usually use much power. The neck of the CRT, where the electron gun resides, is where most of the CRT's power is spent. Corporate propaganda often states a very commonly heard lie that CRTs consume hundreds of watts of power, but that's not physically possible - the neck of the CRT would melt if that was true. Although there are exceptions to the rule, most CRT displays are actually quite power efficient for a self-illuminating display technology.
- With "modern" flat panel displays, especially OLEDs, the power consumption grows in an almost linear fashion with the area of the display. This means that we can actually save more power by creating scalable user interfaces that also work well on smaller display resolutions.