01 Dec 2025
Technological advancement in the realm of Personal Computers could have stopped ~2008 and nothing would be different. Not nothing, there would be one thing that is different, lazy coders and wasteful developers would not be able to exist in the world, at least not in a capacity to make money. Why do I choose the arbitrary date of 2008? Simple, it is purely out of selfish reason. Physical technological advancement could have stopped in 2001 or 2002 or any year, however I choose 2008 because that is when my personal computer was born. The Lenovo X200. Sure, that is definitely a biased take, I agree, but this is my web log and my thoughts on the matter, so we will stick with 2008.
This website is pretty, isn't it? It is simple. It has a sort of charm, a personal touch to it, right? Yet, it utilizes only technology that was available in 2008. If you take a look at the source for this website, you'll see no javascript, no complex attempts to trick a search engine or web browser into doing my bidding; nor will you find anything cookies or tracking efforts. This website is simply a series of files that you are using an overly complex browser(more than likely) to view said files on. There was a time when a web browser was nothing more than a file manager that could interpret HTML and CSS. Now, however, your browser wants to save your passwords, fingerprint your activity, gather personal information and habits so that the company that makes the browser can sell you things that you don't need. Either that, or perhaps the intentions are more nefarious. With the release of the Vault 7 files, I think it is beyond evident that there is a dual purpose to the building of an entire OS into the browser experience, whilst Firefox, Google, Oracle, Apple, etc all tell you not to worry because everything is sandboxed and that your information is safe with them. Just do a quick web search, and reason will tell you that their promises mean very little. That is not the purpose of this article, though it is worth pointing out.
The point is, there is almost nothing that actually needs 32 gigs of RAM. There are a lot of poorly written programs that want that much RAM and more, your browser, for instance, not to mention the very websites you visit in your browser. If you weren't aware, those are programs too. But perhaps the word need begs a definition?
Let's unpack the word need for just a moment (see what I did there?). Let's take a peek at the source code for that word. I attempted to find the Oxford Dictionary meaning for the word online, however, there is a paywall. So, I checked the Merriam Webster definition and it said that the definite was "to be needful...", which is entirely unhelpful. How much RAM did I use? How much electricity? Well my RAM usage to visit those two bloated sites, plus the Duckduckgo.com website to search each of them, spiked from ~200Mb to 1.43Gb of RAM usage. What's worse is, I still don't have a helpful definition. Need, however, implies necessity. For a to be true, b must also be true. For me to edit this phone, I need what?
Now technically, you do not need(I'm going to stop italicizing that word now, I think you get the point.) a computer. However, for the purposes of our deduction, let us say that we enjoy computers, that we like digital cameras, and that we would like to edit some photos we have taken. So, we need a computer to edit digital photos. This is true. When I was at University, I was told by my peers and professors that to edit videos or photos, I need to use the MacPro workstations because they have 64Gigs of RAM and super awesome processors. I was also told that I need to use photoshop and aftershot for these tasks. Back then, I was excited to reserve time on one of these computers. My only computer was a CoreDuo HP desktop that I bought so that I could play Age of Empires II, Morrowind, and Caesar III. However, I don't believe it had more than 1Gig of RAM, and I didn't have the money for Adobe software licenses. I jumped at the chance and revelled in the experience. A couple of years later I discovered Slackware Linux, Kdenlive, Darktable, and GIMP. These programs were free and did not require infinite resources to run. They did the job well, though not as efficiently as Adobe software, and they certainly weren't as pretty, but they did the job for free. It should have made me realize, then and there, the problem. The problem that some guy, or group of guys, was/were selling all of us kids dirty smack. That's right, Adobe software, Apple, Google, Microsoft, all of them are selling drugs, not tools.
This brings us to the first contention in this story: the goal is to sell you something that you don't need, sell you drugs, chemicals released in the brain that tell you that you've done a good job. Smack, cocaine, heroine, etc all do this better, but software is safe, right? So, buy this license that you have to renew every year so that you can use the pretty program and feel good about it. Buy this piece of software because you need it to be respected amongst your peers. You need it to succeed. You need. See, there's the lie, need. You only need a few things. You need food, water, shelter, and a computer from 2008(assuming you still want to edit that digital photo). The point is, need is just a word, a term for subliminal marketing. You don't need Microsoft. You don't need Adobe. But maybe you want them, and that's okay, but I'm kind of surprised you're still here reading.
Why? That's a good question. Why do I think that physical technology could have stopped in 2008 for personal computers? Well, it is simple. I embarked, not long ago, on a mission to simplify my life. I downloaded the smallest version of Linux that also met my specific criteria(Alpine Linux), then proceeded to install and modify DWM and associated tools for every day tasks. NeoMutt for email, Profanity for chat, Newsraft for news, and the list goes on. I built my own OS, technically speaking. We won't get into the definition of Operating System, just let me have this win. Now, I have a fully functioning computer that can do everything I need it to do. I had a System76 laptop, but gave it away. It was cool. It had so much more power. I could play Steam games on it and do all sorts of crazy things. It was too powerful. It hit me one day that I was turning on this super machine so that I could type out characters on a screen in a terminal window. I had 64Gigs of RAM and barely used more than 2Gigs more often than not, and 1.3 of those Gigs were used just to power the OS, which was trash. But that is personal experience. Let's look at an example to help answer the question "why?".
Yesterday, I wrote my first shell script. I've written many shell scripts by borrowing and stealing segments of shell code from various people, but yesterday I wrote my very own shell script to do a function very specific to my own use-case. My script automates the upload of my files to this website using rsync. Sure, it's simple. Only a couple of lines of shell, but I wrote it using my own two braincells. I learned a lot about C over the course of building out this OS as well, I long for the day that I write my own C code without borrowing from anyone. That shell script that I wrote, though, it does a function. It uploads files to a server in a secure way, but also checks for changes on the server and only uploads what is necessary. It is efficient, as efficient as I can think of making it without any sort of complex thought(remember only 2 brain cells!). The point is, I have used SFTP, SSH(GUI), and other types of programs to do that simple task. These programs used 100+ Gigs of RAM, used enough processing power that my computer fans had to kick on, and even took quite a bit of time to do the job. What I'm saying is, I have realized that there is such a thing as objectively bad software. Software that sucks. In fact, it made me realize that something like 90% of software that I have used has been complete trash; and yes, I did just make that statistic up, but no, it isn't hyperbole. A vast majority of software simply just sucks. It's trash. It all uses so many resources on a computer, and for what? To make sure the buttons look 3D? To make sure there is some sort of matte, but shiny matte silver, but more gray than silver theme? To be sure that when you minimize the GUI, it makes a noise and does some fancy graphical magic that makes it look like a genie returning to his lamp? For what? Why? Don't get me wrong, I understand beauty and the nature of a beautiful program, but at some point you have to ask yourself "At what cost?". Yesterday I wrote a shell script. It was beautiful because it did a thing quickly and efficiently on a computer cannot compete in raw power with even a $100 Chromebook these days. But a Chromebook couldn't have done that, or at least not easily. Why? Because software, these days sucks. When a 2 line script can do the job of a 5000 line program, software sucks.
As I have already mentioned in this essay, there is a cause to this problem, that perhaps you haven't quite bought into yet. I'm going to assume that if you are still reading, that maybe you are following my line of thinking. What is the cause? Bad programmers? Bad companies? Laziness? The answer is yes. In my journeys to learn how to program, I have been told time and time again with increasing amounts of prideful derision that I need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel. What those preachers of unsolicited advice fail to understand is that it is their code that I hate. I learned Python first, but I have never created anything truly original. Sometimes, however, I will peruse the code of others and the shortcuts, the lack of reasoning and troubleshooting that I see in their code makes me cringe. Laziness. Some of the best known programmers are also some of the laziest programmers in the world. They write the code that sucks the most. They use flawed and wasteful frameworks. Everyone uses a framework these days, and why not? It makes your job twice as complicated, but half as difficult. I'm not going to preach against frameworks, though I have never met one that I like, but I will preach against laziness. Laziness is the cause of software that sucks. My dad and grandpa both used to tell me, after I cut some corner out of laziness, "If you aren't going to do something right, you might as well not do it at all." Aint' that the truth! The same goes for software. But now I'm just yelling in the wind with nobody around. Let's move one.
How do I propose to solve this issue? this epidemic? I don't. It is too late. The world has already sold its soul to Temu, TikTok, OnlyFans, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, etc, etc. There is not fix, and I'm not interested in fixing the rest of the world. That is a pointless exercize in futility. What I can do is fix it for myself. Maybe you can too. Maybe not. I have a good foundation. Installing DWM over Alpine Linux was the best thing I ever did for my computing life. Like in the rest of life, you can only worry about your own problems. If you fix those, then perhaps you can worry about the problems of your immediate family. If by some miracle you have also fixed those, then maybe you can start to worry about the problems of your close friends, but probably not. If you're luck, fixing your own problems will help fix those of your family and friends and maybe, if you're incredibly lucky, the problems of those outside your circle. Isn't that what Free Software is all about?
fin.