Pensieri di un lunatico minore

A matter of size

So, talking on the IRC channel about “bloat” since Smalltalk was created, we thought about the fact that Eclipse is as “close” as you can get to a Smalltalk environment, so how big is Eclipse compared to VisualWorks? So let’s separate the two as much as possible:

• VisualWorks Object Engine (i.e., VM): 690K

• VisualWorks “image”: 18Mb (including all development tools)

  Please note that that includes tons of code, the entire source of the system, refactoring browser, implementations of crypto, the GUI, etc., Now for Eclipse:

• Sun JDK 1.4.2 for Linux: 65Mb (just runtime)

• Eclipse 2.1: 80Mb

  So, let’s see… VisualWorks is about 20Mb including everything you need, once it’s been loaded from a Store repository or parcels. Eclipse is about 175Mb, or about 9x larger. Sad.

  Yes, I know I’m not comparing apples and oranges, but honestly, VisualWorks has things Eclipse can only dream of, and I’m sure there’s things in the Java world that are included that I’m not counting against VisualWorks, but let’s be real…

  This entry was posted at 9:46 pm on 14 September 2004 and is filed under Smalltalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.

  15 September 2004 Simon Brunning

  Does this matter, really?

  15 September 2004 J.Shell

  Haven’t you heard the song? “Nothing really matters…”

  15 September 2004 petrilli

  That’s what is so depressing, that as “big” as Smalltalk is, it’s nothing compared to the inescapable bloat of Java. I can only hope that .NET isn’t as bad.

  15 September 2004 petrilli

  And the reason it matters is that more code = more bloat = slower execution. It slows a sloppy design.

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