DOWNFALL.SYSv0.0.1-bloat

TABS 3RAM 48 MBREC

$ npm install react

added 1247 packages in 38s

$ size dist/main.js

4.2 MB (gzipped: 1.1 MB)

warn: 'lodash' is 73 KB to capitalize a string

$ ps aux | grep electron

electron 487 MB 6.4% CPU Hello World.app

// TODO: investigate memory leak (2019)

import { useState } from 'react'

fatal: dependency tree exceeded depth 9

EST. 1945 — 2025A DIAGNOSIS
IN NINE PARTS

── CASE FILE / 001 ──

The
Downfall
of Programming

We were promised faster hardware.
Instead, we used it to hide slower software.

▼ SCROLL

to see where the performance went.

EST. RAM SPENT READING
~ 312 MB

●1247 DEPENDENCIES TO PRINT 'HELLO WORLD'●487 MB IDLE — MODERN HELLO WORLD●DENNARD SCALING ENDED 2005●WIRTH'S LAW STILL UNDEFEATED●ELECTRON IS A BROWSER PRETENDING TO BE AN APP●THE LAYER COUNT IS THE BUG●1247 DEPENDENCIES TO PRINT 'HELLO WORLD'●487 MB IDLE — MODERN HELLO WORLD●DENNARD SCALING ENDED 2005●WIRTH'S LAW STILL UNDEFEATED●ELECTRON IS A BROWSER PRETENDING TO BE AN APP●THE LAYER COUNT IS THE BUG

02THEN / NOW

Hello World, 487 MB later.

1998 / NATIVE C

$ ./hello

Hello, World!

$ time ./hello

real 0m0.004s

user 0m0.001s

━Opens instantly
━1.5 MB resident memory
━Single static executable
━Six engineers, no PM
━No telemetry
━No Electron
━No framework

2025 / "MODERN HELLO WORLD"

$ npm create hello-world@latest

├── react@19.2.0

├── react-dom@19.2.0

├── @types/react@19.0.0

├── webpack@5.100.0

├─┬ @babel/core@7.25.0

│ ├── @babel/runtime@7.25.0

│ └── (412 transitive deps)

├── electron@33.0.0

├── chromium@130.0.6723.0

├── eslint@9.10.0

└── ...1239 more packages

▲487 MB resident memory
▲1,247 dependencies
▲4.8 second cold start
▲Bundled Chromium runtime
▲node_modules: 312 MB
▲Telemetry on by default
▲CPU fans audible

RAM

0MB

was 1.5MB in 1998

STARTUP

was 0.04s in 1998

DEPENDENCIES

was 0 in 1998

BINARY

0MB

was 0.12MB in 1998

03WIRTH'S LAW / 1995

"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."

— NIKLAUS WIRTH · A PLEA FOR LEAN SOFTWARE · 1995

FREQUENCY (GHz) vs MEMORY (GB)1990 → 2025

DENNARD SCALING

For 30 years, transistors got smaller, faster, and cooler at the same time. Around 2005 the free lunch ended.

SINGLE-THREAD CEILING

Clocks plateaued near 4 GHz. Performance now hides inside cores you mostly don't use.

SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

Never got the memo. Continued to ship features as if Moore's Law was still paying the bill.

04THE ABSTRACTION TRAP

One button. Eight layers between you and the silicon.

01 · Operating System

02 · Browser

03 · JavaScript Engine

04 · Bundler Output

05 · Runtime

06 · State Manager

07 · Design System

08 · Component Library

Click me

We did not engineer this.
We accumulated it.

05THE MODERN ENGINEER

A generation that ships what it cannot explain.

01 —

The plumber economy.

Most engineers connect pipes between SaaS endpoints. The systems beneath them are sealed, opaque, and someone else's problem.

02 —

Framework first, problem second.

Stack picked before the requirements. Architecture written for the resume, not the user.

03 —

Microservice as theology.

Eight services to send an email. A distributed monolith with worse latency and a Slack channel.

04 —

Hire to ship, not to know.

Velocity rewarded. Comprehension optional. Nobody on the team can describe what happens after the curl.

~/project $ npm install●

├── @aws-sdk/client-s3@3.654.0 ├── lodash.isequal@4.5.0 ├── @babel/core@7.25.7 ├── micromatch@4.0.8 ├── @babel/preset-env@7.25.7 ├── nanoid@5.0.7 ├── @emotion/react@11.13.3 ├── ora@8.1.0 ├── @emotion/styled@11.13.0 ├── postcss@8.4.47 ├── @floating-ui/react@0.26.24 ├── prettier@3.3.3 ├── @hookform/resolvers@3.9.0 ├── prop-types@15.8.1 ├── @next/font@14.2.13 ├── react@19.0.0 ├── @opentelemetry/api@1.9.0 ├── react-dom@19.0.0 ├── @prisma/client@5.20.0 ├── react-helmet@6.1.0 ├── @radix-ui/react-* (37 packages) ├── react-hook-form@7.53.0 ├── @sentry/nextjs@8.30.0 ├── react-i18next@15.0.2 ├── @stripe/stripe-js@4.5.0 ├── react-query@3.39.3 ├── @swc/core@1.7.26 ├── recoil@0.7.7 ├── @tanstack/react-query@5.56.2 ├── redux-toolkit@2.2.7 ├── @types/* (84 packages) ├── rxjs@7.8.1 ├── @vercel/analytics@1.3.1 ├── sharp@0.33.5 ├── axios@1.7.7 ├── socket.io-client@4.8.0 ├── chalk@5.3.0 ├── styled-components@6.1.13 ├── chokidar@3.6.0 ├── tailwindcss@3.4.13 ├── classnames@2.5.1 ├── three@0.168.0 ├── core-js@3.38.1 ├── tslib@2.7.0 ├── d3@7.9.0 ├── typescript@5.6.2 ├── date-fns@3.6.0 ├── uuid@10.0.0 ├── dotenv@16.4.5 ├── webpack@5.94.0 ├── eslint@9.11.1 ├── workbox-webpack-plugin@7.1.0 ├── ... and 1,189 more packages. └── zod@3.23.8 added 1247 packages, audited 23,841 in 47s 38 vulnerabilities (12 moderate, 19 high, 7 critical)

06BENCHMARK / OPENING ONE LOG FILE

You can argue with opinions.
You cannot argue with a stopwatch.

TEST

Open one 1 MB log file.

A — Native editor (Rust, ~6 MB binary)

B — Popular Electron editor (~312 MB)

CPU: M-class · 16 GB RAM · cold boot

COLD STARTLOWER IS BETTER

0.04s

4.8s

RAM AT IDLELOWER IS BETTER

12 MB

487 MB

CPU OPENINGLOWER IS BETTER

78%

BINARY SIZELOWER IS BETTER

6 MB

312 MB

07THE SIX-LAYER CATHEDRAL

Indirection became a virtue.

// EnterpriseHelloWorld.java

public class HelloWorldFactoryProvider {

private final HelloWorldFactory factory;

public HelloWorldFactoryProvider(

HelloWorldFactoryConfig config,

AbstractStringRendererStrategy strategy,

SubjectExtractorBuilder builder,

@Inject(name="HW") Logger log,

) { /* 412 lines of wiring */ }

public Optional<HelloWorldResponse>

getHelloWorldGreetingAsync(

HelloWorldRequestContext ctx

) { return factory.create(ctx)

.pipe(strategy)

.pipe(builder)

.render(); }

}

OVERENGINEERING

Patterns applied to problems that don't exist yet, in case they someday might.

INDIRECTION

Every concrete thing wrapped in an interface, then a factory, then a config, then a builder.

THE PYRAMID

A six-layer cathedral guarding a function that returns a string.

THE PRINCIPLE

Rules that override common sense and a stopwatch are not principles. They are superstition.

08THE DEBLOATING

The layer count is the bug.

A quiet counter-movement. Static binaries. Fast cold starts. Memory you can hold in your head. Tools that don't ship a browser to render a button.

STACK / PEEL

Electron— removed

Chromium— removed

Node.js— removed

Webpack— removed

Babel— removed

TypeScript— removed

React— removed

your_program6 MB · 0 deps

ZIG

comptime, no hidden allocs

RUST

ownership, zero-cost abstractions

static binary, fast compile

BUN

all-in-one, no node_modules torture

MOJO

Python ergonomics, native speed

LOW-LEVEL

knowing what your code costs

STATIC BINARIES

One file. No runtime to install. It just runs.

LOW MEMORY

Megabytes, not gigabytes. Your laptop fan stays quiet.

COLD STARTS

Milliseconds. The cloud bill notices.

09THE BILL

CLOUD BILL

$184k

/mo

BATTERY DRAIN

47%

/hr

RAM USAGE

12.4 GB

idle

COLD START

4.8s

p99

DEPENDENCIES

1,247

direct + transitive

The future of software is not adding more abstractions. It is removing the ones we never needed.

Peel back the layers.

If you cannot explain what your framework does underneath,

your stack owns you.

Debloating is not nostalgia.

It is economics.

TheDownfallDownfallof Programming