50GB for a simple update. 15GB for a calculator. 35GB for a base operating system. Any of this sound familiar? It should sound ridiculous, yet with modern software, it’s expected. Whether we’re talking about business or pleasure, software has become so extensive that it no longer makes sense.
Sometimes it feels like we’re paying a tax, and I don’t mean money (though that's a factor too), because bloated software means more storage, more RAM, bigger bandwidth, less battery life, and of course, a hefty degree of patience.
And still, the experience we get back often feels… thin. But there’s a better way.
Tech Insight: We can bring lean software back
This might surprise anyone who got into computing in the last decade, but software doesn’t have to be bloated. It’s gotten that way because we got comfortable in the age of cheap storage and abundant RAM. But isn’t it ironic that with more memory in our computers, we somehow forgot how to optimize for it? We treat bloat like it’s the price of modernity.
Giant binaries and ginormous updates are just “how things are now”. We don’t think twice about it, because we just want to get the job done, do it reliably, and not care what it took to get there. At least, we don’t care until we start to hit the constraints we didn’t see coming 50GB ago.
2026 isn’t letting us off so easy
We might have been able to get away with this trend for the past several years, but our poor software habits are finally starting to catch up in the most predictable ways. We’ve hit that point where the pace of software “enlargement” has outpaced our capacity to increase capacity:
- Memory shortages are hitting us hard.
- AI is eating our lunch. And our dinner. Breakfast is next.
- Battery life is next on the chopping block.
With these realities, we’re learning some hard lessons because the constraints are real again. Storage isn’t infinite, bandwidth isn’t free, and battery life still has limits, no matter how efficient our processors get.
We can’t keep shipping software as if everyone is sitting on a high-end machine with space to spare, especially not when 16GB is “high-end” again (at least in your pocket). If we’re going to survive this, we need to do, and develop better. It can be that a game can take half your drive for a quarter of the experience you’d get back in 2008. Websites can’t keep needing a whole server rack just to show a button. And hey, apps can’t keep behaving like they’re the only thing your device will ever run.
That’s not progress.
Somewhere along the way we hit on a mismatch between what software does and what the user needs it to do. What we call “modern software” is often a simple product buried under layers that exist for everyone and everything but the user.
We can do better
We can have speed and features without sacrifice. Don’t believe me? Look at how projects like the Godot game engine, REAPER, and even something as widely used as Wikipedia are successfully delivering steady improvements without blowing up the storage budget. This shows that even across different industries, lean doesn’t mean has-been.
It also doesn’t mean no frameworks, no modern UI, or no ambition. It just means being deliberate in our choices: what we ship, and what we’re asking people to carry. And it’s going to matter in this year and beyond, because we’re back in a world of constraints. If software is going to keep deserving a place on our devices, it’s going to need to start earning that footprint again.
Practical Tip: Treat optimisation like a feature, not a humbug
Developers, it’s our responsibility to watch our software’s footprint, not just its performance, and to make it enforceable. Pick a realistic ceiling for what you’re building (startup time, memory usage, bundle size), and stick to it unless there’s a truly good reason not to.
That’s what we did in the age of CDs, and it worked. If dependencies have to justify themselves, we can get back to that little age of software nirvana again, and survive the memory shortage apocalypse.
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- Ghostty vs Kitty: Which Modern Terminal is the Best for Linux Users?
A practical comparison of two modern terminals, with a focus on real-world workflow and feel.
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