Drowning in Features

Jeff Atwood, over at Coding Horror, makes what I think is a very valid point: adding features into new releases of software applications can spoil the software. I’ve seen it happen a number of times to applications that I use. What started out as a terrific little application that did one job very well indeed degenerates into bloatware that contains features that I never use and never wanted. The performance often goes down the toilet as well.

 

A case in point, for me, is Nero. I first bought it to burn some CDs, and that’s all I ever use it for. In the meantime, it has bloated into a huge suite of applications, which often cause more trouble than they are worth. The online updating mechanism, for example, has never, ever, worked properly for me. I have to download a complete fresh install. What started out as an application of less than 10MB (as I recall) now weighs in at a staggering 178 MB. I won’t be upgrading to version 8 of Nero.