Newbie question about text encoding

[MRAB]

On 2015-02-27 16:45, alister wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Feb 2015 03:12:16 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 3:00 AM, alister
>> <alister.nospam.ware at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>> I think there is a case for bringing back the overlay file, or at least
>>> loading larger programs in sections only loading the routines as they
>>> are required could speed up the start time of many large applications.
>>> examples libre office, I rarely need the mail merge function, the word
>>> count and may other features that could be added into the running
>>> application on demand rather than all at once.
>>
>> Downside of that is twofold: firstly the complexity that I already
>> mentioned, and secondly you pay the startup cost on first usage. So you
>> might get into the program a bit faster, but as soon as you go to any
>> feature you didn't already hit this session, the program pauses for a
>> bit and loads it. Sometimes startup cost is the best time to do this
>> sort of thing.
>>
> If the modules are small enough this may not be noticeable but yes I do
> accept there may be delays on first usage.
>
I suppose you could load the basic parts first so that the user can
start working, and then load the additional features in the background.

> As to the complexity it has been my observation that as the memory
> footprint available to programmers has increase they have become less &
> less skilled at writing code.
>
> of course my time as a professional programmer was over 20 years ago on 8
> bit micro controllers with 8k of ROM (eventually, original I only had 2k
> to play with) & 128 Bytes (yes bytes!) of RAM so I am very out of date.
>
> I now play with python because it is so much less demanding of me which
> probably makes me just a guilty :-)
>
>> Of course, there is an easy way to implement exactly what you're asking
>> for: use separate programs for everything, instead of expecting a
>> megantic office suite[1] to do everything for you. Just get yourself a
>> nice simple text editor, then invoke other programs - maybe from a
>> terminal, or maybe from within the editor - to do the rest of the work.
>> A simple disk cache will mean that previously-used programs start up
>> quickly.
> Libre office was sighted as just one example
> Video editing suites are another that could be used as an example
> (perhaps more so, does the rendering engine need to be loaded until you
> start generating the output? a small delay here would be insignificant)
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
>> [1] It's slightly less bloated than the gigantic office suite sold by a
>> top-end software company.
>