Glad you've finally noticed
Bloat has been the bane of computer systems for many decades, certainly since the early days of MS-DOC (MSFT being an early offender). When you complained about it you just got people babbling on about "Moore's Law" plus the usual disdain that application programmers had for anyone not part of their club of true believers. The result has been the systematic degradation of computer systems to the point that there's now an expectation by users that any machine will automatically run slower and slower over time and so have to be replaced with 'the latest'.
I have to program, too, but because of the specifics of my work and my work history I actually know what a crock this is. I can recognize appalling heap management and poor task design; I am annoyed that it takes gigabytes of memory and a multicore processor to manage email or display a web page. I have never had the luxury of being part of the "hose the stuff at the barn wall and see what sticks" school of programming and its frustrating that so much stuff that's out there -- especially for web applications and portable units -- is built like that. (....and don't get me started on testing methodologies that appear to be along the lines of "sling the stuff together and wait for the user to complain").
Time for a rethink. (...or maybe just time to retire....leave the whole edifice to crumble under its own weight).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
