Tiny, single exe (and an ini for config) Windows programs have a special place in my heart. Perfectly portable, instant and lightweight.<p>I want to cry when I see simple software like Sticky Notes in Windows 10 using dozens of MB of memory and have a 30+MB install size with minimal functionality.<p>I don't have a big issue with .NET and Java based apps but I seem to be using more and more Electron based software and while the software isn't bad it sucks that every program comes with its own bloated framework :(
Although it was "removed due to copyright violations"[1] in 2003, TinyWindowsGames.com was a work of art. If you don't mind downloading random binaries you can still grab them via the Internet Archive. I will see if I can create a new screenshot of the playable, tiny thumbnail near the system tray (probably microscopic at today's resolutions).<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20030618002602/http://www.tinywindowsgames.com:80/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20030618002602/http://www.tinywi...</a><p>[1] <i>Nintendo reported us to some software theft agency over "Tiny Donkey
Kong" (I forget what the agency was called) and that got us threatened
us with scary emails. We tried to protest that we just supplied
emulators, and not ROM images, but it fell on deaf ears and we were
too young and intimidatable to stand our ground. It's a shame, since
it was a popular site in its day.</i><p><a href="https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comp.freeware/yKQBaHgjGDI/klMAitootGUJ" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comp.freeware/yKQBaHgjGD...</a>
Paging HN user miles!<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12985672" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12985672</a><p><i>I'm afraid (or perhaps the word I'm looking for is "glad" ;-) that the Internet has passed tinyapps.org on by. After its fleeting 15 seconds of fame back in 2001 (thanks to a Slashdotting and tiny blurb in Wired), the site has mainly served as an irregular tech blog lo these many years.</i>
When I see the specs of things like the Raspberry Pi and Apps like this, it makes me wonder how great a system like that could be.<p>Executable size may not be the best measure of these things though. Ram usage of some things can be quite huge. tinyapps.org seems to avoid this by disallowing things needing runtimes, which while not the cause of RAM bloat, often tends to be a common factor.<p>I'd actually like to see an interface for micro controller style apps. Like An 8 bit AVR emulator that could do some kernel syscalls to the hosted environment. It would allow for a class of apps to be written that would have a fixed memory footprint. There's some Irony here in that this would also be a runtime.<p>I once had a volume knob widget on my task bar that used 4 meg of ram. Somehow I feel it could have been done better.
This calls to mind: <a href="http://suckless.org/" rel="nofollow">http://suckless.org/</a><p>> Home of dwm, dmenu and other quality software with a focus on simplicity, clarity, and frugality.
I've written a few small no-dependency things like this for Windows. Some random notes on writing them: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11011857" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11011857</a><p>These are all no-dependency, and all <100KBytes:<p>Keyboard layout switcher for Windows: <a href="https://github.com/tom-seddon/kbswitch" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tom-seddon/kbswitch</a><p>Windows window manipulation tools, for use with AutoHotKey: <a href="https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2</a>, <a href="https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3</a>, <a href="https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch</a><p>Snack-size Windows clock: <a href="https://github.com/tom-seddon/NotifyClock" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tom-seddon/NotifyClock</a><p>I think the large ones are only as large as they are because they statically link with the CRT. I used to do the full /NODEFAULTLIB /OPT:NOWIN98 thing, and leave out the CRT entirely, so the EXEs were tiny and had no dependencies - but this was a bit of a pain to work with. And dynamically linking with the CRT caused me a couple of deployment problems here and there, since I used to share my binaries folder between several PCs in the past. So eventually I settled on the purely no-dependency option: statically linking with the CRT, and ignoring the EXE size. The average app just isn't made meaningfully larger in the grand scheme of things by this, and by modern standards it barely even counts as measurable. Even if it's a tiny app, and now 10x larger, it might still be only 90KBytes...
I was curious about how small (file size) and efficient (memory) I could write a program with a GUI and came across this old gem. Most of them have links to their source.
Progress is modern computing has only been exceeded in the increased in bloatware! Using these lean and mean apps on modern hardware is heavenly - the way I imagined, 10 years ago, of how things would be today.
I wish it were easy to write such small apps, particular cross-platform. I'm developing a cross-platform file manager [1]. It's way more bloated with dependencies than I would like. But I can't justify spending time on trimming its dep's when there is so much functionality that needs to be implemented. Having said that, I did choose PyQt over Electron for performance reasons [2].<p>[1]: <a href="https://fman.io" rel="nofollow">https://fman.io</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-in-2016/" rel="nofollow">https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-...</a>
I love the minimal and efficient app mindset.<p>Back in the 90s I used this DOS text editor that fit on a single floppy sector (512B). I forget the name, but it was a part of my standard toolkit for many years.<p>These days, I run "evilwm" for my home desktop. That's about as small and efficient as a DE/WM gets anymore, and I love it.
I've been using a replacement of network>Proxomitron proxy filter tool called Proxydomo available on github. God bless the guy that reverse engineered the original.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/amate/Proxydomo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/amate/Proxydomo</a>
Hey nice! I wrote a minimal Windows console-based hex editor [0] just recently for fun. Maybe I should submit it.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/samizzo/hexed" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/samizzo/hexed</a>
Perfect thread to mention AnyDesk, our remote desktop application. We practice minimalism as an art form, the size of the Windows executable is 1,8 MB. [0]<p>Disclaimer: Currently working at AnyDesk.<p>0: <a href="https://anydesk.com/platforms" rel="nofollow">https://anydesk.com/platforms</a>
Besides the file size restriction of 1.4 MB, I agree 100% with the requirements for good OS software. Portability and ad/junk-free is most important.
tangentially related: wasn't there a website of single page web apps a few years ago? I'd love to see tiny SaaS or software solutions listed somewhere.
You can write all sorts of tiny apps. We need to have 100 people just to tell the other 100 people what process to follow, how to write everything, what it should look like, etc. Plus another 100 people to run the process. Also another 100 people to manage those people. Bonus: the following version in this monster must be complete before the previous version is even live. No tiny for us...
Hm, looks like there are some old links - pfe (programmers file editor) links to sites.net, not the official homepage:<p><a href="http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~steveb/cpaap/pfe/default.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~steveb/cpaap/pfe/default.htm</a>
Ninite also follows an interesting concept and saved me some good time in the past. Can be really useful if you need to install the same subset of apps on more machines.
<a href="https://ninite.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ninite.com/</a>
Missing this<p><a href="http://www.bcheck.net/apps/hoe.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bcheck.net/apps/hoe.htm</a><p>customized hotkey launcher.<p>Written in assembly I believe. You can modify it far beyond bosskey.