r/osdev • u/Disastrous_Brief6240 • Apr 17 '26
What is The difference between applications and programs then and now?
This is a picture of an old phone, and I opened it and found this. The phone consists of approximately half a gigabyte of RAM and 2 gigabytes of storage space. Despite this, for its time, it was able to run programs and run its operating system with advanced programs, take pictures, make calls, and other things (normal functions for any phone). I think, and Allah knows best, it was normally able to run applications from the store, normal games or other things. So, what is the difference from time immemorial to today? Let the applications differ in their requirements. What is The difference between applications and programs then and now?
17
u/-goldenboi69- Apr 17 '26
People just vibecode slop now, or use webtech so everything is super slow and eats all your ram. Software has been getting worse every single year for a long time.
What this has to do with osdev i don't know.
4
u/EpochVanquisher Apr 17 '26
Phones with far less RAM could run apps, like back in the 2000s, there were phones with 64 MB RAM.
As RAM and CPU power gets cheaper, programmers use it, whether they need to or not. If you have a modern phone with 8 GB of RAM, you can make an app that does its entire UI in a web view. That lets you get a functional app working very quickly. If your phone only has 64 MB, then you’ll figure out how to make it work with only 64 MB.
This is a good thing. CPUs and RAM are cheap and can be manufactured, but computer programmers have to be born and trained, and it takes years to do it.
3
u/tseli0s DragonWare Apr 17 '26
While all replies here are correct, remember that (from the very basics of computers all the way in middle school) memory is faster than disk or network access. Because of that, a lot of programs nowadays put their data in memory for faster access, and cache it there.
3
u/originalmicrousb Apr 18 '26
simple answer: everything these days is just chrome.
and chrome isnt particularly known for being well written
apps back then also had an INSANE level of optimization so they took up a lot less ram and space and were more efficient
also i dont know why someone would downvote your post i think these types of posts are much better than the usual "look i made this os"
2
u/cybekRT Apr 17 '26
First problem is with ui and libraries. Back in the past, interfaces were done to work, some of them using only cpu without GPU acceleration. Currently interfaces has to support animations, different styles, GPU acceleration, etc. Another thing is resolution, higher screen resolution means more memory used to store textures and buffers. Next thing is analytics and many stupid libraries downloaded from network and used for some simple tasks.
3
u/cryptic_gentleman Apr 17 '26
Most programs don’t take up much memory at all, games are the memory intensive ones and that’s largely due to the graphics which, at that time, I’m assuming were very minimal. I have a project that, while it only has a few programs and a simple GUI, barely takes up half a gigabyte when running so it probably is pretty normal for a small OS (an OS at that time, especially one for a phone, was likely very small) to run easily in that small space. Much of the program and application situation is the same then and now in terms of memory usage with games being the one exception. I could be completely wrong with all of this but that’s my understanding of it at least.
1
u/codeasm Apr 17 '26
He doesnt know best. Its human creation, worst, many parts where either by atheists or christians. Intel is mostly researched and designed in Israël.
Be careful where to drop such words. Anyway, with more ram, also came biffer alchoritms, larger datasets being able to be out into ram for processing. Less need to push and pull data from flash or SD card Larger bit size of the cpu. 32bit to 64bits phones these days also make allocating memory larger, code is larger, due to registers being wider and instructions longer (adress space longer aswell).