Have you ever wondered why minimum specs continue to creep upward? Part of the problem is that developers don't need to be as efficient as they did decades ago.
A recent video by Dave Plummer highlights the bloat of modern applications by following the journey of Plummer making a notepad that's just 2,686 bytes.
App development is complex, and there are genuinely good reasons that games and programs require such high specs in 2026. But generally speaking, programming doesn't have the constraints of yesteryear, so developers don't need to trim code.
A single app not being optimized is not that much of an issue, but when every program on your PC is bloated, problems pop up. The same productivity workflow today requires more RAM than it did in 2015.
For context, Windows 10 launched with a minimum requirement of just 1GB (for 32-bit) and 2GB of RAM (for 64-bit). Windows 11 requires at least 4GB just to boot the operating system, but most users want much more memory. It was controversial when Microsoft and other companies started offering new PCs with 8GB of RAM this year.
Plummer is best known for creating the Windows Task Manager. He also discusses programming and Windows history on his YouTube channel.
In a recent video, Plummer shared how he made a small notepad application that's smaller in size than a YouTube thumbnail.
Tiny Retro Pad has the core functionality of the original Notepad app built by Microsoft. Notably, it lacks the modern features seen in Notepad, such as Copilot. Considering Notepad's addition of Copilot was mocked by many, Tiny Retro Pad is an improvement in some ways.
Making a notepad app that's under 4,096 bytes is more about working within constraints than the specific size of the final app. In the early days of Windows, there were several limits placed on developers, such as hardware caps. Having to work within those constraints forced developers to be more efficient.
Plummer was able to keep Tiny Retro Pad small by utilizing what's already in Windows.
"A tiny native Windows program does not bring along its own entire civilization. It arrives with a lunchbox and a map of the city," said Plummer.
Later in the video, he added, "The program is small because it is not carrying what the platform already has. And that is a lesson that modern software could stand to remember. Not every app needs to bundle the universe. Not every utility needs to ship with a browser engine."
Nowadays, PCs, tablets, and phones have absurd specs. Even modest devices have several gigabytes of memory and tons of storage. Those specs make modern workflows possible, but they also leave room for lazy development.
"Somehow it seems modern software manages to go the other way. You just want a text box and somehow you've imported a runtime, a layout engine, a renderer, a dependency tree, a telemetry client, an auto updater, and a small portion of Chromium," said Plummer.
No one needs a notepad application that's less than 4,000 bytes, but if more app developers focused on efficient code, Windows 11 would feel smoother across the board.
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