Aah the joys of false progressivism.

I hear that representing the absence of value as a number was invented about 6000 years ago, perhaps we should abandon that as antiquated as well..

also, to wit, a Unix kernel of recent vintage:

    $ uname -msr
    OpenBSD 6.3 amd64
    $ du -skc bsd.rd bsd  
    9664    bsd.rd
    12912   bsd
    22576   total

vs, say, a Linux kernel of recent vintage:

    $ uname -msr
    Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64 x86_64
    $ du -skc /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-8-amd64 /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 /lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64
    4152	/boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-8-amd64
    21616	/boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64
    212248	/lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64
    238016	total

yes, there are likely more drivers in the latter. highly doubt there is an order of magnitude more though.

not to mention some 'modern' npm+webpack monstrosity.

that said, given the latter, i can hardly fault a <10Mb go executable as 'excessive', so you're right on that front.