Re:Gmail’s fake loading indicator (2020)
by DonHopkins on Thursday November 11, 2021 @03:58AM
(#29185938)
Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment states that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
>My point was not about copycats, it was about platformization. Apps that you "live in" all day have pressure to become everything and do everything. An app for editing text becomes an IDE, then an OS. An app for displaying hypertext documents becomes a mail reader, then an OS.
So it follows that most programs that can read email are enormous ("expand" being the operative term, with Emacs and Thunderbird being the archetypal examples)!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Notable_quotes
>Some have interpreted this as commenting on the phenomenon of software bloating with popular features. Zawinski himself has stated:
https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1331287160738070528
>My point was not about copycats, it was about platformization. Apps that you "live in" all day have pressure to become everything and do everything. An app for editing text becomes an IDE, then an OS. An app for displaying hypertext documents becomes a mail reader, then an OS.
So it follows that most programs that can read email are enormous ("expand" being the operative term, with Emacs and Thunderbird being the archetypal examples)!