Size of this .app on my Mac: 866 MB
Yes, I know, it’s silly to snark on Electron app sizes by this point. You want to see some real bloat? Let’s compare the included Adobe Photoshop 3 and Adobe Photoshop 2020:
Photoshop 3.0.5: 8.9 MB
Photoshop 21.2.1: 2.76 GB
Now that is some bloat.
Sadly I’m not terribly knowledgable if this is easily implementable or not but theoretically you don’t need to allocate all the disk space, just the parts you’ve written to.
Consider graphics resources: modern screens typically 9 to 16 times as many pixels per square inch. Even though Macintosh computers have always been known for their graphical interfaces and use in publishing, user interface elements did not always exploit increased colour depth in the early 1990's. A graphics resource in a modern application can use an additional 4 to 32 times more memory just for colour. Software also tends to incorporate more graphical elements these days, thus adding more bulk. We shouldn't be surprised by Photoshop being 310 times larger. Since people tend to notice the visual quality of software, whether it enhances the software or is pure cosmetics, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Other aspects of software will also influence its growth. Modern software tends to support more languages and regional variations in how data (numbers, time, etc.) are represented. This virtually always produces a noticeably larger program. More features means more code and associated data, while optimization tends to focus upon speed at the expense of size. Again, programs will be larger. When it improves accessibility and functionality, this "bloat" is a good thing.
I am not saying that bloat is always a good thing and I appreciate how much developers of the past could do so much with so little. My favourite example are early versions of Clarisworks, where a stripped down installation could fit on a single floppy disk while offering a word processor, spreadsheet, database, paint program, vector illustration, and telecommunications software. It also addressed the needs of most home and home office users, even considered in the current context. That being said, most people would consider the presentation stark by modern standards and anyone who takes the time to actually learn how to use their software would find the features skimpy.
I use Photoshop every day, and I know that features added since version 3 that I use take up size:
* Layer styles
* Adjustment layers
* Smart objects
* Camera RAW
* Machine learning selection tools
* Generator for assets
So they have added real, valuable features for me. And I don’t particularly care about application size. Just funny to think you couldn’t even fit Photoshop on a CD at this point.
> Now that is some bloat.
Yeah, but you're roughly 310 times more productive now.
Electron Framework takes up 174 MB.
Past that, the big one is “disk” in Contents/Resources/app/src/ — which I will be completely honest, I don’t know what that is exactly. Is it a disk image? If so, does it have to be set to a reasonably large size at build time so you don’t run out of space in the emulator?