Re: Downwardly Scalable Systems

On 2024-04-13, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

"Good systems should be able to scale down as well as up. They
 should run on slower computers that don't have as much memory or
 disk storage as the latest models. Likewise, from the human point
 of view, downwardly scalable systems should also be small enough to
 learn and use without being an expert programmer." ...
>
I read it mainly out of interest in his ideas for the first aspect
with running on slower computers, but it turns out he doesn't
really discuss that at all. They tend to be contradictory goals, so
without proposing a way to unify them it makes that aspect purely
aspirational.

I like your distinction.  My perspective:

1. Scale down to cheap or embedded hardware.

2. Scale down to "human scale."

Both imply restraint, which goes against the flow.  It takes
discipline to trim the fat and simplify design.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of
art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is
already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see
the thing at all.

From: <https://dadadrummer.substack.com/p/against-innovation>