Snapchat for example is 95MB, 77MB code, and on my phone (Android, so not directly linked, but probably similar) the most unresponsive, crashy and painful-to-use app right along with Skype.
I'm wondering if the same kinds of things happen with Facebook, Skype, etc. It's not the actual Facebook or Skype code that's so huge, but that they've been around for so long and so many people worked on them that they have a very complex build procedure and they're linking in all kinds of unnecessary junk, but no one has the responsibility or desire to go prune it.
The first thing I had in mind was frameworks like PhoneGap, Exponent and the likes. I wonder if these have a big impact on app size.
But it's certainly true that it's not always extra stuff to slap on that makes things bloated. Could just as well be the stuff you don't go out of your way to keep out.
However, I see plenty of other apps that appear to have way more complexity than the Facebook app. They are all significantly smaller. I don't understand what's happening there that requires that much bloat. The UI appears fairly minimal. From an outside perspective (probably an ignorant one), it just appears to be making API calls and throwing out the data.
Genuine question. Where is this bloat coming from? Is it just a pile of thrown on band-aid fixes and kitchen sinks, or is there something that I'm missing. Even third party applications do the same job, yet treat my battery and storage with respect. They seem to be fully capable of the same things that the official app is capable of.
Part of me wants to assume it's the whole, "move fast and break things" approach.
This is a good blog post about it: http://www.darkcoding.net/software/facebooks-code-quality-pr...
And Facebook's own blog post about their Dalvik hacks and how clever they are, which speaks volumes of their development culture: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/04/facebook-messenger-lite-wha...
What gives?
So, let's assume Segment is right and there's a causal relationship between app size and downloads. What am I missing?
For example, I assume if you tested apps sized 0mb-200mb, the data does not extrapolate as far as Hearthstone, which clocks in at a sizeable 1.2gb!
https://www.quora.com/How-do-page-load-times-affect-e-commer...
According to Wikipedia, segment.com's sole purpose is to aggregate data for marketing and advertising. Not a company I want to give page views to.
