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In computing, minimalism refers to the application of minimalist philosophies and principles in hardware and software design and usage. ==History== In the late 1970s and early 1980s programmers had to work within the confines of relatively expensive and limited resources. 8 or 16 kilobytes of RAM was common; 64 kilobytes was considered a vast amount and was the entire address space accessible to the 8-bit CPUs predominant during the earliest generations of personal computers. The most common storage medium was the 5.25 inch floppy disk holding from 88 to 170kB. Hard drives with capacities from 5 to 10 megabytes cost thousands of dollars. Over time, personal computer memory capacities expanded by orders of magnitude and mainstream programmers took advantage of the added storage to increase their software's capabilities and/or to make development easier by using higher-level languages. By contrast, system requirements for legacy software remained the same. As a result, even the most elaborate, feature-rich programs of yesteryear seem minimalist in comparison with current software. Many of these programs are now considered abandonware. One example of a program whose system requirements once gave it a heavyweight reputation is the GNU Emacs text editor, which gained the backronym "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping" in an era when 8MB was a lot of RAM, but today its mainly textual buffer-based paradigm uses far less resources than desktop metaphor GUI IDEs with comparable features such as Eclipse or Netbeans. In a speech at the 2002 International Lisp Conference, Richard Stallman indicated that minimalism was a concern in his development of GNU and Emacs, based on his experiences with Lisp and system specifications of low-end minicomputers at the time.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs )〕 As the capabilities and system requirements of common desktop software and operating systems grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and as software development became dominated by teams espousing conflicting, faddish software development methodologies, some developers adopted minimalism as a philosophy and chose to limit their programs to a predetermined size or scope. A focus on software optimization can result in minimalist software, as programmers reduce the number of operations their program carries out in order to speed execution.〔ne has been written with sparing resource use as a basic goal. Every possible effort has been made to reduce the use of CPU time and memory, the number of system calls, and the number of characters output to the terminal. -- ne info page〕 In the early 21st century, new developments in computing devices have brought minimalism to the forefront. In what has been termed the post-PC era it is no longer necessary to buy a high-end desktop personal computer merely to perform common computing tasks, mobile computing devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, netbooks and plug computers often have smaller memory capacities, less-capable graphics subsystems, and slower processors when compared to the desktop computer they are expected to replace. In addition, heavy use of graphics effects like alpha blending drains the battery on these devices faster than a "flat ui". The growing popularity of these stripped-down devices has made minimalism an important design concern. Google's Chrome browser and Chrome OS are often cited as examples of minimalist design. In Windows 8, Microsoft has decided to drop the graphics-intensive Aero user interface in favor of the "simple, squared-off" Metro appearance, which requires less system resources. This change was made in part because of the rise of smaller, battery-powered devices and the need to conserve power.〔(In 2009, desktops were 44% of the worldwide market and laptops were 56%. Just 3 years later, over 61% of the PCs sold are laptops and the trend is accelerating—this is globally, measuring all Windows PCs sold. Among consumers in the United States buying a PC this year, more than 76% will purchase laptops—the absolute number of all US desktops sold will be fewer than the number of tablets in 2012! )〕 Version 7 of Apple's iOS makes similar changes for user experience reasons. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minimalism (computing)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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