"Systems have so much memory, it doesn't matter if I increase memory usage for simplicity or maintainability."
Now look at your stack and count how many developers could have uttered this phrase when designing each module, subsystem, library, protocol, service, daemon, file type, interface, or plug-in that's part of it.
We should count ourselves lucky that hardware engineers have afforded us the ability to make such trades but we shouldn't take it for granted.
In this case I think the tradeoff is not worthy. We're not in the 80s anymore and its ok for a desktop to load an app icon with an additional file access. Even more if its a well known vector format.
Imagine what would have happened if HTML had been a non human-readable binary format just to spare a few bytes.
We're not in the 80s anymore and its ok for a desktop to load an app icon with an additional file access.
Some optimizations are counter productive.
In what context? Also, aren't you making presumptions about new contexts that might appear? We have for decades been in an era where devices get more power efficient and smaller, allowing them to become more ubiquitous. BeOS used to be able to fit a fully kitted OS into under 300MB that could punch way above its weight in terms of multimedia multitasking. Right now computers attached to your body often need to be recharged every day or once a week. Even now, we'd like those computers to be able to do more with even less power.
If I could make a computer so small and cheap, a big company wouldn't care if one is lost occasionally, yet with enough longevity to accompany a freight shipment of package on its entire journey, while recording or even transmitting data, I bet could sell a bunch of those.
Imagine what would have happened if HTML had been a non human-readable binary format just to spare a few bytes.
If you want to "just spare a few bytes", you could do the same to HTML and keep it text-based. Comparing something like XML and JSON shows that "human-readable" formats can vary significantly in complexity alone.
Besides, I think we could all do with fewer layers of abstraction in our lives. As a reverse-engineer I know once remarked, "Everything is human readable if you have a hex editor."
Now look at your stack and count how many developers could have uttered this phrase when designing each module, subsystem, library, protocol, service, daemon, file type, interface, or plug-in that's part of it.
We should count ourselves lucky that hardware engineers have afforded us the ability to make such trades but we shouldn't take it for granted.