In computing, minimalism refers to the application of minimalist philosophies and principles in hardware and software design and usage.
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In the 1950s, some mainframes had only 1,000 characters of memory. In the 1960s, mainframes had 4 to 64 Kilobytes of storage. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the earliest generations of personal computers, programmers had to work with the confines of relatively expensive and limited resources. 8 or 16 Kilobytes of RAM was common, 64K was considered a vast amount and was the Address space of the 8-bit CPUs of the day. Expansion beyond 64K would require bank switching. Storage capacities ranged from 88K floppy disks to (very expensive) 10 Megabyte hard drives. Personal computer memories have expanded by orders of magnitude over time, where system requirements remained the same for legacy software as it aged, making even the most elaborate, featureful programs of yesteryear seem minimalist in comparison with current software. Many of these programs are now considered abandonware. As the capabilities and system requirements of common desktop software and operating systems grew, many developers adopted minimalism as a philosophy and began choosing to limit their programs to a predefined size or scope.
In the early 21st century, changing applications for computing devices have brought minimalism to the forefront. It is no longer necessary to buy a high-end desktop personal computer merely to perform common computing tasks.[1] Multiplication of devices such as smartphones, netbooks and plug computers have made minimalism an important design concern. Google's Chrome browser and Chrome OS are often cited as examples of minimalist design.[2][3]
Developers may create user interfaces made to be as simple as possible by eliminating buttons and dialog boxes that may potentially confuse the user. Minimalism is sometimes used in its visual arts meaning, particularly in the industrial design of the hardware device or software theme. John Millar Carroll, in his book Minimalism Beyond the Nürnberg Funnel pointed out the use of minimalism resulting in little-or-no learning curve with the benefit of 'instant-use' devices such as video games, ATMs, and mall kiosks that do not require the user to read manuals.[4] User Interface researchers have performed experiments suggesting that minimalism, as illustrated by the design principles of parsimony and transparency, bolsters efficiency and learnability.[5] Minimalism is implicit in the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well."