That an app 'Fits on a Floppy' is still a useful measure in 2026
The article discusses the relevance of the concept 'Fits on a Floppy' in modern software development. It emphasizes the importance of simplicity and compactness in software design, contrasting it with the complexity of contemporary applications. The manifesto advocates for small software solutions, highlighting examples of effective applications that adhere to this principle.
- ▪The term 'Fits on a Floppy' refers to a manifesto advocating for small and simple software solutions.
- ▪Developer Matt Sephton created 18 tiny apps to demonstrate the effectiveness of compact software.
- ▪The idea promotes the notion that limiting project size can lead to increased simplicity in software design.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/05/29/that-an-app-fits-on-a-floppy-is-still-a-useful-measure-in-2026/5247224 |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 11:15:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-29T09:19:59.862Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-29T09:19:59.862Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | u2qSk1kizWgR |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); Software That an app 'Fits on a Floppy' is still a useful measure in 2026 In a world of mass-produced bot-slopware, small is more beautiful than ever Liam Proven Liam Proven Published fri 29 May 2026 // 10:15 UTC If you're old enough, you might remember using floppy disks, either of the 3.5-inch or 5.25-inch variety. They didn't hold much and often you had to have many disks to install one program.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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