While some of our software criteria are subjective - like “easy to use” - or very clear - like “free software” - the criteria, that software should be simple and lightweight are something which can be measured.

There are several values which can be used to determine the “lightweightness” and complexity of a program.

* Size of the source code * Size of the compiled binary * Lines of Code * the programming language which was used * RAM usage

We think, the first three values are giving only limited indications on how lightweight a program is.

The programming language is a strong indicator - a program which was programmed in a language that translate directly to machine code, made by a compiler will be more efficient and lightweight as a program which was programmed in a language which bust be run by an interpreter or bytecode interpreter.

An even stronger indicator is memory usage. So we will measure the memory usage oa a program to give clear recommendations. we do this by using the program smem.