Code Inflation

Journal article about code inflation and how software grows over time whether or not a rational need for it exists.

Gives the history of the/bin/true command in Unix as an example... it was originally 0 bytes (always completed successfully because it contained nothing to execute) and has since grown to 22k bytes without any significant difference in functionality.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7057573/

Article's a few years old (my /bin/true is up to 27k now) but it's still an interesting read if you're bored.