Why do you say "lost"... Technology brought us an orthogonal solution to the problem, but yet, it is a solution :-)

Maybe one day, when we'll run out of whatever-it-takes to build computers, we'll have to optimize for size, but that's another story.

I still remember the days of C64 and the 640kb limitation in DOS. What we got was first optimization then full on hacks and mostly assembly language.

To use a tool and give up on size really doesn't bother me. I rather have elegant solutions then full on hackery or difficult memory management type solutions.

And we've lost the dynamic library battle. I understand why but can't help being saddened by it, it was such an elegant solutions.

I'm really glad we're finally starting to win the dynamic library battle; it was a kludgey fix for a transient storage bottleneck that has been plaguing us with unnecessary complication for at least a decade now. Predictability is a good thing.

It's not such a good thing to have to update each and every application whenever there is a vulnerability in a library.

Meh, I feel like it is even better because even if you could update the library indvidually you have no idea about the ramifications of such an update and what potential other vulnerabilties/bugs doing so will uncover.

You could install the electron or nw.js runtime separately and then just download/distribute a compressed file with the JavaScript source code. Witch would be smaller then most programs.

Elegant in theory maybe, rough in practice.

I don't think so, have we? Windows applications are very small because all the UI libraries are in the OS itself, where they should be.