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The site is a little bit slow because of installed heavy zencart application

What's the meaning of heavy in the above sentence? Does it mean the application is too large or something else?

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In this context, heavy means 'using a lot of resources' or 'placing a (heavy) load on the computer running the application'.

A single word replacement might be difficult to find: heavy is quite descriptive.

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  • Try burdensome, resource intensive, ponderous, substantial; possibly badly coded, inefficient, bloated. (Yes, some not single words.)
    – ErikE
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 4:21
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    All good words, but I can't imagine someone writing about software with words like burdensome. Maybe bloated, but that has decidedly negative connotation, which may not have been intended.
    – pavium
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 4:37
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Pavium's answer is, of course, absolutely correct, but I want to expand a bit.

You asked "Does it mean the application is too large?" The answer is no. The application takes up a lot of resources, but that may be necessary because of the nature of the problem the application is solving. Describing an application as heavy neither implies or denies that the application is too large -- it just says that it's large.

If one wanted to say the application is "too large" they might say it is "inefficient" or "poorly implemented."

I would also add that describing software as "heavy" is uncommon. One would usually either say "heavyweight" or probably just "not lightweight."

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  • Alan， what's the meaning of this line in your answer.(but that may be necessary because of the nature of the problem the application is solving). thank you.
    – enjoylife
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 5:51
  • what does "that may be necessary" refer to? The application takes up a lot of resources? am i right? what dose "the application is solving" refer to?
    – enjoylife
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 5:53
  • If I can answer on behalf of Alan - I think he meant the application may take a lot of resources because it's task is to solve a difficult problem (it may do a lot of calculations). That (meaning 'take a lot of resources') may be necessary because it's the purpose of the application. It may require the CPU to work harder, use more memory, access the disk more. In general we can think of computers as problem-solving devices. Mathematical and Logic problem-solving devices.
    – pavium
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 8:45

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