Over at Drupal's "Development" mailing list there is a discussion titled : "How many modules is too many?"

The question hinges around the issue of performance : The more modules the system has, the slower it works because it has to load all those bits and pieces of code from all over the place.

The issue seems like only affecting coders, that is, the people who develop modules and/or work on the core of Drupal. Yet this is not the case at all.

At Drupal's "Support" mailing list Edward Peter's points us to the work around he had to implement in order to solve a simple usability issue he had with SimpleNews.

What follows is the email I was going to send out to Edward but have opted to publish on my blog instead (because it breaks the rule of being more than 3 paragraphs long). I definitely want to hear your thoughts on this :