Your comment indicates you didn't experience the era where binaries had nothing more than the machine instructions and data necessary to execute. If anything, I think binaries now are more bloated than ever.

I remember different. It used to be controversial when compilers of old had embedded some identifiers into the binaries they produced - like the infamous MSVC-added "Rich" header or I think Borland compilers used to have something like that too.

Some people used to strip or blank out all sort of identifiers for various reasons (IIRC, primarily to complicate analysis with automated tools).