It works both ways. Some folks were overly concerned about both memory footprint and total run-time as their importance actually declined. I made a career out of ignoring both and making leading edge apps that pushed these limits. Few other programmers had yet realized that these things were becoming practical. Within my organization I had an un-earned reputation as a leading edge programmer. Not so. I was a mostly self-taught hacker trying to keep up with the others. Now I was doing scientific programming, and there are plenty of other places where this approach won't work, but it worked for me. Look forward, do new things, and build the future.
Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
31–40 of 50 posts
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#32> Am I wrong or was programming just way cooler back then?
You're wrong, to be blunt.
Sure there's some interesting challenges to solve around keeping memory usage low, but mostly it was just tedious and limiting.
Programming has enough challenges and interesting optimizations without worrying as much as one used to have to about memory.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#33Read “Racing the Beam” for a good time learning about how to do a lot with crazy constraints we don’t have today!
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#34I think certain developers don't care because they don't even understand programming on a lower level nor they understand hardware. As a sysadmin that really grinds me gears.
These days, developers have no shame - even Microsoft shows Teams was a utter piece of garbage with both memory and cpu usage https://youtu.be/CT7nnXej2K4 . Are they even serious with 22 second loading on a modern hardware and multiple gigabytes of memory usage for a stupid chat app?
We still use laptops that have 8GB of RAM in our company for positions like HR, marketing and others and the fact that Teams and couple of browser tabs can totally kill their PCs is insane. Laptop manufacturers haven't caught up to the news and they still charge premium for 32GB machines, while 8GB is no longer sufficient for anything and 16GB should be the baseline these days.
And of course this is not just Teams but many other applications. Too bad most users don't understand the issue and think that something is wrong with their computers.
Regular users are not great testers. Testing used to be a dedicated job...
Anyway I think there should be a lot more pressure on developers to use our current hardware more efficiently
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#35I think it is much cooler now. So many more things are possible now. Instead of having 8 low res sprites to push around, we have high quality 3d rendering. Instead of making a robot with 2 wheels that bumps against a wall and turns, we have humanoid robots to work on. I find it all really exciting.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#36Memory usage is still a problem. Trying to figure out why some objects don't get garbage collected at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#37> Am I wrong or was programming just way cooler back then? You're wrong, to be blunt. Sure there's some interesting challenges to solve around keeping memory usage low, but mostly it was just tedious and limiting. Programming has enough challenges and interesting optimizations without worrying as much as one used to have to about memory.
I disagree. I think constraints (such as memory availablity) are a useful device to encourage creativity.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#38> when memory usage was a concern
I checked this morning; it was still the case.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#39Programmers like you are why I have to upgrade my computer every two years just to browse the web.
Re: Ask HN: Was programming more interesting when memory usage was a concern?
#40I don't think it's so much dealing with resource constraints that made it more exciting, but the fact that you were often originating things, rather than (haphazardly) stitching together exisiting, known works of others. It's always more exciting to create something from scratch rather than "just add water and stir" sorta thing.
[edit to add:] Although, another part of having to understand memory usage, for example, meant that you really had to understand the fundamental building materials you were working with. Where as now, no one has the man hours to really understand the stack of tens of thousands of lines of node shit you have to glue together to do some basic task.. you feel more excited when you are really mastering the materials, I think..