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24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

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Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#61
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

> Damn, are we doing this wrong?

Yes: Not isolating different modules sufficiently to allow you to avoid including most headers when compiling most modules.

Patterns to do this in C++ has been well understood for two decades:

Strict separation of concerns coupled with facades at the boundaries that let all the implementation details of the modules remain hidden.

Yes, it has a cost: You're incurring extra call overhead across module boundaries, and lose in-lining across module boundaries, so you need to choose how you separate your code carefully. But the end-result is so much more pleasant to work with.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#62
post #53

Saw the headline and thought "must be Windows". I'm not a Windows hater, but one of my long standing gripes about Windows is that it just seems to have terrible multitasking compared to OSX. I'm sure there are reasons but it just seems utterly symbolic of Microsoft that they never managed to get Windows to multitask in a rock solid, smooth and reliable way like OSX.

It seems to have improved these past years but beach balls used to be comically widespread on OS X. I'm not at all convinced OS X is in any better shape than Windows.

And OS X certainly doesn't have anywhere near all the kick ass monitoring tools that Windows as, such as the ones shown in this article.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#63
post #53

Saw the headline and thought "must be Windows". I'm not a Windows hater, but one of my long standing gripes about Windows is that it just seems to have terrible multitasking compared to OSX. I'm sure there are reasons but it just seems utterly symbolic of Microsoft that they never managed to get Windows to multitask in a rock solid, smooth and reliable way like OSX.

OS X just slows everything down so you won't notice when something get stuck.

I've been a Mac user for 7 years now, my latest greatest MacBook Pro halts for a few seconds when I connect an external monitor and everything is frozen and unresponsive, like I'm looking at a screenshot of the system

OS multitasking is still usually shit...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#64
post #54
post #49

We've come to the point where building the browser from scratch takes more than building the OS itself.

That's because we've come to the point where the browser is now more akin to an OS than a networked document reader.

I'm reading this thread on a Chromebook and really getting a kick...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#65
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Have you worked with Firefox? How does the build compare?

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#66
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

"Concatenated" builds seem to be the best band-aid for this. Concatenate as many source files as possible before compiling, #include a bunch of cpp files into one big file. It makes tracking down errors slightly harder and macros a bit more risky, but greatly improves the overall build efficiency.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#67
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Are you sure C++ is the only thing to blame, and not how you use it?

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#68

I grew up on the Commodore 64 (1 Core, 1 hyper-thread :-), almost 1 MHz clock freq, almost 64 K usable RAM). The machine was usually pretty responsive, but when I typed too quickly in my word processor it sometimes got stuck and ate a few characters. I used to think: "If computers were only fast enough so I could type without interruption...". If you'd asked me back then for a top ten list what I wished computers cou…

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

"The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing." [0]

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus_%C3%A7a_change,_plus_c%2...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are you commenting? Kind of a crappy attitude you have there.

not really, I was kinda expecting the post would also contain interactions with Microsoft, leading to the resolution of the bug in update XX. The post kinda left me unsatisfied.

Microsoft aren't great at resolving reported bugs even if you pay them for it.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have almost the same background (Vic-20, if you thought programming was hard try having only 3.5k of RAM) and feel the same irritation...but I don't wonder why computers aren't faster, I wonder why operating systems and application is so utterly shit. I have a Moto X phone (not too old) and watching it slow down is almost comical. Sometimes I'll decide to close a few apps and hitting the selector button brings up s…

I think most of the shit is concentrated on a couple of notable platforms: Windows and Android. Outside of that space I've noticed less productivity hampering nightmare tools and OS features. Really I get perhaps one or two bits of stupid from Linux a year on the server-side, usually when integrating it with Windows ironically, and on the macOS/iOS front I haven't had a notable issue since I switched about a year ago…

I'm using Linux for my daily work for more than ten years now and develop for MacOS since around 2000, and I honestly cannot confirm this. If you have a fast and well-tuned machine, the sluggishness of modern applications might not be so notable, but it surely is there, and then there are also many usability issues of desktop software on Linux. Not to speak of browser-based applications, which mostly have unusable user interfaces anyway. For MacOS, usability is still high, but the multithreading and API layering on Cocoa is and always has felt sluggish to me. I no longer use Mail.app but remember it as a particularly bad example.

I agree with the OP, for actual use computers can do more powerful things than they used to be able to, no doubt about that, but programs and operating systems continue to feel slow and clumsy. Android in particular, but in the end all operating systems.

Bloated GUI frameworks, use of unoptimized images in GUIs, and non-optimal multicore programming are to blame, I guess.

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