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Slow Software

inkandswitch.com

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Re: Slow Software

#101

Post by sudeepj »

throwaway286 wrote: post #56

I work at a large company that is not one of the famous silicon valley tech companies. One of the worst parts of working there is the heap of various enterprise anti-virus software they install on our computers. It brings huge typing and disk access latencies. Even opening files in vim with FZF is slow. I can't explain why but this makes programming so much less pleasant. I really just want to work somewhere without…

Do you have enough resources (and permissions) to run VirtualBox? That way you can run a VM and get complete control. You can do things inside the VM and anti-virus will not be in the picture.

I do this in my case but for different reasons and not performance.

Re: Slow Software

#103

Post by phtrivier »

> We hope this material is helpful for you as you work on your own software.

Sadly, as interesting as the material in the article is (great to learn about the measured latencies of the hardware part), I fail to see much that is "actionnable" for a run-of-the-mill software developper.

It seems the only advice is "don't download ad / tracking / social media - related stuff", but even that is not exactly in the developpers circle of influence. Who's going to make google analytics smaller to download ? (except, well, google ?) Is any developper really in the position to say "great news, our pages now load xxx ms faster !! However, you won't be able to compute your KPIs for this semester, is that a problem ?")

Also, is "using a language without GC" accessible today for a web frontend developper ? (through some rust / wasm / whatever magic ?)

Re: Slow Software

#104

Post by philpem »

throwaway286 wrote: post #56

I work at a large company that is not one of the famous silicon valley tech companies. One of the worst parts of working there is the heap of various enterprise anti-virus software they install on our computers. It brings huge typing and disk access latencies. Even opening files in vim with FZF is slow. I can't explain why but this makes programming so much less pleasant. I really just want to work somewhere without…

You too, huh?

Last employer moved to McAfee "because active malware protection". Basically, AMP is a set of rules you can apply to disk accesses per application -- like for instance, "no application can delete PDF files from My Documents" (this is one of the "anti ransomware" rules).

It wasn't too bad with just the signature-based virus scan, but the updater and AMP were horrendous. The PCs (3.6GHz 8-core Xeon workstation with SSD, 16GB+ RAM and a ludicrously powerful 3D card) went from booting in 30 seconds to taking 15 minutes to boot. Eclipse took another five to start. When AMP was deployed to the JIRA server, JIRA refused to start (Atlassian Support suggested AV exceptions which IT refused).

IT response: close out any AV related ticket with "You will not be receiving a hardware upgrade and the AV is mandatory."

Six weeks later, IT was outsourced and the response became "we don't have permission to change AV settings" (BigCo politics).

Four more weeks later and the electronics lab was crippled as Labview got detected as malware by AMP.

A fortnight after, half the technical team handed their notice in.

It wasn't the only reason this FTSE100 was constantly outrun by its competitors, but it was certainly a contributing factor.

Re: Slow Software

#105

Post by RBerenguel »

coder543 wrote: post #5

I think this article places too much emphasis on input devices and hardware constraints, and not enough on software architecture. JIRA doesn't really feel any faster just because your input devices are fast; the application level latency dwarfs the input latency by a large margin. I would take measurements, but JIRA prohibits benchmarking for some reason... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they're probably just trying to save everyone else…

I wrote some Python to convert a long yaml file into jira epics/stories/deploys to avoid having to use the UI for anything aside checking what I have on my todo. Has already saved me more than it took to write.

Re: Slow Software

#106

Post by pdpi »

merb wrote: post #6
gleenn wrote: post #2

I like how the site is an example of very fast software, such a simple design and it renders immediately; a single file load with the tiniest of javascript to make the videos work. A full page load in 27ms with only 14kb transferred!

to be fair the site is a html site only and gets served via cloudflare. not a fair metric against a "dynamic" site. also most webservers/frameworks/whatever will favor throughput over latency.

dynamic sites are a choice, and achieving that richer level of interaction comes with its own costs. For every legitimately dynamic page out there (going all the way up to full-on applications), there’s many more that have no good reason to be anything other than static content that could be served from a cdn. Going pure html for a page that doesn’t need more is precisely the sort of design choice that goes with the mentality they’re advocating.

Optimising for throughout rather than latency is, again, a design choice, and the article serves as an indictment of taking that too far.

Re: Slow Software

#108

Post by speedplane »

RBerenguel wrote: post #105
coder543 wrote: post #5

I think this article places too much emphasis on input devices and hardware constraints, and not enough on software architecture. JIRA doesn't really feel any faster just because your input devices are fast; the application level latency dwarfs the input latency by a large margin. I would take measurements, but JIRA prohibits benchmarking for some reason... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they're probably just trying to save everyone else…

I wrote some Python to convert a long yaml file into jira epics/stories/deploys to avoid having to use the UI for anything aside checking what I have on my todo. Has already saved me more than it took to write.

That's great for you, but I'd bet no one else can effectively use your scripts. The beauty of the UI is that anyone can use it almost immediately.

Re: Slow Software

#109

Post by em500 »

coder543 wrote: post #70
godDLL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While running a Linux stack may still work, your Mac info is outdated by three years, at least. Macs have entered the zoo in 2015.

For practical purposes, that's not true. Macs do not allow running unsigned software by default, and no one runs antivirus on Mac, ever. So even if they were commonly being infected, which they aren't, the person above would have organizational indemnity if someone were infected because they're following industry best practices by not running antivirus on Mac. If you want, you can further restrict Macs to only App St…

> Macs do not allow running unsigned software by default, and no one runs antivirus on Mac, ever.

My company-issued MBP is running something called "Cylance Protect" (and "TrendMicro" earlier). And also something called "Forecpoint DLP". I have no control over any of that, software just appears and disappears. I think it's done by something called "Jamf".

I don't really care either way. The only thing I actually use on the Mac is Chrome for email/calendaring/vidconf and some intranet sites. Actual work is all on Linux servers via ssh (and even that has "ClamAV" antivirus running). So I'm just using it as an expensive terminal/chromebook.

Re: Slow Software

#110

Post by keldaris »

dorukane wrote: post #86

While comparing Samsung and Apple mobile device latencies the article gives these examples: Tapping latency examples (Videos slowed 16x): - Opening a settings tab on an iPhone 6s with ~90ms of latency. - Toggling a setting a Samsung S3 with ~330ms of latency. I agree latency is evil, I hated Android a while ago because of this. Apple always felt really fast compared to other OS. BUT it seems normal that toggling a se…

Isn't that just ridiculously slow animations for the most part? I still use an ancient OnePlusX that I got when it came out and I've disabled all UI animations, toggling most settings (with legitimate exceptions like activating the wifi hotspot feature) feels almost instant, certainly nothing close to 300 ms. Admittedly, I haven't used any iPhone in many years, so I can't really compare.
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