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Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

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Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#51

Post by Razengan »

fxtentacle wrote: post #46

It makes me feel nostalgic to read about the times when people still tried to understand the hardware and make things work amazingly well despite harsh resource limits. Nowadays, even simplistic programs take ages on a device 1000 times more powerful. I had time to read this article because restarting our ruby development server is so excruciatingly slow. It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is g…

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software.

Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#52

Post by jstimpfle »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
jstimpfle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why I find so ironic that many still think only languages like Assembly, C or C++ have a place in IoT on devices like ESP32. Short answer, Parkinson's law. When I browse the Web, open my Windows File Explorer, open Photoshop, open Visual Studio, open just a graphical application that needs GPU acceleration, or do whatever thing that should not be an issue, I find that Parkinson's law very much applies. htt…

Java (the language) is not especially slow; back in the mid 2000s I was optimising a Java GUI to display hundreds of thousands of nodes for chip design clock trees. Java (the culture) makes it hard to be performant. There's a great tendency to use all sorts of frameworks and elaborate object systems where much simpler code would give you at least 90% of the functionality for 10x the performance. But if you get some p…

Yep I agree. Java isn't slow if you build a trivial application. Or an HTTP server. Or something for batch processing. Or if you're a masochist working around performance issues until you reach about ~C level of performance and performance "robustness".

The problem is what Java encourages you to do. And I didn't want to single out a language; Java is just one that I revisit from time to time and I'm always astonished how awkwardly hard it is to do the simplest things in a straightforward (and CPU-efficient) way.

And yes, there are a lot of slow C++ programs, and even slow C programs. There's just a clear tendency for C programs to be faster and more responsive.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#53

Post by miskin »

silvestrov wrote: post #17
hyperpallium wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2000 times more than a ZX81.

2000 times better graphics than a ZX81.

It's a matter of perspective. When one witnessed it from times of Pong until now, it is maybe much easier to appreciate the whole journey. I still find myself trying to save bandwidth on my internet connection that was very scarce resource not-that-long-ago. When I see people listening to music via youtube, unnecessarily transfering all that video content that nobody really watch, I want to cry :). Same with programming - going from ZX to where we are now, you can easily feel the luxury of having almost infinite memory and CPU power. And of course, games now are hardly comparable to what we had on ZX. Great thing is to step back and try to program things like Arduino or ESP8266/ESP32 where you, again, have to think twice about resources.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#54

Post by BubRoss »

jstimpfle wrote: post #38
pjmlp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I find so ironic that many still think only languages like Assembly, C or C++ have a place in IoT on devices like ESP32. Sure, we used Assembly when performance was the ultimate goal, but also plenty of high level languages, including stuff like Clipper for database front ends. 512 KB with a couple of MHz are already capable of doing a lot of stuff, one just needs to actually think how to properly implem…

> Which is why I find so ironic that many still think only languages like Assembly, C or C++ have a place in IoT on devices like ESP32. Short answer, Parkinson's law. When I browse the Web, open my Windows File Explorer, open Photoshop, open Visual Studio, open just a graphical application that needs GPU acceleration, or do whatever thing that should not be an issue, I find that Parkinson's law very much applies. htt…

The bizarre part is that if you mention to the people making visual studio that every version is slower and has more latency and lag in the interactivity, they seem to have no idea what you are talking about and ask what specific situation you are running in to. They either don't know or don't acknowledge the evolution of the performance of their software.

I read once that adobe acrobat has thousands of static variables that initialize on startup. Multiple pdf readers like sumatraPdf are successful largely because of their bloat and start up time.

It's crazy what happens when programming teams have no priority for not wasting user's time and computer resources.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#55

Post by inform880 »

Razengan wrote: post #51
fxtentacle wrote: post #46

It makes me feel nostalgic to read about the times when people still tried to understand the hardware and make things work amazingly well despite harsh resource limits. Nowadays, even simplistic programs take ages on a device 1000 times more powerful. I had time to read this article because restarting our ruby development server is so excruciatingly slow. It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is g…

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software. Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

I understand that Electron apps tend to be a resource hog, but what other options for software create as many cross platform opportunities with as much work? I think for every single greedy developer/company there's another small software project only able to get off the ground because of the maximized opportunities. This is coming from a relatively new full time developer who's trying to get a small side project off the ground.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#56

Post by kdmccormick »

fxtentacle wrote: post #46

It makes me feel nostalgic to read about the times when people still tried to understand the hardware and make things work amazingly well despite harsh resource limits. Nowadays, even simplistic programs take ages on a device 1000 times more powerful. I had time to read this article because restarting our ruby development server is so excruciatingly slow. It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is g…

A Ruby dev server doesn't need to be slow. Put some "craftsmanship" resources into making your dev tools tighter and your app less bloated with dependencies and startup steps.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#57

Post by Razengan »

inform880 wrote: post #55
Razengan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software. Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

I understand that Electron apps tend to be a resource hog, but what other options for software create as many cross platform opportunities with as much work? I think for every single greedy developer/company there's another small software project only able to get off the ground because of the maximized opportunities. This is coming from a relatively new full time developer who's trying to get a small side project off…

This is also partially the fault of the operating system companies for not making native development as easy and portable as it should be.

Things like SwiftUI and the upcoming "clips" (or whatever the iOS/Android "partial/temporary apps" tech is going to be called) are a step in a good direction.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#58

Post by paulryanrogers »

inform880 wrote: post #55
Razengan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software. Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

I understand that Electron apps tend to be a resource hog, but what other options for software create as many cross platform opportunities with as much work? I think for every single greedy developer/company there's another small software project only able to get off the ground because of the maximized opportunities. This is coming from a relatively new full time developer who's trying to get a small side project off…

So much this. I began a configuration program for a desktop app recently, and it's taking months of spare time to get even a rudimentary UI with Qt. Electron or Qtwebview would probably only take a few hours for a web dev like myself.

All that said desktop development is an interesting challenge, if sometimes maddening.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#59

Post by bitwize »

Razengan wrote: post #51
fxtentacle wrote: post #46

It makes me feel nostalgic to read about the times when people still tried to understand the hardware and make things work amazingly well despite harsh resource limits. Nowadays, even simplistic programs take ages on a device 1000 times more powerful. I had time to read this article because restarting our ruby development server is so excruciatingly slow. It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is g…

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software. Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

Electron is the future. Why? Developers would rather spend more of your computer's time (and other resources) than their own time. And most end users -- e.g., people who work in a Slack-based business and so NEED the Slack app -- consider the tradeoff worth it.

Re: Playstation Architecture: A Practical Analysis

#60

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

inform880 wrote: post #55
Razengan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems the craftsmanship aspect of computer programming is getting lost, and all that remains is the large leverage that one can use to drive profits with software. Too many lazy/greedy developers fighting against users and operating systems (coughelectroncough)

I understand that Electron apps tend to be a resource hog, but what other options for software create as many cross platform opportunities with as much work? I think for every single greedy developer/company there's another small software project only able to get off the ground because of the maximized opportunities. This is coming from a relatively new full time developer who's trying to get a small side project off…

> I understand that Electron apps tend to be a resource hog, but what other options for software create as many cross platform opportunities with as much work?

Is laziness a good excuse for poor software? For wasting the time and resources of every one who uses the application? For disregarding the conventions of the host platform including any user preferences and accessibility features?

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