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The computers are fast, but you don't know it

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Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#21

Post by vbezhenar »

jerf wrote: post #6

I've been lightly banging the drum the last few years that a lot of programmers don't seem to understand how fast computers are, and often ship code that is just miserably slower than it needs to be, like the code in this article, because they simply don't realize that their code ought to be much, much faster. There's still a lot of very early-2000s ideas of how fast computers are floating around. I've wondered how m…

Back in time all you needed for perfect performance is to use C and proper algorithms. It was easy.

Nowadays you need vector operations, you need to utilise GPU, you need to utilise various accelerators. For me it is black magic.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#23

Post by tiffanyh »

NIM

NIM should be part of the conversation.

Typically, people trade slower compute time for faster development time.

With NIM, you don’t need to make that trade-off. It allows you to develop in a high-level but get C like performance.

I’m surprise its not more widely used.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#24

Post by MR4D »

user_7832 wrote: post #15

I wonder how much power (and resulting CO2 emissions) could be saved if all code had to go through such optimization. And on a slightly ranty note, Apple's A12z and A14 are still apparently "too weak" to run multiple windows simultaneously :)

That’s a ram issue not a processor issue. At least, that’s according to Apple

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/11/stage-manager-for...

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#25

Post by yieldcrv »

jerf wrote: post #6

I've been lightly banging the drum the last few years that a lot of programmers don't seem to understand how fast computers are, and often ship code that is just miserably slower than it needs to be, like the code in this article, because they simply don't realize that their code ought to be much, much faster. There's still a lot of very early-2000s ideas of how fast computers are floating around. I've wondered how m…

There is a balance, like sure there is inefficient code but often its because that code is accessing an I/O resource inefficiently, and so the CPU and RAM speed of the host machine isnt the bottlebeck no matter what dumb things the programmer does

So you dont need to pretty much ever reinvent or even use a hackerrank algorithm, you need to understand that the database compute instance has a fast cpu and lots of RAM too

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#26

Post by Guest19023892 »

jerf wrote: post #6

I've been lightly banging the drum the last few years that a lot of programmers don't seem to understand how fast computers are, and often ship code that is just miserably slower than it needs to be, like the code in this article, because they simply don't realize that their code ought to be much, much faster. There's still a lot of very early-2000s ideas of how fast computers are floating around. I've wondered how m…

I upgraded a desktop machine the last time I visited my family. It was a Windows 7 computer that was at least 10 years old with 4GB of ram. They wanted to use it online for basic web browsing, so I thought I'd install Windows 10 for security reasons and drop in a modern SSD to upgrade the old 7200rpm drive to make it more snappy.

Well, it felt slower after the "upgrade". Clicking the start menu and opening something like the Downloads or Documents folder was basically instant before. Now, with Windows 10 and the new SSD there was a noticeable delay when opening and browsing folders.

It really made me wonder how it would be running something like Windows 98 and websites of the past on modern hardware.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#27

Post by zasdffaa »

Yajirobe wrote: post #10
jerf wrote: post #6

I've been lightly banging the drum the last few years that a lot of programmers don't seem to understand how fast computers are, and often ship code that is just miserably slower than it needs to be, like the code in this article, because they simply don't realize that their code ought to be much, much faster. There's still a lot of very early-2000s ideas of how fast computers are floating around. I've wondered how m…

Python allows one to save development time in exchange for execution time

Get beyond a certain size of python program and you lose dev time.

IOW you lose both. It's not a huge size either.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#28

Post by chopin »

marcosdumay wrote: post #19
jerf wrote: post #6

I've been lightly banging the drum the last few years that a lot of programmers don't seem to understand how fast computers are, and often ship code that is just miserably slower than it needs to be, like the code in this article, because they simply don't realize that their code ought to be much, much faster. There's still a lot of very early-2000s ideas of how fast computers are floating around. I've wondered how m…

It's not only a matter of 750ms instead of 200ms. I'm astonished every time I open some tool like Visual Studio, SAP Power Designer, or Libre Office that can stay for the most part of a minute on its loading screen. What do those tools even do for that long? They can read enough data from the disk to overflow my computer's main memory a few times during it.

Phone home. I suspect much of the lag is network latency.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#29

Post by vladvasiliu »

porcoda wrote: post #11

Yup. We have gotten into the habit of leaving a lot of potential performance on the floor in the interest of productivity/accessibility. What always amazes me is when I have to work with a person who only speaks Python or only speaks JS and is completely unaware of the actual performance potential of a system. I think a lot of people just accept the performance they get as normal even if they are doing things that ta…

> I think a lot of people just accept the performance they get as normal even if they are doing things that take 1000x (or worse) the time and/or space than it could (even without heroic work).

Habit is a very powerful force.

Performance is somewhat abstract, as in "just throw more CPUs at it" / it works for me (on my top of the line PC). But people will happily keep on using unergonomic tools just because they've always done so.

I work for a shop that's mainly Windows (but I'm a Linux guy). I won't even get into how annoying the OS is and how unnecessary, since we're mostly using web apps through Chrome. But pretty much all my colleagues have no issue with using VNC for remote administration of computers.

It's so painful, it hurts to see them do it. And for some reason, they absolutely refuse to use RDP (I'm talking about local connections, over a controlled network). And they don't particularly need to see what the user in front of the computer is seeing, they just need to see that some random app starts or something.

I won't even get into Windows Remote Management and controlling those systems from the comfort of their local terminal with 0 lag.

But for some reason, "we've always done it this way" is stronger than the inconvenience through which they have to suffer every day.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#30

Post by jjoonathan »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #16
jjoonathan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's fast so long as you don't use any of the many parts that aren't fast!" This isn't great.

That's true for everything in computing. Don't use a hammer as a screwdriver. I'm not even implying they shouldn't have used pandas for this, I'm suggesting they probably wrote the wrong pandas code for this. Pandas is typically 3 times faster than raw Python, not 10 times slower.

No, I think it is fair to call out mediocrity, even when it tries to pull the "disclaim exactly the set of specific applications it gets called out on" trick.

Sure, pandas often beats raw python by a bit, but come on, there's so much mediocrity between the two that I doubt they even had to cheat to find a situation the other way around.

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