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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

#111

Post by babypuncher »

Guest19023892 wrote: post #26
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…

Throw in more RAM and Windows 10 will likely feel snappier than Windows 7 did.

It's probable the old Windows 7 install was 32-bit while your fresh install of 10 would have defaulted to 64-bit. That combined with 10's naturally higher memory requirements means the system has less overhead to work with.

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

#112

Post by pjvsvsrtrxc »

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…

And yet, even with all the evidence that modern, heavily-bloated software development is AWFUL (constant bugs and breakage because no one writing code understands any of the software sitting between them and the machine, much less understands the machine; Rowhammer, Spectre, Meltdown, and now Hertzbleed; sitting there waiting multiple seconds for something to launch up another copy of the web browser you already have running just so that you can have chat, hi Discord)... you still have all the people in the comments below trying to come up with reasons why "oh no it's actually good, the poor software developers would have to actually learn something instead of copying code off of Stack Overflow without understanding it".

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

#113

Post by bayindirh »

p1esk wrote: post #81
jcelerier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. I wish every software engineer would spent at least a little time writing some programs in bare C and running them to get a feel for how fast a native executable can start up and run. It is breathtaking if you're used to running scripting languages and VMs. Conversely when 99.9% of the software you use in your daily life is blazing fast C / C++, having to do anything in other stacks is a complete exer…

Conversely when 99.9% of the software you use in your daily life is user friendly Python, having to do anything in C/C++ is a complete exercise in frustration, it feels like going back a few decades in time

As a person who uses both languages for various needs, I disagree. Things which takes minutes in optimized C++ will probably take days in Python, even if I use the "accelerated" libraries for matrix operations and other math I implement in C++.

Lastly, people think C++ is not user friendly. No, it certainly is. It needs being careful, yes, but a lot of things can be done in less lines then people expect.

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

#114

Post by lynguist »

MR4D wrote: post #24
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...

The funny thing is that actual Macs with 4GB RAM are also supported and they can run the entire desktop environment.

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

#115

Post by willis936 »

lynguist wrote: post #98
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 agree except for the Python bit, which is factually wrong. Python allows you to program as if you’re a jazz pianist. You can improvise, iterate and have fun. And when you found a solution you just refactor it and use numba. Boom, it runs the same speed as a compiled language. I once wrote one little program that ran in 24 min without numba and ca. 8 seconds with numba.

Dozens of instances of a C GUI can launch in the time it takes to launch a hello world python program.

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

#116

Post by radicalbyte »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #74
mrtranscendence wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the end, the code seems to run "fast enough" and nobody involved really notices that what is running in 750ms really ought to run in something more like 200us. Nobody has created a language that is both thousands of times faster than Python and nearly as straightforward to learn and to use. The closest thing I know of might be Julia, but that has its own performance problems and is tied closely to its AI/ML…

C# is faster than python and as easy to use.

I'd argue easier and it plays much better cross CPU than Python. Once you pass the initial JIT phase it's also extremely fast.

As the sister post says: Go is in the same class as C# only it's a bit verbose/ugly in comparison but it compiles to native machine code..

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

#117

Post by michaelchisari »

munificent wrote: post #68
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 agree 100%. I wish every software engineer would spent at least a little time writing some programs in bare C and running them to get a feel for how fast a native executable can start up and run. It is breathtaking if you're used to running scripting languages and VMs. Related anecdote: My blog used to be written using Jekyll with Pygments for syntax highlighting. As the number of posts increased, it got closer and…

I wish product designers took performance into consideration when they designed applications. Engineers can optimize until their fingers fall off, but if the application isn't designed with efficiency in mind (and willing to make trade-offs in order to achieve that), we'll probably just end up right back in the same place.

And a product which is designed inefficiently where the engineer has figured out clever ways to get it to be more performant is most likely a product that is more complicated under the hood than it would be if performance were a design goal in the first place.

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

#118

Post by bhauer »

tester756 wrote: post #93
jcelerier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. I wish every software engineer would spent at least a little time writing some programs in bare C and running them to get a feel for how fast a native executable can start up and run. It is breathtaking if you're used to running scripting languages and VMs. Conversely when 99.9% of the software you use in your daily life is blazing fast C / C++, having to do anything in other stacks is a complete exer…

Is performance inversely proportional to dev experience? because what you wrote could be said about using C++ in the context of dev experience 10 compilers, IDEs, debuggers, package managers and at the end of the day LLVM compiles 30min and uses tens of GBs of RAM on average hardware I don't believe that this is the best we can get.

> Is performance inversely proportional to dev experience?

No. I feel there is great developer experience in many high performance languages: Java, C#, Rust, Go, etc.

In fact, for my personal tastes, I find these languages more ergonomic than many popular dynamic languages. Though I will admit that one thing that I find ergonomic is a language that lifts the performance headroom above my head so that I'm not constantly bumping my head on the ceiling.

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

#119

Post by momojo »

charlie0 wrote: post #69

I've always been tempted to make things fast, but for what I personally do on a day to day basis, it all lands under the category of premature optimization. I suspect this is the case for 90% of development out there. I will optimize, but only after the problem presents itself. Unfortunately, as devs, we need to provide "value to the business". This means cranking out features quickly rather than as performant as pos…

> for what I personally do on a day to day basis, it all lands under the category of premature optimization

Another perspective on premature opt: When my software tool is used for an hour in the middle of a 20-day data pipeline, most optimization becomes negligible unless it's saving time on the scale of hours. And even then, some of my coworkers just shrug and run the job over the weekend.

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

#120

Post by pjvsvsrtrxc »

p1esk wrote: post #81
jcelerier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. I wish every software engineer would spent at least a little time writing some programs in bare C and running them to get a feel for how fast a native executable can start up and run. It is breathtaking if you're used to running scripting languages and VMs. Conversely when 99.9% of the software you use in your daily life is blazing fast C / C++, having to do anything in other stacks is a complete exer…

Conversely when 99.9% of the software you use in your daily life is user friendly Python, having to do anything in C/C++ is a complete exercise in frustration, it feels like going back a few decades in time

Yes, writing software in C/C++ is harder. It's a darn good thing most software is used much more frequently than it is written, isn't it?
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