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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by LoveMortuus »

kossTKR wrote: post #132
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 hope one day latency in general will be "back to normal". I still remember how fast console based computing, an old gameboy or a 90's macintosh would be - click a button and stuff would show up instantly. There was a tactility present with computers that's gone today. Today everything feels sluggish - just writing this comment on my $3000 Macbook Pro and i can feel the latency, sometimes there's even small pauses.…

May I ask if you're using the M1 based MacBook or the Intel one?

I'm asking because I've been thinking of getting a MacBook Air in the future with the intent to use it for writing.

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

#203

Post by Spivak »

dgan wrote: post #67
tiffanyh wrote: post #23

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.

at that point, almost anything compiled will be at least an order of magnitude faster than python

The dichotomy between "compiled/interpreted" languages is completely meaningless at this point. You can argue that Python is compiled and Java is interpreted. I mean one of our deployment stages is to compile all our Python files.

The thing that makes the difference isn't the compilation steps, it's how dynamic the language is and how much behind the scenes work has to be done per line and what tools the language gives you to express stronger guarantees that can be optimized (like __slots__ in Python).

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by reedjosh »

Python and Pandas are absolutely excellent until you notice you need performance. I say write everything in Python with Pandas until you notice something take 20 seconds.

Then rewrite it with a more performant language or cython hooks.

Developing features quickly is greatly aided by nice tools like Python and Pandas. And these tools make it easy to drop into something better when needed.

Eat your cake and have it too!

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

#206

Post by tester756 »

pjvsvsrtrxc wrote: post #126
tester756 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? "10 compilers, IDEs, debuggers, package managers" what are you talking about? (Virtually) No one uses ten different tools to build one application. I don't even know of any C++-specific package managers, although I do know of language-specific package managers for... oh, right, most scripting languages. And an IDE includes a compiler and a debugger, that's what makes it an IDE instead of a text editor. "and at t…

>No one uses ten different tools to build one application.

I meant you have a lot of choices to make

Instead of having one strong standard which everyone uses, you have X of them which makes changing projects/companies harder, but for solid reason? I don't know.

>"and at the end of the day LLVM compiles 30min and uses tens of GBs of RAM on average hardware" sure, if you're compiling something enormous and bloated... I'm not sure why you think that's an argument against debloating?

I know that lines in repo aren't great way to compare those things, but

.NET Compiler Infrastructure:

20 587 028 lines of code in 17 440 files

LLVM:

45 673 398 lines of code in 116 784 files

The first one I built (restore+build) in 6mins and it used around 6-7GB of RAM

The second I'm not even trying because the last time I tried doing it on Windows it BSODed after using _whole_ ram (16GBs)

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

#208

Post by LoveMortuus »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #190
41b696ef1113 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hopefully the focus on 100hz+ screens in tech Come again? I think anything beyond 60hz still qualifies as niche. Vendors are still selling 720p laptops.

My guess is that few people have stopped to compare them. I've never knowingly seen a 100+hz screen in person, so I stopped by a local store. Sure enough, I could tell that the motion was smoother. Bought 2. After using those, I can feel my older monitors that I'm using to write this are choppy.

But do you notice the smoothness in the day to day basis or have you, in a way, crippled yourself, because now the majority of monitors feel choppy to you?

Sounds a bit like the, 'Never meet your heroes', thingy.

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

#209

Post by idlehand »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #187
bayindirh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally find C++ more friendly, just because of the formatting that python forces upon you. But I do have to say that I never managed to really get into python, it always just felt like to much of a hassle, thus I always avoided it if possible.

I didn't like it for years but then I kind of got into it for testing out machine learning and I found it kind of neat. My biggest gripe is no longer the syntax but the slowness, trying to do anything with even a soft performance requirement means having to figure out how to use a library that calls C to do it for you. Working with large amounts of data in native Python is noticeably slower than even NodeJS.

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

#210

Post by grishka »

dylan604 wrote: post #197
grishka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a video of a guy running an old version of Visual C++ on an equally old version of Windows, in a VM on modern hardware, to try Windows development "the old way". It took about one frame to launch. One. Frame. By the way, Apple isn't much better. Xcode takes around 15 seconds to launch on an M1 Max. edit: probably this video https://youtu.be/j_4iTovYJtc?t=282

One. Frame. Of. What? I've never heard of someone describing how long something took like this without at least defining the frame rate.

Of video. Which probably was 30 fps. I mean, the splash screen just blinked for a barely noticeable split second before the main window appeared. You double click the shortcut, and it's already done launching before you realize anything. That's how fast modern computers are.

(actually, some things on the M1 are fast enough that I'm now getting annoyed at networking taking what feels like ages)

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