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"Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

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Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#21

Post by grumpyprole »

dist-epoch wrote: post #8

I'm not convinced this is true and not just a popular argument. Just today I've processed 4 TB of JSON data, in Python, on a desktop computer. That would be crazy to imagine 10 years ago. Yes, many cores, fast SSD, etc. Maybe it should be 20 TB if ultra optimized, but the capability advance is incredible. Yes, apps maybe start slowly, but now everybody can easily edit HD video on their mid-range laptop.

A complied language can be over 1000 times faster than Python, so maybe the dual core from 10 years ago would have been fine.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#22

Post by testless »

myself248 wrote: post #2

I've been saying for a while now, that developers and their managers should use a low-spec machine, let's say the 5th-percentile of whatever their users are using in the field, at least one day a week. This might force some reprioritizing of performance and efficiency goals. As long as devs spend their days with bugattis while writing software for corollas, this will continue to get worse.

For Web apps, I think using lighthouse and the chrome tools to emulate slow devices goes a long way.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#23

Post by richiebful1 »

Is this really true that software is getting slower? I've been using a budget Windows 10 desktop lately, and I'm shocked by how fast everything is running: ESRI ArcGIS, Firefox, code editors, etc. I remember having a budget desktop PC back in the mid 2000's and it was a significantly worse experience on very basic workflows (Excel, regular web browsing, etc)

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#24

Post by _heimdall »

Timon3 wrote: post #17
myself248 wrote: post #2

I've been saying for a while now, that developers and their managers should use a low-spec machine, let's say the 5th-percentile of whatever their users are using in the field, at least one day a week. This might force some reprioritizing of performance and efficiency goals. As long as devs spend their days with bugattis while writing software for corollas, this will continue to get worse.

Is there some way to reliably simulate this, e.g. using a VM? It would be nice to have IDE, build tools etc. using all available speed while running the output as if it was on slower hardware.

I've had better success with VMs for performance dogfooding in a desktop environment.

On mobile I've always gone back to testing on low end hardware, there are just too many inconsistencies when trying to simulate slower performance, outdated OS problems, touchscreen drivers, etc.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#25

Post by wredue »

ado__dev wrote: post #3

I feel like nobody really cares about optimization anymore. It's just "ship, ship, ship, move faster, ship." So there's a lot of tech-debt, a lot of unoptimized code, and a lot of "just make it work", at the expense of writing software that utilities the hardware properly. On the flip side of that though, hardware has gotten fast enough, where this is possible.

It’s actually worse than you think.

Functional programmers have been in a massive propaganda campaign to actively paint optimization not just as “usually not necessary”, but actually as a negative thing.

Ask any developer what they think of optimization, and the vast majority will respond “optimization is the root of all evil” or some other nonsense variant.

Now that they’ve successfully paint optimization as bad, they’re working on painting any profiling or measurement at all as bad.

They need this because the performance characteristics of pure functional programming is pretty dogshit.

You also find hordes of developers that selectively care. Watching Python developers shit on Java for “being too slow” is getting pretty old.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#26

Post by codexb »

It’s similar to Jevon’s Paradox in economics.

More efficient use of a resource results in people using more of that resource, not less. Creating more efficient gasoline engines doesn’t cause people to use less fuel, they all just buy larger cars now.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#27

Post by danielovichdk »

I am pretty certain that if you stripped away most of the abstractions (law of leaky abstractions) and wrote software that was optimized to the hardware design per se, then you be able to write software that is blazingly fast.

Look up how many steps your favorite language is going through before hitting the cpu.

No wonder shit is slow when all we do is stacking abstractions and not concentrating on removing them.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#28

Post by stcredzero »

playingalong wrote: post #6
myself248 wrote: post #2

I've been saying for a while now, that developers and their managers should use a low-spec machine, let's say the 5th-percentile of whatever their users are using in the field, at least one day a week. This might force some reprioritizing of performance and efficiency goals. As long as devs spend their days with bugattis while writing software for corollas, this will continue to get worse.

Is it the devs who need to ride the Corollas? Or is it the managers and/or the testers?

The devs. They have the true power to do something about it. Basically, that way you tighten that iteration loop for optimal efficiency to nearly nothing.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#29

Post by cuu508 »

wanderr wrote: post #10
myself248 wrote: post #2

I've been saying for a while now, that developers and their managers should use a low-spec machine, let's say the 5th-percentile of whatever their users are using in the field, at least one day a week. This might force some reprioritizing of performance and efficiency goals. As long as devs spend their days with bugattis while writing software for corollas, this will continue to get worse.

I hate this for developers. I got to experience this first hand because I had a boss who thought like you. Developers generally need to run a bunch of resource intensive tools to build the application in the first place, so an underpowered system will already be choking. It means their app will feel slow no matter what. So then when they run it and it's slow, they will shrug and say it's just slow because their syste…

> It means their app will feel slow no matter what.

How so? Do the heavy tools need to run alongside the app? Are you thinking of something like Android emulator? For that scenario, keep the beastly workstation, but switch to a $150 phone.

Re: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

#30

Post by _heimdall »

wanderr wrote: post #10
myself248 wrote: post #2

I've been saying for a while now, that developers and their managers should use a low-spec machine, let's say the 5th-percentile of whatever their users are using in the field, at least one day a week. This might force some reprioritizing of performance and efficiency goals. As long as devs spend their days with bugattis while writing software for corollas, this will continue to get worse.

I hate this for developers. I got to experience this first hand because I had a boss who thought like you. Developers generally need to run a bunch of resource intensive tools to build the application in the first place, so an underpowered system will already be choking. It means their app will feel slow no matter what. So then when they run it and it's slow, they will shrug and say it's just slow because their syste…

I think its reasonable to say anyone evolved in the product should regularly use the end product on low end hardware. I wouldn't expect devs to run full development environments on low end hardware unless they themselves are building dev tools.
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