Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techslang.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 193 posts

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

#141

Post by Gigachad »

toast0 wrote: post #118
Gigachad wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you’ve got Node, docker, Postgres, redis, an IDE, etc running, the system is out of memory and already chugging before your actual app even opens.

Run all that stuff on a different machine than you run the app on. Unless the app includes all that stuff.

It's massively easier to just give someone a macbook that actually works properly and runs everything you need than to hand out people plastic chromebooks and mess around with remote development environments. Then if required, hire some testers to click around on cheap hardware. But realistically, the users on 2010 laptops aren't the ones paying the companies bills so no one really wants to spend money on them.

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

#142

Post by rini17 »

Reminded me how in game design, why the negative effects should be never gradual but use a threshold or hard limit. Because otherwise the players are prone to like, have a game character walking slowly, burdened by too much gear they are reluctant to drop, making whole experience miserable. The software development is similarly pulling itself into such misery.

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

#143

Post by theatomheart »

toolslive wrote: post #87
rahkiin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could use some tips on talking with IT about this as it cripples work performance

You think it's IT pushing this? They are just executing orders.

Yes and no. Businesses have cyber insurance policies. In a world of frequent ransomware attacks, many security policy changes have been mandated by insurance companies, and for legitimate reasons.

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

#144

Post by lucas_membrane »

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.

> "developers ... should use a low-spec machine"

That is exactly what Michael Brown, founder of Central Point Software, insisted on back in the 1980's when they were producing the #1 selling PC software according to PC magazine.

An informed market also helped. A little bit earlier there was a comparison review published (same publication, IIRC) of the top spreadsheet programs (spreadsheets being the reason office workers were getting PC's). MBA Analyst was the best, in everything except speed, much better functionality than Visicalc, MS Multiplan or Lotus123, and only slower by a difference few users would notice without a stopwatch. MBA Analyst vanished in a flash after that article came out, and it found such a stable oblivion that it doesn't even show up on google nowadays.

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

#145

Post by maximus-decimus »

AlienRobot wrote: post #56

I can't find the video anymore, but there was a team viewer video talking about a performance update on youtube, showing how it went from taking 20 seconds to start up to... 10 seconds.

This Casey tweet? https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1640827575437250561?lan...

There was a lot of comment when this was posted here.

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

#146

Post by woopwoop24 »

foofie wrote: post #138
rahkiin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, just sad npm becomes 100x slower (We measured this), and build times and indexing times increase so much too.

You're telling them that your convenience is worth more to the company than plugging a security hole. The company can live with your loss of productivity because it is living with the loss of everyone's productivity. The company cannot live without security. On top of that, if you are the only one making noise about slow computers and complaining about stuff and things then you eventually end up being the problem. I…

or just get rid of microsoft in the workplace and enjoy the absence of a terrible environment with the addition of fewer attack scenarios, better software and happier users but sad management people, but they don't do work on their machines anyway ;)

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

#147

Post by lucas_membrane »

A major cause of the problem is that when a user sits at a computer or terminal or even a cellphone to do a certain task, software (and hardware) from a large number of producers is often involved between between entry and the awaited response, and so there is no way for any single software (or hardware) producer to possibly improve their particular product(s) so as to produce a time saving to the user amounting to a significant percentage of the total time. Thus, any significant incentive for the producer to do a little better is well hidden. Not to mention that if you speed up the toll booths, you may get so many vehicles bumper-to-bumper on the bridge that it collapses.

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

#148

Post by trealira »

onion2k wrote: post #5

It feels true but I don't think it actually is. Especially given the fact Wirth wrote it in 1995 which is practically the pinnacle of what most of us perceive as when software was actually fast.

It could have been true the whole time. Perhaps software has been getting slower, and it's gotten so much slower and more bloated that 1995 software seems lean and fast by our modern standards, when by 1980s Wirthian standards, it wasn't.

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

#149

Post by AlienRobot »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #145
AlienRobot wrote: post #56

I can't find the video anymore, but there was a team viewer video talking about a performance update on youtube, showing how it went from taking 20 seconds to start up to... 10 seconds.

This Casey tweet? https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1640827575437250561?lan... There was a lot of comment when this was posted here.

Yes, this was it!

...dear God, what is wrong with this industry...

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

#150

Post by jfim »

woopwoop24 wrote: post #146
foofie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling them that your convenience is worth more to the company than plugging a security hole. The company can live with your loss of productivity because it is living with the loss of everyone's productivity. The company cannot live without security. On top of that, if you are the only one making noise about slow computers and complaining about stuff and things then you eventually end up being the problem. I…

or just get rid of microsoft in the workplace and enjoy the absence of a terrible environment with the addition of fewer attack scenarios, better software and happier users but sad management people, but they don't do work on their machines anyway ;)

There's some terrible corporate-ware that runs on Linux and Mac, and the company policy will likely mandate the use of it.
Post reply on HN