Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
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Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
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Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#2When I started as a programmer in the late 70s the relationship between hardware costs and programmer costs were just about the reverse to those described by Jeff. It was always cheaper to optimise the code than it was to invest in new hardware. I must admit that it is hard to shrug off the frugal approach to the hardware that I adopted at the start of my developer career - I think it still pays off to err on the side of low hardware overhead whenever the option arises.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#3This is a ridiculous myth that I wish we could just put to rest once and for all. If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Even if hardware was free you still need to put it somewhere, power it, cool it and so on. There's no excuse for sloppy coding.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#4"Also, having programmers who believe that their employers actually give a damn about them is probably a good business strategy for companies that actually want to be around five or ten years from now."
This is probably the most overlooked reason to get at least semi-good hardware. Part of the reason I quit my last job was because of management's stubborn refusal to get us tools that would make us be more productive.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#5"Also, having programmers who believe that their employers actually give a damn about them is probably a good business strategy for companies that actually want to be around five or ten years from now." This is probably the most overlooked reason to get at least semi-good hardware. Part of the reason I quit my last job was because of management's stubborn refusal to get us tools that would make us be more productive.
I applied to a job in the spring of 2006 and when they were showing me around the development area I noticed that everyone had single smallish CRTs and what seemed like older computers. I asked about it and they told me that most people had P3-500's! Unsurprisingly their salary offer was low also and I did not take the job.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#6This is a ridiculous myth that I wish we could just put to rest once and for all. If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Even if hardware was free you still need to put it somewhere, power it, cool it and so on. There's no excuse for sloppy coding.
Also, I'd add that designing an app to scale out effectively is one of the harder challenges that most developers face in the world of web apps. He seems to imply that you just by another few boxes and magic happens, which is not the case from what I've seen.
To be fair, the article is a little more balanced than the headline.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#7This is a ridiculous myth that I wish we could just put to rest once and for all. If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Even if hardware was free you still need to put it somewhere, power it, cool it and so on. There's no excuse for sloppy coding.
If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick.
Well, that depends on the value of n, right? Not every piece of software is Google or Twitter: They don't all have a userbase that grows virally to encompass every breathing human in existence, plus animals and robots. Especially if you charge the users money.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#8This argument is applicable only to code that runs on only a small number of machines. Using roughly his numbers, you can afford to pay somebody US$100 000 to work for a whole year to make your code 10% faster if that code uses 100% of a million dollars' worth of hardware, which is only 200 high-end US$5000 servers or gaming machines, or 2000 low-end servers.
But that's assuming that the benefit of the speed improvement is merely improved throughput resulting in data-center savings. If the issue is that your non-AJAX UI is frustratingly and inconsistently slow and so your ex-customers have switched to your competitors' AJAX app because it has consistent 200ms response times when they click on buttons, it may not matter if their app actually uses more CPU cycles than yours (because half of it is written in JavaScript and your ex-customers aren't running Chrome yet.) If your game gets 20 frames per second and your competitor's game gets 35 frames per second with nicer-looking graphics, you're going to lose sales, even if the customers run the game for only 10 hours each.
And that's why gamer games and desktop apps are still written largely in C, C++, or Java with some Lua, and Google's large-scale apps are mostly written in C++ and Java, while small-scale server-based applications and the stuff developed by the in-house IT guys are written in all kinds of higher-productivity, lower-performance languages.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#9"Also, having programmers who believe that their employers actually give a damn about them is probably a good business strategy for companies that actually want to be around five or ten years from now." This is probably the most overlooked reason to get at least semi-good hardware. Part of the reason I quit my last job was because of management's stubborn refusal to get us tools that would make us be more productive.
I quit a job a couple of years ago where (I kid you not) I had no desk, no allocated seating, and no PC. I was expected to bring in my own laptop. Whenever there was a director's meeting, we all had to surrender our communal office and hide in the server room. Duration of job: less than six months. It would have been shorter if I'd know what assholes they were (I had some idea they might sort out the problems if I waited a while). Worst. Company. Ever.
Re: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
#10This is a ridiculous myth that I wish we could just put to rest once and for all. If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Even if hardware was free you still need to put it somewhere, power it, cool it and so on. There's no excuse for sloppy coding.
If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Well, that depends on the value of n , right? Not every piece of software is Google or Twitter: They don't all have a userbase that grows virally to encompass every breathing human in existence, plus animals and robots. Especially if you charge the users money.
It's not just about users because there are no users; there's just data. Any data, the same thing applies.