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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#251

Post by sorcerer-mar »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #231
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a very theoretical argument: we could of course theoretically make everything even faster. It's nowhere near the most optimal use of the available hardware. All we'd have to give up is squishy hard-to-measure things like "feature sets" and "engineering velocity."

we could of course theoretically make everything even faster. It's nowhere near the most optimal use of the available hardware. All we'd have to give up is squishy hard-to-measure things like "feature sets" and "engineering velocity." Says who? Who are these experienced people that know how to write fast software that think it is such a huge sacrifice? The reality is that people who say things like this don't actuall…

> These kinds of myths get perpetuated by people who repeat it without having experienced the side of just writing native software. I think mostly it is people rationalizing not learning assembly and sticking to C++ or PERL because that's what they learned first.

Why stop at C++? Is that what you happen to be comfortable with? Couldn't you create even faster software if you went down another level? Why don't you?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#252

Post by andy12_ »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

Online Word (or Microsoft 365, or whatever it is called) regularly took me 2 minutes to load a 120 page document. I'm being very literal here. You could see it load in real time approximately 1 page a second. And it wasn't a network issue, mind you. It was just that slow.

Worse, the document strained my laptop so much as I used it, I regularly had to reload the web-page.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#253

Post by defen »

kasey_junk wrote: post #160
hombre_fatal wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if end-users had the data to reasonably tie-break on software quality and performance, as I scroll my list of open applications not a single one of them can be swapped out with another just because it were more performant. For example: Docker, iterm2, WhatsApp, Notes.app, Postico, Cursor, Calibre. I'm using all of these for specific reasons, not for reasons so trivial that I can just use the best-performing solu…

I’m surprised in your list because it contains 3 apps that I’ve replaced specifically due to performance issues (docker, iterm and notes). I don’t consider myself particularly performance sensitive (at home) either. So it might be true that the world is even _less_ likely to pay for resource efficiency than we think.

What did you replace Docker with?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#254

Post by cube00 »

wtetzner wrote: post #61
jillesvangurp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cost? The hardware is dirt cheap. Programmers aren't cheap. The value of being able to use cheap software on cheap hardware is basically not having to spend a lot of time optimizing things. Time is the one thing that isn't cheap here. So there's a value in shipping something slightly sub optimal sooner rather than something better later. > Except your browser taking 180% of available ram maybe. For most business…

> Time is the one thing that isn't cheap here. Right, and that's true of end users as well. It's just not taken into account by most businesses. I think your take is pretty reasonable, but I think most software is too far towards slow and bloated these days. Browsers are pretty good, but developers create horribly slow and wasteful web apps. That's where the optimization should be done. And I don't mean they should m…

> I just wish developers cared a little bit more than they do.

Ask the nice product owner to stop crushing me with their deadlines and I'll happily oblige.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#255

Post by [deleted] »

SilverSlash wrote: post #21

The title made me think Carmack was criticizing poorly optimized software and advocating for improving performance on old hardware. When in fact, the tweet is absolutely not about either of the two. He's talking about a thought experiment where hardware stopped advancing and concludes with "Innovative new products would get much rarer without super cheap and scalable compute, of course".

[deleted]

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#256

Post by RajT88 »

tjader wrote: post #78
Gigachad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

I just clicked on the network icon next to the clock on a Windows 11 laptop. A gray box appeared immediately, about one second later all the buttons for wifi, bluetooth, etc appeared. Windows is full of situations like this, that require no network calls, but still take over one second to render.

This one drives me nuts.

I have to stay connected to VPN to work, and if I see VPN is not connected I click to reconnect.

If the VPN button hasn't loaded you end up turning on Airplane mode. Ouch.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#258

Post by busterarm »

pdhborges wrote: post #64
busterarm wrote: post #10

Let's keep the CPU efficiency golf to Zachtronics games, please. I/O is almost always the main bottleneck. I swear to god 99% of developers out there only know how to measure cpu cycles of their code so that's the only thing they optimize for. Call me after you've seen your jobs on your k8s clusters get slow because all of your jobs are inefficiently using local disk and wasting cycles waiting in queue for reads/writ…

I'm looking at our Datadog stats right now. It is 64% cpu 36% IO.

That's great for you. How much infrastructure do you run?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#259

Post by light_hue_1 »

alkonaut wrote: post #181

"The world" runs on _features_ not elegant, fast, or bug free software. To the end user, there is no difference between a lack of a feature, and a bug. Nor is there any meaningful difference between software taking 5 minutes to complete something because of poor performance, compared to the feature not being there and the user having to spend 5 minutes completing the same task manually. It's "slow". If you keep maxim…

No way.

You've got it totally backwards. Companies push features onto users who do not want them in order to make sales through forced upgrades because the old version is discontinued.

If people could, no one would ever upgrade anything anymore. Look at how hard MS has to work to force anyone to upgrade. I have never heard of anyone who wanted a new version of Windows, Office, Slack, Zoom, etc.

This is also why everything (like Photoshop) is being forced into the cloud. The vast majority of people don't want the new features that are being offered. Including buyers at businesses. So the answer to keep revenue up is to force people to buy regardless of what features are being offered or not.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#260

Post by lifeisstillgood »

mamcx wrote: post #240
caseyy wrote: post #91

There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make. It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality g…

> the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software In fact, the realization is that the market buy support . And that includes google and other companies that lack much of human support. This is the key. Support is manifested in many ways: * There is information about it (docs, videos, blogs, ...) * There is people that help me ('look ma, this is how you use google') * There…

This really focuses on the single metric that can be used try ought lifetime of a product … a really good point that keeps unfolding.

Starting an OSS product - write good docs. Got a few enterprise people interested - “customer success person” is most important marketing you can do …

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