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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

#481

Post by cheema33 »

nostrademons wrote: post #465
bruce511 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track, but missing an important aspect. In most cases the company making the inferior product didn't spend less. But they did spend differently. As in, they spent a lot on marketing. You were focused on quality, and hoped for viral word of mouth marketing. Your competitors spent the same as you, but half their budget went to marketing. Since people buy what they know, they won. Back in the day MS…

Quality can lead to sales - this was the premise behind the original Google (they never spent a dime on advertising their own product until the Parisian Love commercial [1] came out in 2009, a decade after founding), and a few other tech-heavy startups like Netscape or Stripe. Microsoft certainly didn't spend a billion $ marketing Altair Basic. The key point to understand is the only effort that matters is that which…

> Investing in engineering quality is pointless if there is no headroom to deliver experiences that will make a customer say "Wow, I need to have that."

This. Per your example, this is exactly what it was like when most of us first used Google after having used AltaVista for a few years. Or Google Maps after having used MapQuest for a few years. Google invested their resources correctly in building a product that was head and shoulders above the competition.

And yes, if you are planning to sell beer, you are going to need the help of scantily clad women on the beach much more than anything else.

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

#482

Post by arolihas »

skydhash wrote: post #308
mjburgess wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they wanted the telemetry. It's not clear that this was a dev-initiated switch. Perhaps we can blame the 'statistical monetization' policies of adtech and then AI for all this -- i'm not entirely sold on developers. What, after all, is the difference between an `/etc/hosts` set of loop'd records vs. an ISP's dns -- as far as the software goes?

> Presumably they wanted the telemetry Why not log them to a file and cron a script to upload the data? Even if the feature request is nonsensical, you can architect a solution that respect the platform's constraints. It's kinda like when people drag in React and Next.js just to have a static website.

someone out there now has a cool resume line item about doing real time cloud microservices on the edge

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

#483

Post by jimbokun »

naasking wrote: post #396
mike_hearn wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, you could do that quite easily but there isn't much juice to be squeezed from runtime selected data structures. Set with O(1) insert: var set = new HashSet (); Done. Don't need any fancy support for that. Or if you want to load from a database, using the repository pattern and Kotlin this time instead of Java: @JdbcRepository(dialect = ANSI) interface EmployeeQueries : CrudRepository { fun findByCountryAndGender(…

> Hm, you could do that quite easily but there isn't much juice to be squeezed from runtime selected data structures. Set with O(1) insert: But now you've hard-coded this selection, why can't the performance characteristics also be easily parameterized and combined, eg. insert is O(1), delete is O(log(n)), or by defining indexes in SQL which can be changed at any time at runtime? Or maybe the performance characterist…

Why aren’t you building these languages?

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

#484

Post by jimbokun »

naasking wrote: post #398
bflesch wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument makes sense. I guess now it's your time to shine and to be the change you want to see in the world.

I wish I had the time... always "some day"...

Thus the answer to your question of why those languages don’t exist.

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

#485

Post by kristianp »

vel0city wrote: post #322
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I suspect GP has just gotten used to this and it is the new “snappy” to them. I see this all the time with people who have old computers. “My computer is really fast. I have no need to upgrade” I press cmd+tab and watch it take 5 seconds to switch to the next window. That’s a real life interaction I had with my parents in the past month. People just don’t know what they’re missing out on if they aren’t using it…

Yeah, I play around with retro computers all the time. Even with IO devices that are unthinkably performant compared to storage hardware actually common at the time these machines are often dog slow. Just rendering JPEGs can be really slow. Maybe if you're in a purely text console doing purely text things 100% in memory it can feel snappy. But the moment you do anything graphical or start working on large datasets it…

The newish windows photo viewer in Win 10 is painfully slow and it renders a lower res preview first, but then the photo seems to move when the full resolution is shown. The photo viewer in windows 7 would prerender the next photo so the transition to the next one would be instant. The is for 24 megapixel photos, maybe 4mb jpegs.

So the quality has gone backwards in the process of rewriting the app into the touch friendly style. A lot of core windows apps are like that.

Note that the windows file system is much slower than the linux etx4, I don't know about Mac filesystems.

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

#486

Post by mmooss »

jcadam wrote: post #476
bruce511 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track, but missing an important aspect. In most cases the company making the inferior product didn't spend less. But they did spend differently. As in, they spent a lot on marketing. You were focused on quality, and hoped for viral word of mouth marketing. Your competitors spent the same as you, but half their budget went to marketing. Since people buy what they know, they won. Back in the day MS…

It's not just software -- My wife owns a restaurant. Operating a restaurant you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success. We're still trying to figure out the marketing. I'm convinced the high failure rate of restaurants is due largely to founders who know how to make good food and think their culinary skills plus word-of-mouth will get them sales.

> you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success.

Doesn't that depend on your audience? Also, what do you mean by quality?

Where I live, the best food can lead to big success. New tiny restaurants open, they have great food, eventually they open their big successor (or their second restaurant, third restaurant, etc.).

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

#487

Post by mmooss »

dahart wrote: post #217
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 dumbest and most obvious of realizations finally dawned on me after trying to build a software startup that was based on quality differentiation. We were sure that a better product would win people over and lead to viral success. It didn’t. Things grew, but so slowly that we ran out of money after a few years before reaching break even. What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, are a compe…

Maybe you could compete by developing new and better products? Ford isn't selling the same car with lower and lower costs every year.

It's really hard to reconcile your comment with Silicon Valley, which was built by often expensive innovation, not by cutting costs. Were Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft successful because they cut costs? The AI companies?

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

#488

Post by MisterBastahrd »

The world will seek out software optimization only after hardware reaches its physical limits.

We're still in Startup Land, where it's more important to be first than it is to be good. From that point onward, you have to make a HUGE leap and your first-to-market competitor needs to make some horrendous screwups in order to overtake them.

The other problem is that some people still believe that the masses will pay more for quality. Sometimes, good enough is good enough. Tidal didn't replace iTunes or Spotify, and Pono didn't exactly crack the market for iPods.

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

#490

Post by jimbokun »

worik wrote: post #459
Multicomp wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Atlanta Georgia, we have a ToyoTechs business. They perform maintenance on only Toyota-family automobiles. They have 2 locations, one for large trucks, one for cars, hybrids, and SUV-looking cars. Both are always filled up with customers. Some of whom drive hundreds of miles out of state to bring their vehicles exclusively there, whether the beater is a customized off-roader or a simple econobox with sentimen…

People understand cars. Abstract data structures, not so much. There are laws about what goes into a car, strict regulation. Software, not so much. Until my boss can be prosecuted for selling untested bug ridden bad software that is what I am instructed to produce

With the introduction of insurance for covering the cost of a security breach, suddenly managers have an understanding of the value of at least the security aspect of software quality. As it impacts their premiums.
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