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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

#511

Post by CyberDildonics »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #505
CyberDildonics wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and give me examples of what you mean. I'm talking about speeding software up by 10x-100x by language choice, then 7x with extremely minimal adjustments (allocate memory outside of hot loops), then 25x - 100x with fairly minimal design changes (use vectors, loop through them straight). I'm also not saying people are lazy, I'm saying they don't know that with something like modern C++ and a little bit of know…

So you agree there’s a trade off between developer productivity and optimization (coding in assembly isn’t worth it, but allocating memory outside of hot loops is) You agree with my original point then?

Are you seriously replying and avoiding everything we both said? I'll simplify it for you:

Writing dramatically fast software that is 1,000x or even 10,000 times faster than a scripting language takes basically zero effort once you know how to do it and these assembly optimization are a myth that you would have already shown me if you could.

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

#512

Post by sorcerer-mar »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #511
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree there’s a trade off between developer productivity and optimization (coding in assembly isn’t worth it, but allocating memory outside of hot loops is) You agree with my original point then?

Are you seriously replying and avoiding everything we both said? I'll simplify it for you: Writing dramatically fast software that is 1,000x or even 10,000 times faster than a scripting language takes basically zero effort once you know how to do it and these assembly optimization are a myth that you would have already shown me if you could.

“Zero effort once you know how to do it” is another way of saying “time and effort.”

Congratulations you’ve discovered the value of abstractions!

I mean, you’re the one who started this off with the insane claim that there’s no tradeoff, then claimed there are no optimizations available below C++ (i.e. C++ is the absolute most optimized code a person can write). Not my fault you stake out indefensible positions.

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

#514

Post by dgb23 »

mjr00 wrote: post #298
Retric wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a slow program has the features I need and a fast program doesn't, the slow program is going to be "higher quality" in my mind. That’s irrelevant here, the fully featured product can also be fast. The overwhelming majority of software is slow because the company simply doesn’t care about efficiency. Google actively penalized slow websites and many companies still didn’t make it a priority.

> That’s irrelevant here, the fully featured product can also be fast. So why is it so rarely the case? If it's so simple, why hasn't anyone recognized that Teams, Zoom, etc are all bloated and slow and made a hyper-optimized, feature-complete competitor, dominating the market? Software costs money to build, and performance optimization doesn't come for free. > The overwhelming majority of software is slow because th…

> Software costs money to build, and performance optimization doesn't come for free.

Neither do caching, operational/architectural overhead, slow builds and all the hoops we jump through in order to satisfy stylistic choices. All of this stuff introduces complexity and often demands specialized expertise on top.

And it's typically not about optimization, but about not doing things that you don't necessarily have to do. A little bit of frugality goes a long way. Often leading to simpler code and fewer dependencies.

The hardware people are (actually) optimizing, trying hard to make computers fast, to a degree that it introduces vulnerabilities (like the apple CPU cache prefetching memory from arrays of pointers, which opened it up for timing attacks, or the branch prediction vulnerability on intel chips). Meanwhile we software people are piling more and more stuff into programs that aren't needed, from software patterns/paradigms to unnecessary dependencies etc.

There's also the issue of programs feeling entitled to resources. When I'm running a video game or a data migration, I obviously want to give it as many resources as possible. But it shouldn't be necessary to provide gigabytes of memory for utility programs and operative applications.

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

#515

Post by caseyy »

nine_k wrote: post #507
caseyy wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, inferior goods are not necessarily poor-quality products, though there is a meaningful correlation, and I based my original comment on it. Still, a OnePlus Android phone is considered an inferior good; an iPhone (or a Samsung Galaxy Android phone) is considered superior. Both are of excellent quality and better than one another in key areas. It's more about how wealth, brand perception, and overall market…

> A OnePlus Android phone is considered an inferior good; an iPhone (or a Samsung Galaxy Android phone) is considered superior. Both are of excellent quality No, the inferior good is a device with 2GB RAM, a poor quality battery, easy to crack screen, a poor camera. poor RF design and thus less stable connectivity, and poor mechanical assembly. But it has its market segment because it costs like 15% of the cost of an…

I mean "inferior good" as a macroeconomics term: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inferior-good.asp. And the point of my comment is to show that product quality alone doesn't determine whether it's an inferior good.

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

#516

Post by nine_k »

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.

My wife ran a restaurant that was relatively successful due to the quality of its food and service. She was able to establish it as an upper-tier experience, by both some word of mouth, but also by catering to right events, taking part in shows, and otherwise influencing the influencers of the town, without any massive ad campaigns. As a result, there were many praises in the restaurant's visitor book, left by people from many countries visiting the city.

It was not a huge commercial success though, even though it wasn't a failure either; it generated just enough money to stay afloat.

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

#517

Post by codethief »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #393
dsr_ wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lemon Market exists specifically when customers cannot tell, prior to receipt and usage, whether they are buying high quality or low quality.

Wow, that's actually a good argument for some kind of trial or freemium setup. Interesting.

That must be why WinRAR became so popular. :-)

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

#518

Post by maccard »

homebrewer wrote: post #508
maccard wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an i9 windows machine with 64GB ram and an M1 Mac. I’d say day to day responsiveness the Mac is heads and tails above the windows machine, although getting worse. I’m not sure if the problem is the arm electron apps are getting slower or if my machine is just aging

It's Windows. I'm on Linux 99% of the time and it's significantly more responsive on hardware from 2014 than Windows is on a high end desktop from 2023. I'm not being dramatic. (Yes, I've tried all combinations of software to hardware and accounted for all known factors, it's not caused by viruses or antiviruses). XP was the last really responsive Microsoft OS, it went downhill from then and never recovered.

My current machine I upgraded from win10 to win11 and I noticed an across the board overnight regression in everything. I did a clean install so if anything it should have been quicker but boot times, app launch times, compile times all took a nosedive on that update.

I still think there’s a lot of blame to go around for the “kitchen sink” approach to app development where we have entire OS’s that can boot faster than your app can get off a splash screen.

Unfortunately, my users are on windows and work has no Linux vpn client so a switch isn’t happening any time soon.

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

#519

Post by vdqtp3 »

Aurornis wrote: post #449
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 can never tell if all of these comments are exaggerations to make a point, or if some people really have computers so slow that everything takes 20 seconds to launch (like the other comment claims). I'm sure some of these people are using 10 year old corporate laptops with heavy corporate anti-virus scanning, leading to slow startup times. However, I think a lot of people are just exaggerating. If it's not instantl…

It's not an exaggeration.

I have a 12 core Ryzen 9 with 64GB of RAM, and clicking the emoji reaction button in Signal takes long enough to render the fixed set of emojis that I've begun clicking the empty space where I know the correct emoji will appear.

For years I've been hitting the Windows key, typing the three or four unique characters for the app I want and hitting enter, because the start menu takes too long to appear. As a side note, that no longer works since Microsoft decided that predictability isn't a valuable feature, and the list doesn't filter the same way every time or I get different results depending on how fast I type and hit enter.

Lots of people literally outpace the fastest hardware on the market, and that is insane.

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

#520

Post by nsagent »

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…

It really depends on the software. I have the top-of-the-line M4 Max laptop with 128GB of memory. I recently switched from Zotero [1] to using papis [2] at the command line.

Zotero would take 30 seconds to a minute to start up. papis has no startup time as it's a cli app and searching is nearly instantaneous.

There is no reason for Zotero to be so slow. In fact, before switching I had to cut down on the number of papers it was managing because at one point it stopped loading altogether.

It's great you haven't run into poorly optimized software, but but not everyone is so lucky.

[1]: https://www.zotero.org/ [2]: https://github.com/papis/papis

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