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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

#531

Post by p1necone »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #522
dahart wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're laying it out like it's universal, in my experience there are products where people will seek for the cheapest good enough but there are also other product that people know they want quality and are willing to pay more. Take cars for instance, if all people wanted the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business. Same for professional tools and products, you save more by buying qualit…

> the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business

I would argue this is a bad example - most luxury cars aren't really meaningfully "better", they just have status symbol value. A mid range Honda civic or Toyota corolla is not "worse" than a Mercedes for most objective measurements.

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

#532

Post by m-schuetz »

maccard wrote: post #119
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…

Slack, teams, vs code, miro, excel, rider/intellij, outlook, photoshop/affinity are all applications I use every day that take 20+ seconds to launch. My corporate VPN app takes 30 seconds to go from a blank screen to deciding if it’s going to prompt me for credentials or remember my login, every morning. This is on an i9 with 64GB ram, and 1GN fiber. On the website front - Facebook, twitter, Airbnb, Reddit, most news…

How does your vscode take 20+ seconds to launch? Mine launches in 2 seconds.

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

#533

Post by karmakaze »

cletus wrote: post #317

So I've worked for Google (and Facebook) and it really drives the point home of just how cheap hardware is and how not worth it optimizing code is most of the time. More than a decade ago Google had to start managing their resource usage in data centers. Every project has a budget. CPU cores, hard disk space, flash storage, hard disk spindles, memory, etc. And these are generally convertible to each other so you can…

Google doesn't come up with better compression and binary serialization formats just for fun--it improves their bottom line.

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

#534

Post by xg15 »

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…

This is also the exact reason why all the bright-eyed pieces that some technology would increase worker's productivity and therefore allow more leisure time for the worker (20 hour workweek etc) are either hopelessly naive or pure propaganda.

Increased productivity means that the company has a new option to either reduce costs or increase output at no additional cost, one of which it has to do to stay ahead in the rat-race of competitors. Investing the added productivity into employee leisure time would be in the best case foolish and in the worst case suicidal.

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

#535

Post by naasking »

jimbokun wrote: post #484
naasking wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

That would be an explanation if new object/functional/procedural languages weren't coming out every year.

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

#536

Post by caseyy »

nine_k wrote: post #527
caseyy wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see your point. But the choice between an iPhone and a Galaxy is mostly the ecosystem. And the choice between OnePlus and a Galaxy S is mostly about the quality of the camera. And the choice between a Galaxy and a Xioami is mostly about trusting a Chinese brand (not for its technical merits; they make excellent devices). The real quality / price differentiation, to my mind, lies farther down the scale. That is, the…

There are many behavioral economics ideas about smartphone choices. There are various psychological aspects, such as lifestyle, status, social and personal values, and political influences. That is all true.

The strongest decider for whether a good will show positive or negative elastic demand (and be considered superior or inferior) is probably how it's branded, pricing strategy included. For example, wealthy people shop in boutiques more than large retail centers, though the items sold are often sourced from the same suppliers. The difference? Branding, including pricing.

You're right about basic goods, such as groceries. Especially goods that are almost perfectly identical and freely substitutable, like milk. What's a superior or inferior good becomes hard to guess when there is a high degree of differentiation (as you say, ecosystems, cameras, security). It's easier to measure than predict.

Anyway, this is all a "fun fact." My original comment really does make the assumption that software, which is relatively substitutable, is like the milk example — the price and the inferiority/superiority are strongly correlated. And the entire expensive software market has collapsed like the expensive secondary market for used cars.

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

#537

Post by sssilver »

p1necone wrote: post #531
aucisson_masque wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're laying it out like it's universal, in my experience there are products where people will seek for the cheapest good enough but there are also other product that people know they want quality and are willing to pay more. Take cars for instance, if all people wanted the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business. Same for professional tools and products, you save more by buying qualit…

> the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business I would argue this is a bad example - most luxury cars aren't really meaningfully "better", they just have status symbol value. A mid range Honda civic or Toyota corolla is not "worse" than a Mercedes for most objective measurements.

As someone who drove both, I vehemently disagree. Stripped of logos, one is delightful, the other just nominally gets the job done.

The Mercedes has superior suspension that feels plush and smooth. Wonderful materials in the cabin that feel pleasant to the touch. The buttons press with a deep, satisfying click. The seats hug you like a soft cloud.

All of that isn’t nothing. It is difficult to achieve, and it is valuable.

All of that make the Mercedes better than a Corolla, albeit at a higher cost.

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

#538

Post by naasking »

rjbwork wrote: post #469
naasking wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it doesn't go far enough IMO. Why not add language/runtime support for durable list comprehensions, and also atomically updatable ones so they can be concurrently shared, etc. Bring the database into the language in a way that's just as easily to use and query as any other value.

Well, you can do that with LINQ + EF and embedded databases like SQL Lite or similar.

LINQ is on the right track but doesn't quite go far enough with query composition. For instance, you can't "unquote" a query within another query (although I believe there is a library that tries to add this).

EF code-first is also on the right track, but the fluent and attribute mapping are awkward, foreign key associations often have to be unpacked directly as value type keys, there's no smooth transition between in-memory native types and durable types, and schema migration could be smoother.

Lots of the bits and pieces of what I'm describing are around but they aren't holistically combined.

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

#539

Post by crote »

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…

> People want cheap, so if you sell something people want, someone will make it for less by cutting “costs” (quality).

Sure, but what about the people who consider quality as part of their product evaluation? All else being equal everyone wants it cheaper, but all else isn't equal. When I was looking at smart lighting, I spent 3x as much on Philips Hue as I could have on Ikea bulbs: bought one Ikea bulb, tried it on next to a Hue one, and instantly returned the Ikea one. It was just that much worse. I'd happily pay similar premiums for most consumer products.

But companies keep enshittifying their products. I'm not going to pay significantly more for a product which is going to break after 16 months instead of 12 months. I'm not going to pay extra for some crappy AI cloud blockchain "feature". I'm not going to pay extra to have a gaudy "luxury" brand logo stapled all over it.

Companies are only interested in short-term shareholder value these days, which means selling absolute crap at premium prices. I want to pay extra to get a decent product, but more and more it turns out that I can't.

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