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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

#631

Post by satvikpendem »

xg15 wrote: post #534
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…

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 ra…

Indeed, and I don't know why people keep saying that we ever thought the 20 hour workweek was feasible, because there is always more work to be done. Work expands to fill the constraints available, similar to Parkinson's Law.

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

#632

Post by tm-guimaraes »

TFYS wrote: post #622
rapsey wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all results of political corruption, not capitalism. It is the government's job to set the ground rules for the economy.

Political corruption is a consequence of capitalism. Taking over the political system provides a huge competitive advantage, so any entity rich enough to influence it has an incentive to do so in an competition based economy that incentivizes growth.

When did Political corruption not exist? In what system in history did the people in power have so few rotten apples that corruption was an anomally? Blaming corruption on capitalism is silly. As long has worldhas resources, people want control of reasources, and bad actors will do bad actors thingies.

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

#633

Post by cylemons »

jolt42 wrote: post #541
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…

IIRC, Microsoft was also charging Dell for a copy of Windows even if they didn't install it on the PC! And yeah OS/2 was ahead by miles.

How was that legal? They were charging dell for something they weren't using?

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

#634

Post by astrange »

yifanl wrote: post #241
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…

The Nintendo Switch on a chipset that was outdated a decade ago can run Tears of the Kingdom. It's not sensible that modern hardware is anything less than instant.

That's because TOTK is designed to run on it, with careful compromises and a lot of manual tuning.

Nintendo comes up with a working game first and then adds the story - BotW/TotK are post-apocalyptic so they don't have to show you too many people on screen at once.

The other way you can tell this is that both games have the same story even though one is a sequel! Like Ganon takes over the castle/Hyrule and then Link defeats him, but then they go into the basement and somehow Ganon is there again and does the exact same thing again? Makes no sense.

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

#636

Post by zelos »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #174
ngangaga wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Innovative new products would get much rarer without super cheap and scalable compute, of course". Interesting conclusion—I'd argue we haven't seen much innovation since the smartphone (18 years ago now), and it's entirely because capital is relying on the advances of hardware to sell what is to consumers essentially the same product that they already have. Of course, I can't read anything past the first tweet.

And I'd argue that we've seen tons of innovation in the past 18 years aside from just "the smartphone" but it's all too easy to take for granted and forget from our current perspective. First up, the smartphone itself had to evolve a hell of a lot over 18 years or so. Go try to use an iPhone 1 and you'll quickly see all of the roadblocks and what we now consider poor design choices littered everywhere, vs improvement…

...TomTom just getting off the ground

TomTom was founded in 1991 and released their first GPS device in 2004. By 2007 they were pretty well established.

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

#637

Post by TFYS »

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #632
TFYS wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political corruption is a consequence of capitalism. Taking over the political system provides a huge competitive advantage, so any entity rich enough to influence it has an incentive to do so in an competition based economy that incentivizes growth.

When did Political corruption not exist? In what system in history did the people in power have so few rotten apples that corruption was an anomally? Blaming corruption on capitalism is silly. As long has worldhas resources, people want control of reasources, and bad actors will do bad actors thingies.

You're right, political corruption is a problem in other systems as well, not just capitalism. I guess it would be more accurate to say that power concentration causes political corruption. We should try to figure out if it's possible to manage the economy in a way that limits the amount of power any individual can have to such an extent that corruption would be impossible.

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

#638

Post by diego_sandoval »

I generally believe that markets are somewhat efficient.

But somehow, we've ended up with the current state of Windows as the OS that most people use to do their job.

Something went terribly wrong. Maybe the market is just too dumb, maybe it's all the market distortions that have to do with IP, maybe it's the monopolístic practices of Microsoft. I don't know, but in my head, no sane civilization would think that Windows 10/11 is a good OS that everyone should use to optimize our economy.

I'm not talking only about performance, but about the general crappiness of the experience of using it.

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

#639

Post by dmos62 »

caseyy wrote: post #167
dmos62 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad software is not cheaper to make (or maintain) in the long-term.

There are many exceptions. 1. Sometimes speed = money. Being the first to market, meeting VC-set milestones for additional funding, and not running out of runway are all things cheaper than the alternatives. Software maintenance costs later don't come close to opportunity costs if a company/project fails. 2. Most of the software is disposable. It's made to be sold, and the code repo will be chucked into a .zip on som…

Thanks for the insightful counter-argument.

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

#640

Post by BLenkomo »

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…

I feel your realization and still hope my startup will have an competitive edge through quality.

In this case quality also means code quality which in my coding believe should lead to faster feature development

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