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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

#641

Post by immibis »

satvikpendem wrote: post #631
xg15 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably because the 40-hour workweek was feasible.

It became feasible because back when the workweek was "whenever you're not asleep", a lot of people set a lot of things on fire until it wasn't.

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

#642

Post by immibis »

rapsey wrote: post #618
chii wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need a better economic system none has been found. The command economy is inefficient, and prone to corruption. informal/barter systems are too small in scale and does not produce sufficient amounts to make the type of abundant lifestyle we enjoy today possible. As the saying goes - free market capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

Free market capitalism does not exist anywhere.

In fact, free market and capitalism are opposites.

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

#643

Post by immibis »

rapsey wrote: post #606
TFYS wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think regulations are enough. They're just a band-aid on the gaping wound that is a capitalist, market based economy. No matter what regulations you make, some companies and individuals become winners and over time will grow rich enough to influence the government and the regulations. We need a better economic system, one that does not have these problems built in.

Gaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.

Actually, the system that produced the greatest standard of living increase in human history is whatever Communist China's been doing for the last century.

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

#644

Post by casey2 »

True for large corporations. But for individuals the ability to put what was previously an entire stacks in a script that doesn't call out to the internet will be a big win.

How many people are going to write and maintain shell scripts with 10+ curls? If we are being honest this is the main reason people use python.

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

#645

Post by dsign »

TFYS wrote: post #609
rapsey wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.

Sure, but you can't ignore the negative sides like environmental destruction and wealth and power concentration. Just because we haven't yet invented a system that produces a good standard of living without these negative side effects doesn't mean it can't be done. But we aren't even trying, because the ones benefiting from this system the most, and have the most power, have no incentive to do so.

Capitalism is a good economic engine. Now put that engine in a car without steering wheel nor brakes and feed the engine with the thickest and ever-thickening pipe from the gas tank you can imagine, and you get something like USA.

But most of the world doesn't work like that. Countries like China and Russia have dictators that steer the car. Mexico have gangs and mafia. European countries have parliamentary democracies and "commie journalists" that do their job and reign political and corporate corruption--sometimes over-eagerly--and unions. In many of those places, wealth equals material well-being but not overt political power. In fact, wealth often employs stealth to avoid becoming a target.

USA is not trying to change things because people are numbed down[^1]. Legally speaking, there is nothing preventing that country from having a socialist party win control of the government with popular support and enact sweeping legislation to overcome economic inequality somewhat. Not socialist, but that degree of unthinkable was done by Roosevelt before and with the bare minimum of popular support.

[^1]: And, I'm not saying that's a small problem. It is not, and the capitalism of instant gratification entertainment is entirely responsible for this outcome. But the culprit is not capitalism at large. IMO, the peculiarities of American culture are, to a large extent, a historic accident.

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

#646

Post by dijit »

Aurornis wrote: post #453
KapKap66 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a problem when people who aren't very sensitive to latency and try and track it, and that is that their perception of what "instant" actually means is wrong. For them, instant is like, one second. For someone who cares about latency, instant is less than 10 milliseconds, or whatever threshold makes the difference between input and result imperceptible. People have the same problem judging video game framerate…

> For someone who cares about latency, instant is less than 10 milliseconds Click latency of the fastest input devices is about 1ms and with a 120Hz screen you're waiting 8.3ms between frames. If someone is annoyed by 10ms of latency they're going to have a hard time in the real world where everything takes longer than that. I think the real difference is that 1-3 seconds is completely negligible launch time for an a…

I think you're right, maybe the disconnect is UI slowness?

I am annoyed at the startup time of programs that I keep closed and only open infrequently (Discord is one of those, the update loop takes a buttload of time because I don't use it daily), but I'm not annoyed when something I keep open takes 1-10s to open.

But when I think of getting annoyed it's almost always because an action I'm doing takes too long. I grew up in an era with worse computers than we have today, but clicking a new list was perceptibly instant- it was like the computer was waiting for the screen to catch up.

Today, it feels like the computer chugs to show you what you've clicked on. This is especially true with universal software, like chat programs, that everyone in an org is using.

I think Casey Muratori's point about the watch window in visual studio is the right one. The watch window used to be instant, but someone added an artificial delay to start processing so that the CPU wouldn't work when stepping fast through the code. The result is that, well, you gotta wait for the watch window to update... Which "feels bad".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U

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

#647

Post by rapsey »

immibis wrote: post #643
rapsey wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.

Actually, the system that produced the greatest standard of living increase in human history is whatever Communist China's been doing for the last century.

Capitalism.

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

#648

Post by oblio »

cogman10 wrote: post #271

I'm going to be pretty blunt. Carmack gets worshiped when he shouldn't be. He has several bad takes in terms of software. Further, he's frankly behind the times when it comes to the current state of the software ecosystem. I get it, he's legendary for the work he did at id software. But this is the guy who only like 5 years ago was convinced that static analysis was actually a good thing for code. He seems to have a…

> But this is the guy who only like 5 years ago was convinced that static analysis was actually a good thing for code.

Why isn't it?

> Interpreted stuff is slow

Well, it is. You can immediately tell the difference between most C/C++/Rust/... programs and Python/Ruby/... Either because they're implicitly faster (nature) or they foster an environment where performance matters (nurture), it doesn't matter, the end result (adult) is what matters.

> networks are slow

Networks are fast(er), but they're still slow for most stuff. Gmail is super nice, but it's slower than almost desktop email program that doesn't have legacy baggage stretching back 2-3 decades.

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

#649

Post by TFYS »

dsign wrote: post #645
TFYS wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you can't ignore the negative sides like environmental destruction and wealth and power concentration. Just because we haven't yet invented a system that produces a good standard of living without these negative side effects doesn't mean it can't be done. But we aren't even trying, because the ones benefiting from this system the most, and have the most power, have no incentive to do so.

Capitalism is a good economic engine. Now put that engine in a car without steering wheel nor brakes and feed the engine with the thickest and ever-thickening pipe from the gas tank you can imagine, and you get something like USA. But most of the world doesn't work like that. Countries like China and Russia have dictators that steer the car. Mexico have gangs and mafia. European countries have parliamentary democraci…

You can't really separate wealth and power, they're pretty much the same thing. The process that is going on in the US is also happening in Europe, just at a slower pace. Media is consolidating in the hands of the wealthy, unions are being attacked and are slowly losing their power, etc. You can temporarily reverse the process by having someone steer the car into some other direction for a while, but wealth/power concentration is an unavoidable part of free market capitalism, so the problem will never go away completely. Eventually capital accumulates again, and will corrupt the institutions meant to control it.

A smart dictator is probably harder to corrupt, but they die and then if you get unlucky with the next dictator the car will crash and burn.

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

#650

Post by ryao »

jayd16 wrote: post #173
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…

A lot of nostalgia is at work here. Modern tech is amazing. If the old tools were actually better people would actually use them. Its not like you can't get them to work.

As a regular user of vim, tmux and cscope for programming in C, may I say that not only do I prefer the old tools, but I use them regularly.
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