Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 842 posts

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

#721

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

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…

I notice a pattern in the kinds of software that people are complaining about. They tend to be user-facing interactive software that is either corporate, proprietary, SaaS, “late-stage” or contains large amounts of telemetry. Since I tend to avoid such software, the vast majority of software I use I have no complaints about with respect to speed and responsiveness. The biggest piece of corporate bloatware I have is Chromium which (only) takes 1-2 seconds to launch and my system is not particularly powerful. In the corporate world bloat is a proxy for sophistication, for them it is a desirable feature so you should expect it. They would rather you use several JavaScript frameworks when the job could be done with plain HTML because it shows how rich/important/fashionable/relevant/high-tech they are.

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

#722

Post by WillAdams »

Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #714
WillAdams wrote: post #443

Wirth's Law: >software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

Unfortunately there is a distinct lack of any scientific investigation or rigorous analysis into the phenomenon allegedly occurring that is called “Wirth’s Law” unlike, say, Moore’s Law despite many anecdotal examples. Reasoning as if it were literally true leads to absurd conclusions that do not correspond with any reality that I can observe so I am tempted to say that as a broad phenomenon it is obviously false and…

Call it the X-Windows factor --- software gets more capable/more complex and there's a constant leap-frogging (new hardware release, stuff runs faster, software is written to take advantage of new hardware, things run more slowly, software is optimized, things run more quickly).

The most striking example of this was Mac OS X Public Beta --- which made my 400MHz PowerPC G3 run at about the same speed as my 25 MHz NeXT Cube running the quite similar OPENSTEP 4.2 (just OS X added Java and Carbon and so forth) --- but each iteration got quicker until by 10.6.8, it was about perfect.

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

#723

Post by nickpp »

RalfWausE wrote: post #593
musicale wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20 hour workweek etc We have that already. It's called part-time jobs. Usually they don't pay as much as full-time jobs, provide no health insurance or other benefits, etc.

> provide no health insurance I am so glad to live in Germany...

… where your full time job pays less than the GP's part time job

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

#724

Post by agentultra »

hermitShell wrote: post #713
agentultra wrote: post #158

I heartily agree. It would be nice if we could extend the lifetime of hardware 5, 10 years past its, "planned obsolescence." This would divert a lot of e-waste, leave a lot of rare earth minerals in the ground, and might even significantly lower GHG emissions. The market forces for producing software however... are not paying for such externalities. It's much cheaper to ship it sooner, test, and iterate than it is to…

Point 1 is why growth/debt is not a good economic model in the long run. We should have a care & maintenance focused economy and center our macro scale efforts on the overall good of the human race, not perceived wealth of the few. If we focused on upkeep of older vehicles, re-use of older computers, etc. our landfills would be smaller proportional to 'growth'. I'm sure there's some game theory construction of the ab…

I sometimes wonder how the game theorist would argue with physics.

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

#725

Post by physicsguy »

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…

I worked in a previous job on a product with 'AI' in the name. It was a source of amusement to many of us working there that the product didn't, and still doesn't use any AI.

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

#726

Post by splatter9859 »

progbits wrote: post #664
musicale wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20 hour workweek etc We have that already. It's called part-time jobs. Usually they don't pay as much as full-time jobs, provide no health insurance or other benefits, etc.

It's a bad deal as a developer. I receive 50% of the money but still provide 70-80% value to the company.

As someone who straddles two fields (CS and Healthcare) and has careers/degrees in both -- the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

This could be said about most jobs in the 21st century these days in any career field given. That's a culture shift and business management/organization practice change that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

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

#727

Post by CyberDildonics »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #696
CyberDildonics wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your original comment was saying you have to give up features and development speed to have faster software. I've seen this claim before many times, but it's always from people rationalizing not learning anything beyond the scripting languages they learned when they got in to programming. I explained to you exactly why this is true, and it's because writing fast software just means doing some things slightly differen…

So again, what you're saying is there is a tradeoff. You just think it should be made in a different place than where the vast majority of engineers in the world choose to make it. That's fine! It's probably because they're idiots and you're really smart, but it's obviously not because there's no tradeoff. > that asm is some sort of necessity for software that runs faster than scripting languages. It seems you're not…

So again, what you're saying is there is a tradeoff. You just think it should be made in a different place than where the vast majority of engineers in the world choose to make it.

Show me what it is I said that makes you think that.

That's fine! It's probably because they're idiots and you're really smart, but it's obviously not because there's no tradeoff.

Where did I say any of this? I could teach anyone to make faster software in an hour or two, but myths like the ones you are perpetuating make people think it's difficult or faster software is more complicated.

You originally said that making software faster 'decreases velocity and sacrifices features' but you can't explain or backup any of that.

You agree with me, it turns out!

I think what actually happened is that you made some claims that get repeated but they aren't from your actual experience and you're trying to avoid giving real evidence or explanations so you keep trying to shift what you're saying to something else.

The truth is that if someone just learns to program with types and a few basic techniques they can get away from writing slow software forever and it doesn't come at any development speed, just a little learning up front that used to be considered the basics.

Next time you reply show me actual evidence of the slow software you need to write to save development time. I think the reality is that this is just not something you know a lot about, but instead of learning about it you want to pretend there is any truth to what you originally said. Show me any actual evidence or explanation instead of just making the same claims over and over.

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

#728

Post by pixelfarmer »

TFYS wrote: post #625
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.

We haven't really been trying to find such a system. The technological progress that we've had since the last attempts at a different kind of a system has been huge, so what was once impossible might now be possible if we put some effort into it.

There is no system that fulfills your requirements.

It is even easy to explain why: Humans are part of all the moving pieces in such a system and they will always subvert it to their own agenda, no matter what rules you put into place. The more complex your rule set, the easier it is to break.

Look at games, can be a card game, a board game, some computer game. There is a fixed set of rules, and still humans try to cheat. We are not even talking adults here, you see this with kids already. Now with games there is either other players calling that out or you have a computer not allowing to cheat (maybe). Now imagine everyone could call someone else a cheater and stop them from doing something. This in itself is going to be misused. Humans will subvert systems.

So the only working system will be one with a non-human incorruptible game master, so to speak. Not going to happen.

With that out of the way, we certainly can ask the question: What is the next best thing to that? I have no answer to that, though.

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

#729

Post by MonkeyClub »

monkeyelite wrote: post #462
Aurornis wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t work like that. If an image processing algorithm takes 2 instructions per pixel, adding a check to every access could 3-4x the cost. Your understanding of how bounds checking works in modern languages and compilers is not up to date. You're not going to find a situation where bounds checking causes an algorithm to take 3-4X longer. A lot of people are surprised when the bounds checking in Rust is basical…

> Your understanding of how bounds checking works in modern languages and compilers is not up to date. One I am familiar with is Swift - which does exactly this because it’s a library feature of Array. Which languages will always be able to determine through function calls, indirect addressing, etc whether it needs to bounds check or not? And how will I know if it succeeded or whether something silently failed? > if…

> Java and python

Java and Python are not on the same body of water, let alone the same boat.

You can see some comparisons here:

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

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

#730

Post by CelestialMystic »

jen20 wrote: post #717
CelestialMystic wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. I don't believe you and it besides the point because I suspect that it is an expensive vacuum cleaner. I don't want to put any thought into a vacuum cleaner. I just want to buy the most powerful (bonus points if it is really loud), I don't care ab…

> I want the choice to buy something that makes a dent in my electricity bill if I so choose to. Have you considered that the market for such a thing is effectively zero? Why would anyone make this? Dysons are fine, even if the founder is a total tool.

I was being hyperbolic throughout the entire post.

Every-time you have a conversation around older stuff being better than newer stuff (some of this is due to regulation), you will have someone say their boutique item that costs hundreds of pounds (or maybe 1000s) works perfectly well. Ignoring the fact that most people don't wish to buy these boutique items (the dude literally talked about some Norwegian toilet design). I buy whatever is typically on offer than is from a brand that I recognise. I don't care about the power consumption of my vacuum cleaner. I am not using it for the entire day. It is maybe 30 minutes to an hour twice a week. I just want to do this task (which I find tedious) as quickly as possible.

BTW Dysons count in this regard as boutique, they are expensive and kinda rubbish. They are rendered useless by cat fur (my mother had three cats and it constantly got clogged with it). Bagless vacuum cleaners are generally garbage anyway (this is a separate complaint) because when you try to empty them, you have to empty it into a bag typically.

Post reply on HN