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Fast

catherinejue.com

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Re: Fast

#141

Post by lblume »

asa400 wrote: post #135
9rx wrote: post #12

> Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” They don't explicitly ask for it, but they won't take you seriously if you don't at least pretend to be. "Fast" is assumed. Imagine if Rust had shown up, identical in every other way, but said "However, it is slower than Ruby". Nobody would have given it the time of day. The only reason it was able to gain attention was because it claimed to be "Faster than C++". Watch…

To a first approximation HN is a group of people who have convinced themselves that it's a high quality user experience to spend 11 seconds shipping 3.8 megabytes of Javascript to a user that's connected via a poor mobile connection on a cheap dual-core phone so that user can have a 12 second session where they read 150 words and view 1 image before closing the tab. Fast is _absolutely not_ the only thing we care abo…

The fact that this article and similar ones get upvoted very frequently on this platform is strong evidence against this claim.

Considering the current state of the Web and user application development, I tend to agree with regard to its developers, but HN seems to still abide by other principles.

Re: Fast

#142

Post by betterhealth12 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #106
adwn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?" I don't get it. Wouldn't going from 1 second to 0 seconds add the same amount of money to the yearly profit as going from 2 seconds to 1 second did? Namely, $1M.

yeah it's one of those things that are funny to the people saying it because they don't yet realize it doesn't make sense. I bet they felt that later, in the hotel room, in the shower, probably with a bottle of scotch.

earlier in my career it'd be appealing to make jokes like that, or include a comment in an email. eventually you realize that people - especially "older" or those already a few years into their career - mostly don't want to joke around and just want to actually get the thing done you are meeting about.

Re: Fast

#144

Post by silotis »

joshvm wrote: post #61
Liftyee wrote: post #54

I always have to remind myself of the bank transfer situation in the US whenever I read an article complaining about it. Here in the UK, bank transfers are quick and simple (the money appears to move virtually instantly). Feel free to enlighten me to why they're so slow in the US.

For ACH, it's the scheduling and batching that makes it slow. The transfer itself should be instant but often my bank sends it out around midnight. This is why Venmo and Zelle are so popular. You can also modify/cancel a bank transfer before it goes through, which is nice. This is the same in Switzerland. If you request an IBAN transfer, it's never instant. The solution there for fast payments is called TWINT, which…

These days ACH settlement runs multiple times a day. The biggest source of delay for ACH transfers is your bank delaying release of the funds for risk management. ACH transfers can be reversed even after they have "settled" and if the receiving bank has already disbursed the funds then they have to eat the cost of reimbursing the sender. Reversals are more likely to happen soon after the transfer completes, so delaying release of the funds makes it less likely the bank will be left holding the bag.

Re: Fast

#145

Post by lblume »

9rx wrote: post #125
atq2119 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet we live in a world of (especially web) apps that are incredibly slow, in the sense that an update in response to user input might take multiple seconds. Yes, fast wins people over. And yet we live in a world where the actual experience of every day computing is often slow as molasses.

The trouble is that "fast" doesn't mean anything without a point of comparison. If all you have is a slow web app, you have to assume that the web app is necessarily slow — already as fast as it can be. We like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so there is no reason to think that someone would make something slower than is necessary. "Fast" is the feature people always wanted, but absent better information, th…

> you have to assume

We don't have to assume. We know that JavaScript is slow in many cases, that shipping more bundles instead of less will decrease performance, and that with regard to the amount of content served generally less is more.

Whether this amount of baggage every web app seems to come with these days is seen as "necessary" or not is subjective, but I would tend to agree that many developers are ignorant of different methods or dislike the idea of deviating from the implied norms.

Re: Fast

#146

Post by cycomanic »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Kinda funny but I think LLM-assisted workflows are frequently slow -- that is, if I use the "refactor" features in my IDE it is done in a second, if I ask the faster kind of assistant it comes back in 30 seconds, if I ask the "agentic" kind of assistant it comes back in 15 minutes. I asked an agent to write an http endpoint at the end of the work day when I had just 30 min left -- my first thought was "it took 10 min…

I've already written about this several times here. I think the current trend of LLMs chasing benchmark scores are going in the wrong direction at least as programming tools. In my experience they get it wrong with enough probability, so I always need to check the work. So I end up in a back and forth with the LLM and because of the slow responses it becomes a really painful process and I could often have done the task faster if I sat down and thought about it. What I want is an agent that responds immediately (and I mean in subseconds) even if some benchmark score is 60% instead of 80%.

Re: Fast

#147

Post by lvass »

breuleux wrote: post #119
calibas wrote: post #49

Efficient code is also environmentally friendly. First, efficient code is going to use less electricity, and thus, fewer resources will need to be consumed. Second, efficient code means you don't need to be constantly upgrading your hardware.

Well, that depends. Very inefficient code tends to only be used when absolutely needed. If an LLM becomes ten times faster at answering simple prompts, it may very well be used a hundred times more as a result, in which case electricity use will go up, not down. Efficiency gains commonly result in doing way more with more, not more with less.

Indeed, that is a common occurrence that called Jevons Paradox.

Re: Fast

#148

Post by lblume »

breuleux wrote: post #119
calibas wrote: post #49

Efficient code is also environmentally friendly. First, efficient code is going to use less electricity, and thus, fewer resources will need to be consumed. Second, efficient code means you don't need to be constantly upgrading your hardware.

Well, that depends. Very inefficient code tends to only be used when absolutely needed. If an LLM becomes ten times faster at answering simple prompts, it may very well be used a hundred times more as a result, in which case electricity use will go up, not down. Efficiency gains commonly result in doing way more with more, not more with less.

Correct. This is also known as a rebound effect [1], or, specifically with regard to technological improvements, as the Jevons paradox [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Fast

#149

Post by Otek »

stronglikedan wrote: post #106
adwn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?" I don't get it. Wouldn't going from 1 second to 0 seconds add the same amount of money to the yearly profit as going from 2 seconds to 1 second did? Namely, $1M.

yeah it's one of those things that are funny to the people saying it because they don't yet realize it doesn't make sense. I bet they felt that later, in the hotel room, in the shower, probably with a bottle of scotch.

> I bet they felt that later, in the hotel room, in the shower, probably with a bottle of scotch.

Geez, life in my opinion is not so serious. It’s okay to say stupid things and not feel bad about it, as long as you are not trying to hurt anyone.

I bet they felt great and immediately forgot about this bad joke.

Re: Fast

#150

Post by MawKKe »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #104

Just want to say how much I thank YCom for not f'ing up the HN interface, and keeping it fast. I distinctly remember when Slashdot committed suicide. They had an interface that was very easy for me to scan and find high value comments, and in the name of "modern UI" or some other nonsense needed to keep a few designers employed, completely revamped it so that it had a ton of whitespace and made it basically impossibl…

Similar thing happened (to me) with Hackaday around 2010-2011. I used to check it almost daily, and then never again after the major re-design.
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