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There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

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Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#81

Post by paulddraper »

efsavage wrote: post #74
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #48

Feel like this is the equivalent of a traffic engineer standing at the grand opening of the 5th lane for the highway saying there’s no reason for traffic to be slow anymore. That is, there’s a misunderstanding of why software (traffic) was slow in the first place, and it has nothing to do with our ability to generate code (number of lanes), even if that code is “high quality”.

Sorry I can't resist the pedantry but a traffic engineer knows better than anyone that adding a 5th lane (often even a 4th) won't improve traffic except in fairly specific circumstances. :D

But it will definitely improve, either speed or volume.

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#82

Post by canada_dry »

I regularly support Windows users and when I do, I cringe at just how awful the experience is! (My daily driver for the last decade have been various flavours of linux)

High end Windows 10/11 machines (like my Alienware I9 w/ 64GB mem + RTX4090) seem a bit sluggish. Low end machines with Windows are absolutely painful to use!

I've install debian onto my fairly ancient Lenovo X201 Tablet and it is exceptionally snappy.

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#83

Post by m463 »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #48

Feel like this is the equivalent of a traffic engineer standing at the grand opening of the 5th lane for the highway saying there’s no reason for traffic to be slow anymore. That is, there’s a misunderstanding of why software (traffic) was slow in the first place, and it has nothing to do with our ability to generate code (number of lanes), even if that code is “high quality”.

just¹ prompt like the lotus philosophy:

Simplify, then add lightness.

[1] hn favorite word

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#85

Post by [deleted] »

noosphr wrote: post #75
y1n0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the test suite. The test suite becomes an executable specification, and the better the spec, the better the results you can get from AI.

It really isn't. It's s about subpar models trained on subpar data doing subpar work. The only reason why anyone takes it seriously is that we've had a glut of subpar developers for 30 years so it all balances out in the end.

[deleted]

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#87

Post by IshKebab »

Yeah.... maybe. I think AI is still too prone to go down rabbit holes and not understand the whole picture well enough to come up with good optimisations. It's probably good at micro-optimisation, e.g. pre-allocating arrays. But is it going to realise that you don't need that array in the first place? I dunno.

On the other hand it does mean there's no excuse for writing your program using Python or Electron or whatever, which will have a big effect on performance.

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#88

Post by paulddraper »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #64
newsomix9xl wrote: post #14

One article said secure software was here because of AI, this one says it can now be performant. Yet when I ask for code it writes, by default, both slow and insecure code that mostly works. Kinda. As I try to get AI to rewrite it into more secure, less bloated and optimized code is when it starts to randomly crash. Then I read articles about how AI is "moving too fast" and cry.

I cannot imagine how nitpicky people are. AI went from 'good autocomplete' to 'I just tell it to do an entire thing and it does it and it works the first try'. Maybe pick languages that are more boring. That's what works for me. It worked for hiring crappy outsourced programmers and it works for AI. It seems to do well with PHP - no long running processes / side effects. it works great with golang, simple language sp…

The goal posts always move

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#89

Post by xbar »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #48

Feel like this is the equivalent of a traffic engineer standing at the grand opening of the 5th lane for the highway saying there’s no reason for traffic to be slow anymore. That is, there’s a misunderstanding of why software (traffic) was slow in the first place, and it has nothing to do with our ability to generate code (number of lanes), even if that code is “high quality”.

The author clearly understood this part of the topic and agrees. There are multiple reasons that software is slow.

As you imply, some of them are not because spending time on optimization seems relatively expensive compared to value. But some of them are.

Re: There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

#90

Post by jayd16 »

newsomix9xl wrote: post #14

One article said secure software was here because of AI, this one says it can now be performant. Yet when I ask for code it writes, by default, both slow and insecure code that mostly works. Kinda. As I try to get AI to rewrite it into more secure, less bloated and optimized code is when it starts to randomly crash. Then I read articles about how AI is "moving too fast" and cry.

Aha, the problem is you're asking for code that works.
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