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There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

danluu.com

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

#121

Post by trgn »

cwnyth wrote: post #106
trgn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cannot be an emperical statement. Traffic engineers have absolutely wrecked the american city, largely be ause they didnt know the impact of adding lanes. It's not the only reason. I think that traffic engineers lack/lacked a feel, a certain gut understanding , an inability to feel through the skin. Just look around you. See and hear them at municipal meetings. They are unable to sensually experience the effects…

I've spoken with traffic engineers before, and the consensus I've gotten is that, excusing a few bad apples, much of the problems originate with popular or political interference.

I believe it, but what's the point of having them then.

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

#122

Post by jjcm »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #100
jjcm wrote: post #70

This speaks to me. I've been running an autoresearch loop the past couple of days to improve the load time of my various projects' frontends. I've been really, really impressed with how effective this is. I went from a 4s load on simulated slow 4g to ~750ms: https://image.non.io/speedup-graphs.webp Side by side vid of the results: https://video.non.io/speedups.mp4 This was for https://non.io , which is something I ha…

> This was for https://non.io Maybe hugged but feels really sluggish to me for it is.

These are the stats I'm seeing: https://image.non.io/7a8adcb1-2a17-4e2c-b213-d0c3e173a1d5.we...

Should note the server is on USW and I don't have edge servers for it at the moment.

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

#126

Post by hollowturtle »

SadErn wrote: post #35
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 feel like I’m reading a post from 2025 instead of one written three minutes ago. People get entrenched in closedminded thinking. My guess is that this has been your canned spasm for the past year. Repeating these things won’t make them true or protect your job. You protect your job by learning how to use new tools as the technology advances. This sort of lazy thinking isn’t acceptable anymore. Whether this is a ref…

> Repeating these things won’t make them true or protect your job.

Most of these things are just true as of today.

> You protect your job by learning how to use new tools as the technology advances.

Sure and the more you learn the more you see how hyped they were and reality untangle

> Engineers don't ask a tool to write code.

And what they ask? They create loops or graphs? These tools ultimately vomit code anyways

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

#127

Post by baliex »

bitwize wrote: post #107
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.

Skill issue. The fact is that with the right spec, agentic guardrails, and evals, frontier models can now one-shot secure, performant code. This is the job of software engineering now. Learn to properly use the tools for the job.

Color me sceptical but I’d say that’s a bold claim.

Can you give a concrete example of that being the case? I’d love to see the prompt and harness. And understand the scale of problem you’re talking about solving with a one-shot approach.

How long will it take to write the right spec? How will you know ahead of time that the spec is correct?

Which agentic guardrails do you mean? How can they be set up?

-

I’d say the job of software engineering is still firmly being able to stand by the work you present and being reasonably confident that it’s correct according to yours and others’ understanding of the problem you’re attempting to solve.

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

#128

Post by throwitaway222 »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #100
jjcm wrote: post #70

This speaks to me. I've been running an autoresearch loop the past couple of days to improve the load time of my various projects' frontends. I've been really, really impressed with how effective this is. I went from a 4s load on simulated slow 4g to ~750ms: https://image.non.io/speedup-graphs.webp Side by side vid of the results: https://video.non.io/speedups.mp4 This was for https://non.io , which is something I ha…

> This was for https://non.io Maybe hugged but feels really sluggish to me for it is.

Never visited before and the site was HN load speed. Very fast.

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

#130

Post by paulhebert »

intrasight wrote: post #62

I've been using computers for 4 decades. They have gotten no faster. The nuclear plant computer system we built in 1989 had to present selected screens in 1 second. I don't think any apps I use today can do that.

It’s all incentives. I’ve worked on web projects where the people in charge cared about performance. It’s easy to get sub second speeds if you start with that goal.

I’ve also worked on projects where the people in charge added 1mb client-side mapping libraries to render a static map and ignored my push back. Those website were slow

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