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Just Make It Faster

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Re: Just Make It Faster

#2

Post by maeon3 »

If something is taking way too long, often times it shouldn't be made faster, it should be done differently. For example, it takes me 4 hours to get to work, just making the car faster isn't going to help. Maybe the solution is to take a plane, get a different job,work from home, or move closer to where you want to be.

Re: Just Make It Faster

#3

Post by pierrefar »

maeon3 wrote: post #2

If something is taking way too long, often times it shouldn't be made faster, it should be done differently. For example, it takes me 4 hours to get to work, just making the car faster isn't going to help. Maybe the solution is to take a plane, get a different job,work from home, or move closer to where you want to be.

Yep. What the post described as the final solution was bringing down the running time from 24hrs to 10min using straightforward optimisations. I would guess moving from 10min to 30sec would take doing it differently.

Re: Just Make It Faster

#4

Post by yesno »

Good post. Don't forget to pay your full-stack engineer with a full-stack money. Don't be cheap on them mkay?

On the other hand, I'd like to have a full-stack CEO as well. Not just someone who can only say "make it work", "make it faster", "make me some money".

Re: Just Make It Faster

#5

Post by supermanwillfly »

yesno wrote: post #4

Good post. Don't forget to pay your full-stack engineer with a full-stack money. Don't be cheap on them mkay? On the other hand, I'd like to have a full-stack CEO as well. Not just someone who can only say "make it work", "make it faster", "make me some money".

I'm curious to know what do you think is a reasonable wage in SF for a "full-stack" developer. Feel free to break it down by years of experience.

And by full-stack CEO, you mean someone who understands all the aspects of the business and isn't a pandering, disconnected, figure-head? In a lot of companies they'd be called the operating CEO, or in more cases, the COO/president.

Re: Just Make It Faster

#8

Post by perlgeek »

maeon3 wrote: post #2

If something is taking way too long, often times it shouldn't be made faster, it should be done differently. For example, it takes me 4 hours to get to work, just making the car faster isn't going to help. Maybe the solution is to take a plane, get a different job,work from home, or move closer to where you want to be.

... unless it's something like a forgotten index in a database. Which can easily make a difference for a factor 10 or more.

That's the problem with computing: Often you don't have a very good understanding if there's a good reason for the thing to be slow. Only if there is such a conceptual reason (like, you're solving a problem involving very many variables that must be optimized), you must start thinking if a different approach is in order.

Re: Just Make It Faster

#9

Post by fleitz »

rhymeswithcycle wrote: post #7

The author achieved a big speed increase with a faster disk, more RAM, adding indexes, and rewriting slow queries. The relevant skillset is "knowing a thing or two about databases", not "full-stack programmer".

Incorrect, the point about being a full stack programmer is knowing where to look. You only need to know about databases to FIX the problem but you need the full stack to FIND the problem.

If you knew a little about assembler then maybe you'd waste a lot of time rewriting code. Instead of fixing the db. Full stack programmers are valuable for their knowledge that is an inch deep but a mile wide. Any fix a full stack performs is going to seem trivial to an expert in that field.

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