how very honest!
I enjoy Zed's enthusiasm. While people seem to argue with him frequently or vice versa, he is prolific in his books and software and is definitely helping improve things.
The Setup: Zed Shaw
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#12I agree hardware is no big deal for development in general. I tend to buy one generation behind in term of hardware. Not only all the bugs have been work out but I also got great bargains. Initial depreciation is steep for technology related products.
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#13Everyone I see in these kind of articles uses old hardware and small screens. I feel like it is selection bias - it makes for a better story when the rock stars don't use the best tools. When I moved from an old Mac to a tricked out iMac, my apps compiled 10x as fast. I suppose it's nice to know you can write good software on any box, but it's worthwhile to have good tools for something you spend many hours on each d…
Aside from an SSD, a 2006 computer (with the introduction of the first intel Core2Duo) with 8 gigs of ram is really the last time things got noticeably faster for the average programmer.
Sure, game programmers and the like 'need' to upgrade more often, but for almost everyone else, it's just been a waste of money in relation to what you get.
Laptops are a different story, though I think that's quickly coming about (or it already has with i5/i7s)
I have noticed a tendency for some of the bulkier tools to get slower over time, making it seem like you need a better computer, when in reality, we just need better tool makers (VS 2010 was a notable step back that made you feel like it was time to upgrade).
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#14Not long about I accidentally ruined the keyboard on my oldish white macbook, I debated spending cash I really didn't need to spend on a nice new macbook air. But after giving it some good thought I decided to just go ahead and replace the topcase myself.
While deciding this I realized it's rather a shame that in our hacker culture there's still somewhat of a fetishism for having a sleek new laptop, and that it would be much better if the culture valued the patched together, upgraded and heavily worn.
There are many great reasons for this: cut down on consumer waste, more in-tune with the hacker ideal to squeeze the most out of what you have in front of you, interesting performances issues aren't solved with a simple hardware upgrade, and of course Zed's point that we remain more in-touch with what actual users are using.
It shouldn't a point of shame to have the latest and the greatest, but it would be nice more cred went to the hacker in the room with the oldest, most beatup, but still productive laptop
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#15This is a good contrast to this recent front-page HN story:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3075145
"If you're a developer, you need to spend money on a great computer, an awesome monitor, a fantastic chair and a good bed"
Personally, I think Zed's approach is far more responsible/sane. If you "need to spend money on a great computer", you are either doing something very different than me, or very wrong.
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#16This is a good contrast to this recent front-page HN story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3075145 "If you're a developer, you need to spend money on a great computer, an awesome monitor, a fantastic chair and a good bed" Personally, I think Zed's approach is far more responsible/sane. If you "need to spend money on a great computer", you are either doing something very different than me, or very wrong.
Shouldn't it be worth it to decrease friction in something you are spending 8-10 hours a day on? Personally I can't stand when I run into the physical/computational limitations of a system I'm on. I also can't stand it when someone on my team complains about this.
A nice computer, a good amount of RAM, good input devices, a good chair and a desk are paltry compared to what you should be paying a great engineer or designer.
Tools don't make the talent, but they sure do make the extraction of talent into product/technology much easier all around.
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#17This is a good contrast to this recent front-page HN story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3075145 "If you're a developer, you need to spend money on a great computer, an awesome monitor, a fantastic chair and a good bed" Personally, I think Zed's approach is far more responsible/sane. If you "need to spend money on a great computer", you are either doing something very different than me, or very wrong.
If you are working on software that will run on customers' machines tomorrow, it makes sense to do at least a good chunk of development on very average hardware. These days, most client development is web stuff, so you don't often have the excuse of compile times.
But if you're working on software that's supposed to run well on high-spec machines and servers, or targeting machines a few years in the future, then you're better off with a higher spec machine; one with lots of RAM and CPU cores, so you can play around with the various tradeoffs of time vs memory vs parallelism. Or if you have a big source tree - the one I have is perhaps 10GB in size, and takes about 14 minutes to build today - then it makes lots of sense to reduce turnaround time by throwing hardware at it.
For example, I work on a compiler that is used by the build tree. I can't really be sure the compiler is "good" unless it builds the whole tree, and the tree's tests run; if I checked it in as is, the integration server could find the problem, and then I'd be in everybody's bad books. Reducing the build time by 5 minutes, iterated over perhaps 5 or 10 builds in a day, and it starts adding up to non-trivial productivity advantages.
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#18Not long about I accidentally ruined the keyboard on my oldish white macbook, I debated spending cash I really didn't need to spend on a nice new macbook air. But after giving it some good thought I decided to just go ahead and replace the topcase myself. While deciding this I realized it's rather a shame that in our hacker culture there's still somewhat of a fetishism for having a sleek new laptop, and that it would…
Don't replace it if it works for you, but due to Moore's Law computer hardware doesn't age that well. Older guitars that are well taken care of sound as good if not better than shiny new ones, but after a certain age your computer begins wasting your time.
Most programming time is spent sitting and thinking, but when I act I want the computer to respond as quickly as possible, whether compiling or running tests or opening a website.
That's not to say I don't share the sentiment about computers becoming less hackable and more consumer toys. It's a shame that laptops these days have almost zero user-servicable parts.
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#19Not long about I accidentally ruined the keyboard on my oldish white macbook, I debated spending cash I really didn't need to spend on a nice new macbook air. But after giving it some good thought I decided to just go ahead and replace the topcase myself. While deciding this I realized it's rather a shame that in our hacker culture there's still somewhat of a fetishism for having a sleek new laptop, and that it would…
My workstation started life as an HP I bought at Best Buy in 1998. I've just upgraded it piecemeal over the years, and while none of the original hardware remains, I've never replaced it outright.
My two development boxes, also under my desk, are whiteboxes cobbled together from previous iterations of my workstation - the hardware gets handed down, and once it hits four generations old, it gets shelved in the garage. Those pieces occassionally get used to patch friends' computers. I've quadrupled RAM with old unused DIMMs for more people than I care to think about
If that isn't patched together, upgraded, and heavily worn, I don't know what is!
Re: The Setup: Zed Shaw
#20Everyone I see in these kind of articles uses old hardware and small screens. I feel like it is selection bias - it makes for a better story when the rock stars don't use the best tools. When I moved from an old Mac to a tricked out iMac, my apps compiled 10x as fast. I suppose it's nice to know you can write good software on any box, but it's worthwhile to have good tools for something you spend many hours on each d…
Aside from an SSD, a 2006 computer (with the introduction of the first intel Core2Duo) with 8 gigs of ram is really the last time things got noticeably faster for the average programmer. Sure, game programmers and the like 'need' to upgrade more often, but for almost everyone else, it's just been a waste of money in relation to what you get. Laptops are a different story, though I think that's quickly coming about (o…
I frequently run things like:
find -iname '*.foo' | xargs -P 8 -n 1 process-foo
Work per clock cycle is improving at a not too shabby rate either. When I upgraded from a Q6600 to an i7 920, build times reduced by about 60%; Handbrake transcode times improved by even more.