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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

#111

Post by Timpanzee »

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”.

I agree with traffic example, however, I don’t think it quite applies to software in the same way. Imagine a world where for some reason our current quality of hardware is locked in place; they can never get better or faster in any way shape or form. Then the big tech race will be optimizing software. I personally think that there would be a 10x to even 100x increase in software speed that is possible through many optimizations. The current software incentive is geared more towards adding more features rather than optimizing performance since software engineers know they can always know hardware will keep getting better which will keep their slower, less optimize software at similar speeds. This isn’t a critique of software engineers, simply a statement of the incentives under which they operate.

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

#112

Post by vagab0nd »

tobinfekkes wrote: post #3

Wow, my browser's Reader Mode saved my bacon on this one. Otherwise, I would have left immediately. I'm all for speedy, simple, plaintext websites, but it is a negligible amount of work in 2026 to throw some barebones CSS in and make it approachable.

"There's no reason for websites to be ugly anymore"

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

#113

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

xbar wrote: post #89
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.

The title is a disservice to the author’s point of view, then, because the article also reads as a “look what agents can do to optimize a toy problem” blog post.

Maybe the author should be a bit more careful about what titles they give their blog posts, lest they be misinterpreted by mere mortals such as myself.

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

#114

Post by jeswin »

raincole wrote: post #10

100% sure software in the coming years will just feel slower and slower.

For Desktop use, 100% of electron and python slowness will be gone in a couple of years, at least for new projects. If you're using Rust (or Mojo or C/C++), you'll have to try hard (almost a deliberate effort) to make software slow.

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

#115

Post by phucphungbk »

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.

[flagged]

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

#117

Post by hollowturtle »

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.

Very much not a skill issue; even with the best spec, guardrails and evals, frontier models will just do the hell they want.

> one-shot secure, performant code.

I call it reverse skill issue; it feels secure and performant because you can't verify properly, it feels right but it's actually broken in many nuanced ways. You can measure performance and produce a broken measurement as well. It's not as simple as you make it

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

#118

Post by phucphungbk »

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”.

[flagged]

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

#119

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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”.

I get the paradox for adding a few lanes…

Imagine traffic not getting any better after adding 1000 lanes in a medium sized town… not just to one area but to every single damn road.

Yet we’ve done this with RAM, CPU, and storage…

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

#120

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

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

I mean that was kind of my point, but judging by the responses I may have been too snarky.

Both the traffic engineer and the author of this blogpost are well-qualified enough in their fields of expertise to be careful about the claims that they make with regards to speed and efficiency.

A big issue is how those claims are interpreted by non-technical people, especially in leadership. Would hate for my CEO to stumble upon this blog post and believe, based on the title and a brief skimming, that his engineers just aren’t using AI correctly and that’s why the website still takes a few seconds to load its content.

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