Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#121

Post by userbinator » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #118

badsectoracula wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the above require software to be as slow as it often is. Windows being able to run Win32 applications isn't what makes Windows Calc slow nor is anything else you mentioned - you do not need a supercomputer to download currency conversion rates (which, btw, is bloat by itself and could be handled by a dedicated program instead of being shoved into calc) and even the ability to download a CSV or whatever from a…

Calc is my favourite example too. Win+R+calc+enter and start typing, it used to work no matter how fast I was. Not anymore, I sit waiting at its convenience. Android is pretty inconsistent too, the same series of steps are instant or hang the UI for 5 seconds depending on the current moon phase or something I haven't worked out yet.

The Windows 10 calculator even has a loading screen. The UI is hideously large. It's like a joke of what "modern" software has become, except that it's actually serious.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#122

Post by OnlyOneCannolo » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:55 AM UTC

wglb wrote: post #109

markbnj wrote: post #106

> 1995 was the year in which programmers stopped thinking about the quality of their programs. Oh, please. There are some good points in the article but that hyperbole was unnecessary. I was programming in 1995, and nobody stopped thinking about the quality of their software.

I’ve been programming since 1965, read Dijkstra, Niklaus Wirth. And these days I break software at people’s request. There is in fact much less concern and emphasis on quality these days. It is also interesting to note that Knuth also does not do libraries

Can you elaborate on the Knuth thing?

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#123

Post by xvilka » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:57 AM UTC

daniel-s wrote: post #21

Meh, I think this whole argument is wrong. Software "bloat" is fine. I'm reminded of this [1] article comparing Bruguet and Carson numbers. You have ever cheaper hardware. The marginal utility of any given unit of new, equally serviceable computing power is going to be less than the previous one. So eventually if something can be 2% better/more functionality, etc. at 10x the bloat it is rational to accept that. When…

It comes with a cost. If not money then environmental footprint. Bitcoin is a good example. Or a toxic deadlands of computer and mobile scrap. Just because companies think it's cheap and blind developers think it's acceptable to bloat.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#124

Post by MaysonL » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:59 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #32

The referenced AppSignal post about 13,000 dependencies for a todo list is conflating dependencies required for the build tooling with dependencies that are actually bundled in to the web app. It's also hilarious that right after referencing the dependency problem in the JS ecosystem the OP then goes and advocates splitting up your library into a bunch of mini libraries. That's exactly how we got into this mess in th…

Back in the '70s I worked on machines with head-per-track disks. SSDs begin to bring that responsiveness back.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#125

Post by cable2600 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #38

ummonk wrote: post #32

The referenced AppSignal post about 13,000 dependencies for a todo list is conflating dependencies required for the build tooling with dependencies that are actually bundled in to the web app. It's also hilarious that right after referencing the dependency problem in the JS ecosystem the OP then goes and advocates splitting up your library into a bunch of mini libraries. That's exactly how we got into this mess in th…

In my experience what the switch to SSDs resulted into was Windows 10 becoming practically unusable on a mechanical HDD. Comparing how long the OS needs to start up, launch applications, etc on my laptop with Win10 vs a much older laptop with Win8 (the first and last time Microsoft bothered to optimize Windows the last decade) is night and day and that older laptop originally came with Vista! When i first installed W…

At Microcenter you can buy a house brand SSD hard drive with 128G on it for $58 and boot from that and store all your other files on a D:\ regular hard drive. That is how I set up my son's Windows 10 gaming rig.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#126

Post by userbinator » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:06 AM UTC

One only has to look at the demoscene to realise that limitations inspire creativity and efficiency. It's just a form of art, but gives a glimpse at what computers are capable of, if only we would try to use them more efficiently. I think award-winning 4k or 64k demos should be required watching for every software developer. Here are some personal favourites which have also appeared on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11848097

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409210

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3n3c_8Nn2Y

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#127

Post by cable2600 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #68

“1995 was the year in which programmers stopped thinking about the quality of their programs.” There are some valid points in this article, but seriously?

Actually it was the year that managers stoppped taking programmers in that know how to do quality control and focus on doing it faster with more bugs so it ships sooner. If you look at some of the MS-DOS programs they rn with little to few bugs, but Windows 95 ran them in MS-DOS mode. Later on Windows programs needed updates and bug fixes to make them work faster and every version of MS-Office fixed bugs but ran slower as CPUs and hard drives got faster they didn't focus on quality any more just shipping it with bugs and fix the bugs later on.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#128

Post by emmelaich » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #107

markbnj wrote: post #106

> 1995 was the year in which programmers stopped thinking about the quality of their programs. Oh, please. There are some good points in the article but that hyperbole was unnecessary. I was programming in 1995, and nobody stopped thinking about the quality of their software.

Proliferation of hyperboles has gone out of control, hard to read news, and watch YouTube videos without writers/content creators, or even normal people speak in daily life without this very annoying pattern. I think problem is worse among our American cousins, than elsewhere in the English speaking world.

> Proliferation of hyperboles has gone out of control,

:-)

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#129

Post by userbinator » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

arexxbifs wrote: post #99

greggman3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That text editor quote really bugs me. Sure my Atari 800 had a word processor that came on a 8k cartridge. I couldn't type Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Arabic into. I could only type ASCII. Just the ability to do that alone would likely entail many many megabytes of code. For one, there is no text based system like those old machines that handles all that so I have to switch to graphics. Just the font alone fo…

I think actual bloat is better measured by comparing the size and speed of a program with a few of its previous versions and look at the number of new features. Outlook strikes me as a suitable candidate: I can't think of anyone using it any differently today than say 10 years ago. I even think comparing with something that is 20 years old today is more interesting than comparing a 1995 IDE to a line editor written f…

Outlook strikes me as a suitable candidate

The web version of Outlook is a great example --- on a computer only a year old, it often lags on every keypress when writing an email.

YouTube's redesign ("Polymer") is another example, where the new site is much slower than before, despite not really increasing in features.

Re: Niklaus Wirth was right and that is a problem

#130

Post by amoe_ » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:13 AM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #22

I do see this as a gap/opportunity in a lot of existing markets. Huge players who dominate these areas are doing so with these giant, slow, unwieldy web apps. Look at how Figma managed to take over in the design market by creating a lighter/faster product than what everyone else was offering. I wholly endorse any other teams that want to use Wasm to kick stagnant old web apps off their thrones.

Surely Figma actually took over that market by 1) making a web-based version of a category of software that was primarily desktop-based, and 2) giving it away for free? I don't think performance has much to do with it.