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We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

theguardian.com

171–180 of 265 posts

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#171
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter looks promising for solving a lot of the platform conflict problems.

Sadly the flutter team seems more focused on mobile and web than desktop.

It’s a bummer but the reasons are obvious. Mobile is the reason of Flutter’s existence, if they don’t win there there’s no win anywhere else.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#172

Does the sad realization occur to anyone else that if all software was open instead of proprietary, we probably would already have the most optimized, most efficient, most advanced software? Instead, most of it's proprietary, so we've been re-inventing the wheel for decades. I remember how well and how fast software worked 20 years ago. Today I have to reboot my telephone to make a call.

This doesn't make sense to me. There's lots of open source software that's widely used, but most of it is not the "most optimized, most efficient, most advanced".

I think you are looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. The software I remember from 20 years ago was generally slow, clunky, unstable, and often didn't work very well.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#173

One of the best 2h practical course that I had was just write the fastest square matrix multiplication. You could use any language, any algorithm, just no libraries. The target was a 32 core CPU server (this was ~10 years ago). At 5000x5000 all the Java and Python attempts were running out of memory. In C, We tried some openmp, some optimized algorithm, but in the end the best trick was to flip one of the matrix so t…

reminds me of the dude who managed to parse TB with awk instead of whatever spark like product was trendy

Probably you’re thinking of https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-...

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#176
post #121

I just don't buy this. I cut my teeth as a HPC programmer working with C and writing no-lock algorithms. There will always be a need for that, but realistically the vast majority of software being developed is simply not performance-critical. It's designed to work at human speed. Advances in language, compiler, and runtime implementations will continue to keep up with any growth in the need for performant application…

What about battery life? If you prefer, call it carbon footprint. Python has a huge carbon footprint. We should get rid of slow languages for environmental reasons.

Unless you live in a cold climate and use electric heat? Endlessly gzipping /dev/random would simply cause your electric heater to run less frequently.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#177
When I read articles similar to this one, I can't avoid asking myself how can universities take a more integrated approach to disciplines related to software engineering and computer science. I know that we can't learn all the stuff that's going around, but some standard organization should be put on the table. I felt it many times while studying this lack of "low level" preparedness.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#178
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it can't, but it doesn't matter in the way your colleagues thought it would. Excel is a much better product than Google Sheets, but having the better product doesn't mean having the winning product.

Some times, there's one feature that's so useful it justifies the lack of many others. Google Docs is a terrible word processor compared to Word or even Pages, but being able to edit a document at the same time as someone else (with full features and little friction—IIRC Pages doesn't support Track Changes while collaborating) is so useful that I end up using Google Docs anyway.

Whats most annoying to me such "onlinedness"/"cloudness" that people (myself including) associate with web apps are not really dependant on the front end being web based. You should be able to build as good collaboration etc features as easily with native apps as with web tech. In mobile the the lines are blurrier, but on desktop there feels to be division between offline native apps and online web apps, with very few bridging the gap with native online apps.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#179
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it can't, but it doesn't matter in the way your colleagues thought it would. Excel is a much better product than Google Sheets, but having the better product doesn't mean having the winning product.

I do believe a browser app can do pretty much the same as a native one, but I agree that the important bit is they didn't see the big picture: mostly free tech, no installation, safer, low mantainance, out-of-the-box truly client server, etc. Actually the web now is 100X more beautiful and responsive than at that time. I mean what you can do with an intranet server, not the radioactive media monstrosities. Not really…

There's browser-based versions of excel and probably every other component in office. It's always clunkier in my opinion, and loses some features or other depending on what it is. The added layer of security also adds annoyances (like getting constantly kicked out after a period of inactivity) and new bugs.

To the user I'd say it's a trade-off that gains you little or nothing and loses a lot over native apps. The benefits of switching to browser and cloud based apps go to the organization you work for the and software companies selling the products.

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