We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #13

ledauphin wrote: post #10

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…

Even if the software only needs to respond at a certain speed, scale will quickly make you either pay through the nose for better hardware or optimize the software so that it can respond in a small fraction of the original speed. The trick, as always, is finding balance between paying for hardware and paying developers.

But that is the case now too and in my experience it swung to paying through the nose for hardware in general; as more or less a sidetrack I take on projects where I optimise (mostly online) systems. Example; a few weeks ago a startup asked me to check out their setup as they were spending almost 30k$/mo on AWS. I spent a few days optimising and now they are down to less than 10k$. With some more work it will be a few 1000$; there is still so much wrong. But that is less low hanging fruit so it will be a lot more expensive. Still well worth it imho.

People really bought into the ‘people are more expensive than hardware’ as an excuse to get screwed like this. For $5k in human cost, these guys (and their investors) now save 200k/year in hosting. And this is not an isolated story; I am working on another one at this very moment. Programmers have become so incredibly sloppy with the ‘autoscaling’ and ‘serverless’ cloud ‘revolution’.

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

#22

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

thedevelopnik wrote: post #15

Zigurd wrote: post #6

If you look at the volume of software that needs to be produced, and at the trend to include software in more products, and at the entrepreneurial imperative that risk capital is the most expensive resource, it looks very unlikely that handcrafted machine instructions will play a greater role in the future. Cloud computing and SaaS have extended the deadline for coming up with an answer to "What comes after Moore's L…

I don’t think that handcrafted machine instructions are what is necessary. Even switching from languages like Ruby or JS (Node) to languages like Go or Elixir yields tremendous efficiency improvements. Beyond that, developers being conscientious of what they send over the wire, and being just a bit critical of what the framework or ORM produces also can yield substantial gains. I say this as a “DevOps” guy who is res…

[deleted]

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

#23

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

The major problem areas are those where it's economically "best" to do the computationally inefficient thing.

The obvious example is the quick-to-build MVP, but many of the bigger problems come from platform conflicts. Because we have at least five different actively uncooperating operating system platforms, it's hard to build portable native apps - so people build electron apps instead. We also use the web browser as a competitive battleground; due to coordination problems only one programming language and UI model is possible, although another is creeping in via webassembly.

Then there's the ongoing War On Native Apps. Every platform holder would love to take the 30% cut of the profits and veto which applications can run on the platform. We're left with Windows (non-app-store) and sort of MacOS (although watch out for notarisation turning into a veto in the future). And sadly this has very real benefits in malware prevention. Systems which run arbitrary code get exploited.

Beyond that there's cryptocurrency, where finding a less-efficient algorithm is a design goal to maximise the energy wasted, in order to impose a global rate limit on "minting" virtual tokens.

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

#24

Post by jobseeker990 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #2

The renewed interest in C++ and other compiled languages is an indication of the need to get more efficient. Programmer skill will become more important in the future. But they won't be today's skills. I expect that programming in the future will be more about getting the AI to do what you want rather than writing code directly.

What about Rust or D? OR even Go-lang?

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

#25

Post by ledauphin » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #21

falcolas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the software only needs to respond at a certain speed, scale will quickly make you either pay through the nose for better hardware or optimize the software so that it can respond in a small fraction of the original speed. The trick, as always, is finding balance between paying for hardware and paying developers.

But that is the case now too and in my experience it swung to paying through the nose for hardware in general; as more or less a sidetrack I take on projects where I optimise (mostly online) systems. Example; a few weeks ago a startup asked me to check out their setup as they were spending almost 30k$/mo on AWS. I spent a few days optimising and now they are down to less than 10k$. With some more work it will be a fe…

You're quite right that there's plenty to optimize. It's not that there isn't money in optimizing. It's that there's often not _enough_ money in optimizing to rise to the level of the top N priorities for a business.

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

#26

Post by 6510 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #13

ledauphin wrote: post #10

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…

Even if the software only needs to respond at a certain speed, scale will quickly make you either pay through the nose for better hardware or optimize the software so that it can respond in a small fraction of the original speed. The trick, as always, is finding balance between paying for hardware and paying developers.

That is how people reason about it but we could argue it is the balance between who pays for the hardware and who pays for the software.

I.O.W., If you have a program with millions of users you make something that performs well enough for people to pay for it. While each cpu cycle wasted then becomes millions of cycles, you never get billed for those it doesn't matter to you.

I wonder if an eco system is possible where software providers have to pay for ALL resources consumed. It sounds ridiculous but having any transaction going on would make monetizing software a lot easier.

It would for the most part boil down to billing the end user for the data stored, the cpu cycles and the bandwidth consumed. A perfectly competitive vehicle. Want to invest in growing your user base? Pay part of their fees and undercut the competition.

It would make it more logical if they didn't own the device. The hardware can scale with usage. You just replace the desktop, console or phone with one better fit for their consumption.

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

#27

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

Why do we need more computer power? I haven't upgraded my laptop since 2009 (well, I've replaced its HDD with an SSD 2 years ago and it made a huge difference) and I'm okay. Some people insist on photorealistic 3D graphics in the games they play, I agree that's cool but wouldn't say that's anything close to important.

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

#28

Post by bordercases » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #23

The major problem areas are those where it's economically "best" to do the computationally inefficient thing. The obvious example is the quick-to-build MVP, but many of the bigger problems come from platform conflicts. Because we have at least five different actively uncooperating operating system platforms, it's hard to build portable native apps - so people build electron apps instead. We also use the web browser a…

Now this is horror.

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

#29

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

ledauphin wrote: post #25

tluyben2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is the case now too and in my experience it swung to paying through the nose for hardware in general; as more or less a sidetrack I take on projects where I optimise (mostly online) systems. Example; a few weeks ago a startup asked me to check out their setup as they were spending almost 30k$/mo on AWS. I spent a few days optimising and now they are down to less than 10k$. With some more work it will be a fe…

You're quite right that there's plenty to optimize. It's not that there isn't money in optimizing. It's that there's often not _enough_ money in optimizing to rise to the level of the top N priorities for a business.

Agreed, until you raise it at the right level at the right time. People do not find me for nothing... Usually after the initial launch euphoria dies down and someone looks at the books and asks why such a large % of the expenditure goes there. People start looking around online and see things like ‘our application serves 200k requests/day with one 50$/mo server’ and compare that with their 30k/mo setup barely serving 50k/day and start poking around. It is usually apples and pears, but more often than not there are massive issues. Most of them I would consider beginner issues but they are not made by beginners; many senior programmers I meet simply do not know about normal forms, proper types (all are stringy), proper indexes, O(n^2) etc; they trust cloud scaling to solve it all. And it does! But it costs...

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

#30

Post by at_a_remove » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #12

This is a topic that really interests me, but I couldn't read the article -- either a paywall, ad-wall, or some other reader-hostile blocker incongruent with the foundation of the Internet prevents usability. Ah well. I'll join the conversation regardless. For all the programmers out there -- _how do we do this?_. I came into programming through Matlab and Python in Economics and Data Science. I don't have formal tra…

Honestly? I used to jabber on about this with regards to the still distant future of actual nanotechnology ... we need to find the guys who wrote videogames for arcades in the 1980s and press them for their secrets before so many brilliant tricks will be lost to time. They did so much with so little!

My guess is that we will slowly approach this wall and spend a lot of time trying for incremental gains, trying to avoid the inevitable, which would be the design of new chipsets with new instructions, sets of new languages explicitly designed to take advantage of the new hardware, and then tons of advances in compiler theory and technology. On top of it, very tight protocols designed for specific use.

I think we have layers upon layers of inefficiency, each using what was at hand. All reasonable things to do, in the short-term, based on the pressures of business. But in the end of the day we're still transmitting video over HTTP, of all things. Sure, we did it! But you can't tell me that it is efficient or even within the original scope of the protocol's concept.

Naturally, I think the whole thing would run about a trillion dollars and take armies of geniuses, but it would at least be feasible, just ... it would require a lot of will. And money.