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Weathering Software Winter

100r.co

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21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#21

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

didgetmaster wrote: post #17

> Our philosophy is that to make fast software, you need slow computers... One of the reasons why our industry produces slow, bloated software is because the engineers building it often have the fastest computers with the most resources. It should be a requirement before shipping to have your whole team personally use the software for a week on 10 year old computers. One of the reasons why my data management system (…

Running the software on an underpowered computer as a test is admirable. I go further. Where possible, I actually write the software on an underpowered computer, preferably the one it wil run on. Because in addition to wanting the software to run quickly, I also want to be able to edit the software and re-compile quickly.

Sometimes it is not possible to compile the software on the target computer, e.g., an MCU, but we should still be able to compile and flash the MCU software using underpowered computers. We should not need a large, graphical operating system and graphical software to create software for tiny computers that do not support graphics. I continue to be baffled by the large, graphical Windows software people use to program MCUs. There are exceptions,1 but they seem rare.

1. For example, https://github.com/PaulStoffregen/teensy_loader_cli

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#22

Post by grogenaut »

bvisness wrote: post #20

I loved seeing this talk in person and really enjoyed reading through it again now. I’m kind of fascinated by the longevity of software for simple systems - games like Another World or Monkey Island or even DOOM are well-loved decades later, whereas games like Black and White that don’t port well are largely forgotten. I’m surprised to see commenters here who don’t see portability as important for preservation - or m…

Honestly I couldnt get black and white to even run. I tried for like 3 years. And that's with paying for it.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#23

Post by themacguffinman »

bvisness wrote: post #19
seti0Cha wrote: post #16

This whole thing strikes me as silly. Problems accessing services while alone in a boat in the middle of the sea is not anything like the general problem of preserving information and technology. We don't need to make knowledge individually accessible and maintainable because humans generally don't try to do that by themselves. And humans are actually really good at preserving the knowledge they care about. Kids in s…

“We don’t need to make knowledge individually accessible and maintainable”, followed _immediately_ by “humans are actually really good at preserving knowledge”. Who do you think does the preservation? How do you think preservation works?

Communities, ie. "humans" collectively, not individuals.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#24

Post by theamk »

nine_k wrote: post #12
theamk wrote: post #9

It always saddens to me when people only think of the extremes, while perfectly good options exist! If your develop for highly locked device (iPhone) which requires the very latest version of huge dev environment -- maybe choose some other development target which does not evolve quite as much. Qt, Java, etc.. are not updated for years. And don't forget to make sure that your OS does not break without updates either.…

The thing with iOS and iPhone is that it's the market that pays best. A typical iPhone user is more conditioned and used to pay for apps, and is more ready to pay for the cool factor. So, switching the target market to Android devices may be harder than one thinks. > Qt, Java, etc.. are not updated for years. Hmm. Have you really been paying attention? They very much are, and in exciting ways. They don't make old ver…

Yes, but "things that pay best" and "sustainable computing" are often in disagreement. Nothing wrong with chasing the money, but you should be honest: "Because I wanted to earn more money, I decided to use locked-down cloud-based devices. This means my computing is not really sustainable, and sometimes required putting smartphone up the mast, but I need to pay port fees and buy fuel for my boat"

And yes, there are all sorts of exciting things in Qt and Java world, but you don't have to use them. We currently build some tools on Qt 5.9 (2017) and feel no pressure to upgrade at all. And my computer still has Qt 4.8 available (including dev headers) from 2011, which I assume still works. Which is great, I agree.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#25

Post by pjmlp »

didgetmaster wrote: post #17

> Our philosophy is that to make fast software, you need slow computers... One of the reasons why our industry produces slow, bloated software is because the engineers building it often have the fastest computers with the most resources. It should be a requirement before shipping to have your whole team personally use the software for a week on 10 year old computers. One of the reasons why my data management system (…

Best example how bad this is, using Android Studio studio in computers that aren't gaming rigs, apparently Android team cannot be bothered to make it usable.

Optimizing Android builds and decreasing Android Studio resource usage tends to be a common talk at Android related conferences.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#26

Post by meheleventyone »

themacguffinman wrote: post #23
bvisness wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We don’t need to make knowledge individually accessible and maintainable”, followed _immediately_ by “humans are actually really good at preserving knowledge”. Who do you think does the preservation? How do you think preservation works?

Communities, ie. "humans" collectively, not individuals.

The point is that making knowledge easy to access and maintain for an individual makes communal action easier.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#27

Post by seti0Cha »

meheleventyone wrote: post #26
themacguffinman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communities, ie. "humans" collectively, not individuals.

The point is that making knowledge easy to access and maintain for an individual makes communal action easier.

And my point was that the scenario of one person needing to transmit knowledge to a single other person over fast stretches of time does not properly characterize any problem people actually face. Engineering your solution for that constraint might still be useful for real scenarios, but it's hardly likely to be optimal and very unlikely to be what people actually use.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#28

Post by andromeduck »

pjmlp wrote: post #25
didgetmaster wrote: post #17

> Our philosophy is that to make fast software, you need slow computers... One of the reasons why our industry produces slow, bloated software is because the engineers building it often have the fastest computers with the most resources. It should be a requirement before shipping to have your whole team personally use the software for a week on 10 year old computers. One of the reasons why my data management system (…

Best example how bad this is, using Android Studio studio in computers that aren't gaming rigs, apparently Android team cannot be bothered to make it usable. Optimizing Android builds and decreasing Android Studio resource usage tends to be a common talk at Android related conferences.

My first internship involved compiling android about once a week on a dual core 20 Gb machine. It took HOURS to build almost anythining from scratch.

Re: Weathering Software Winter

#29

Post by sliken »

quartesixte wrote: post #14
xvedejas wrote: post #10

The author mentions power use being a factor. Last I did some research into this, smartphones are by far the most power-efficient general-purpose computers broadly available, using several times less power than something like a raspberry pi. I wonder if running an open-source OS on smartphones was considered for their sailboat permacomputing?

100r also is experimenting in hardware that can survive being thrashed around at sea. Or that is a key constraint of theirs. And I think a lot of smartphones fail this criteria. Also when your powersource is solar powered batteries, the small differences probably don’t matter a whole lot.

Cell phones seem pretty well suited, might have to add a ziplock bag to be water proof. What failure modes do you think would be common?
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