Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slow Software

inkandswitch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 272 posts

Re: Slow Software

#201

Post by opportune »

silviogutierrez wrote: post #57
throwaway286 wrote: post #56

I work at a large company that is not one of the famous silicon valley tech companies. One of the worst parts of working there is the heap of various enterprise anti-virus software they install on our computers. It brings huge typing and disk access latencies. Even opening files in vim with FZF is slow. I can't explain why but this makes programming so much less pleasant. I really just want to work somewhere without…

I'm currently picking the OS stack for all machines at my company. All guidance, even people I respect, point towards antivirus protection. Yet I lean towards nixing that. I know it's hugely ineffective. In fact, it opens up holes of its own[1]. And yet... it's like scaffolding in NYC[2]. Absolutely useless[3]. But if you are all for removing it, and a brick falls and hurts someone, heads will roll. Quite a quandary…

Keep in mind the reason guidance exists for products that aren’t really all that necessary is largely due to the massive sales teams behind those products, plus (as you mention) cover-your-ass concerns

Re: Slow Software

#202

Post by opportune »

pjmlp wrote: post #79
eikenberry wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really just want to work somewhere without anti-virus. Not trying to be hostile.. but why aren't you? I've never worked anywhere that required anti-virus, so I know there are jobs out there that don't require it. In recent years I've gone so far as to take the stance that I won't use company computers at all, only my own, and I still haven't had any problems finding work. Unless you have strict restrictions on sw…

I worked in such companies, where you need to sign that you assume all legal consequences of a virus being introduced into the company network via your computer.

That doesn’t really work for large companies unless your employer plans on suing you for $100mm+ after a breach.

But big companies have internal security teams which basically handle all of this behind the scenes (until you get road blocked weeks/months when they come out of the woodwork to make your new product secure - a very necessary annoyance)

Re: Slow Software

#203

Post by slavik81 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #197
majewsky wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard an anecdote about how Minecraft got much slower when Notch (the original developer) turned it over to a team of employees. The new team did some refactoring, e.g. instead of calling functions like doWork(int x, int y, int z) they refactored that into doWork(Coordinate c) and that's when Minecraft started eating RAM like some sort of delicious candy, because now each time you deal with a new Coordinate, it's o…

Was `Coordinate` a class or a struct? C# structs generally [0][1] don't force use of the garbage-collected heap. [0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2010/09/30/the-... (ignore the usual comments telling the reader they are wrong for wondering about whether the garbage-collected heap is used) [1] https://jacksondunstan.com/articles/3453

Minecraft is a Java application.

Re: Slow Software

#204

Post by opportune »

coder543 wrote: post #70
godDLL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While running a Linux stack may still work, your Mac info is outdated by three years, at least. Macs have entered the zoo in 2015.

For practical purposes, that's not true. Macs do not allow running unsigned software by default, and no one runs antivirus on Mac, ever. So even if they were commonly being infected, which they aren't, the person above would have organizational indemnity if someone were infected because they're following industry best practices by not running antivirus on Mac. If you want, you can further restrict Macs to only App St…

Being individually targeted is a possibility if you work for a high-profile or important software company

Additionally, not sure about you, but the reason I like to develop on macs is due to the fact that I can test nix software on them. That means I am installing and running nix binaries either via browser or through package managers such as pip. There is absolutely a non-zero risk that Linux malware will somehow find its way into my development environment. I am not trying to fear monger, as I do believe macs are still generally the safest, but don’t let them lull you into a false sense of security

Re: Slow Software

#205

Post by therealx »

dandare wrote: post #160

Input latency, I can understand. Web latency, at least you know what you are paying for (trackers, fonts, bloated stylesheets, MBs of JS libraries...). But core software latency, that is pure madness. Android share menu: what on earth takes 500ms-2000ms to display a menu?? Android scrolling: I could have a smoother scrolling if I rendered the view on a wall in Doom III. Why on earth is the scrolling process not prior…

On the other hand, my 2018 MBP feels MUCH faster. I think it's the faster read write on the SSD.

Re: Slow Software

#206

Post by hobs »

maccard wrote: post #162
dagw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use Git when you can pay for Perforce! Perforce integrates very nicely with a whole bunch of third party tools in a way git does not, and is on the whole a lot easier to use for most people than git (and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like Perforce at all)

Really? My experience is the opposite - all the tools integrate with git, not perforce. Said as someone who likes perforce. Having hundreds of developers working with large binary files was incompatible with git until very recently.

I would have to echo this, no problem with perforce, but sayings its ecosystem of plugins is more viable than git?

Maybe 5+ years ago?

Re: Slow Software

#207

Post by NVRM »

dandare wrote: post #160

Input latency, I can understand. Web latency, at least you know what you are paying for (trackers, fonts, bloated stylesheets, MBs of JS libraries...). But core software latency, that is pure madness. Android share menu: what on earth takes 500ms-2000ms to display a menu?? Android scrolling: I could have a smoother scrolling if I rendered the view on a wall in Doom III. Why on earth is the scrolling process not prior…

Java

Re: Slow Software

#208

Post by nugator »

dandare wrote: post #160

Input latency, I can understand. Web latency, at least you know what you are paying for (trackers, fonts, bloated stylesheets, MBs of JS libraries...). But core software latency, that is pure madness. Android share menu: what on earth takes 500ms-2000ms to display a menu?? Android scrolling: I could have a smoother scrolling if I rendered the view on a wall in Doom III. Why on earth is the scrolling process not prior…

Amen, the Android share menu. Seems like it tries to go through the entire history of my previous shares to see what is most popular, then asks every app that enables sharing to list their respective sharing targets. Some of these apps also checks which of its own sharing targets are most popular (like the sms app and Messenger). Finally it renders a long list that to me feels random each time and not always relevant. /End rant

Re: Slow Software

#209

Post by thinclientwoe »

I spent a decade working in engineering at Intel. Basically all design work (as of 2016, and for 10+ years prior) is done over VNC to Linux servers in data centers.

The experience was barely tolerable over 100mbit Ethernet to an on-site data center, and anything less was fairly abominable for just about anything other than working in a black and white terminal.

The majority of the work is fairly graphical and most engineers rarely have the luxury of connecting to an on site data center.

Over the years the situation both improved and worsened:

Pluses: - circa 2010 some of us were lucky enough to get gigabit Ethernet connected to our desk. - circa 2010-2015 there were improvements to the VNC protocol like JPG and Zlib compression that helped a lot with bandwidth constrained situations (nearly all) - circa 2014 a lot of us got 802.11ac capable office APs and laptops, often pushing 300+ mbps reliably.

Minuses: - The company shut down a bunch of datacenters and setup “hub” sites. Making most of us work over high latency WAN links even in the office. - More and more work seemed to get organized across sites, making many of us remote to far-off datacenters even if we were local to a hub.

No one in engineering management or IT seemed to take the problem seriously. No wonder the company has floundered so much.

To me an unresponsive interface completely spoils flow and dramatically reduces my productivity.

Re: Slow Software

#210

Post by half-kh-hacker »

majewsky wrote: post #141
icebraining wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author doesn't say you should use a language without GC, but minimize its effects. There are techniques to avoid GC churn by reducing allocations and the subsequent cleanups.

I heard an anecdote about how Minecraft got much slower when Notch (the original developer) turned it over to a team of employees. The new team did some refactoring, e.g. instead of calling functions like doWork(int x, int y, int z) they refactored that into doWork(Coordinate c) and that's when Minecraft started eating RAM like some sort of delicious candy, because now each time you deal with a new Coordinate, it's o…

Yeah, that's true. After beta 1.8, coordinates started getting packaged as a class which MCP calls 'BlockPos'.
Post reply on HN