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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#241

Post by yifanl »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

The Nintendo Switch on a chipset that was outdated a decade ago can run Tears of the Kingdom. It's not sensible that modern hardware is anything less than instant.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#242

Post by _aavaa_ »

Tainnor wrote: post #139
ffsm8 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of it was exchanged for abstractions which traded runtime speed for the ability to create apps quickly and cheaply. Really? Because while abstractions like that exist (i.e. a webserver frameworks, reactivity, SQL and ORMs etc), I would argue that these aren't the abstractions that cause the most maintenance and performance issues. These are usually in the domain/business application and often not something tha…

> ORMs Certain ORMs such as Rails's ActiveRecord are part of the problem because they create the illusion that local memory access and DB access are the same thing. This can lead to N+1 queries and similar issues. The same goes for frameworks that pretend that remote network calls are just a regular method access (thankfully, such frameworks seem to have become largely obsolete).

The fact that this was seen as an acceptable design decision both by the creators, and then taken up by the industry is in an of itself a sign of a serious issue.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#243

Post by billfor »

titzer wrote: post #12

I like to point out that since ~1980, computing power has increased about 1000X. If dynamic array bounds checking cost 5% (narrator: it is far less than that), and we turned it on everywhere, we could have computers that are just a mere 950X faster. If you went back in time to 1980 and offered the following choice: I'll give you a computer that runs 950X faster and doesn't have a huge class of memory safety vulnerabi…

I made a vendor run their buggy and slow software on a Sparc 20 against their strenuous complaints to just let them have an Ultra, but when they eventually did optimize their software to run efficiently (on the 20) it helped set the company up for success in the wider market. Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage, perhaps in some cases one of the most important.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#244

Post by Workaccount2 »

skydhash wrote: post #113
esperent wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's basically stealing This feels like hyperbole to me. Who is being stolen from here? Not the end user, they're getting the tradeoff of more features for a low price in exchange for less optimized software.

From what I’m seeing people do on their computers, it barely changed from what they’ve been doing on their pentium 4 one. But now, with Electron-based software and the generals state of Windows, you can’t recommend something older than 4 years. It’s hard to not see it as stealing when you have to buy a 1000+ laptop, when a 400 one could easily do the job if the software were a bit better.

Most people today could be using excel '98 and be no less productive.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#245

Post by jayd16 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #187
jayd16 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing the art(!) of two different games, that targeted two different sets of hardware while using the ideal hardware for one and not the other. Kind of a terrible example.

> You're comparing the art(!) The art direction, modelling and animation work is mostly fine, the worse look results from the lack of dynamic lighting and ambient occlusion in the Oblivion Remaster when switching Lumen (UE5's realtime global illumination feature) to the lowest setting, this results in completely flat lighting for the vegetation but is needed to get an acceptable base frame rate (it doesn't solve the…

I haven't really played it myself but it sounds like from the video you posted the remasters a bit of an outlier in terms of bad performance. Again it seems like a bad example to pull from.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#246

Post by abanana »

xg15 wrote: post #214

Meanwhile on every programmer's 101 forum: "Space is cheap! Premature optimization is the root of all evil! Dev time > runtime!"

Exactly. Yes I understand the meaning behind it, but the line gets drummed into developers everywhere, the subtleties and real meaning are lost, and every optimisation- or efficiency-related question on Stack Overflow is met with cries of "You're doing it wrong! Don't ever think about optimising unless you're certain you have a problem!" This habit of pushing it to extremes, inevitably leads to devs not even thinking about making their software efficient. Especially when they develop on high-end hardware and don't test on anything slower.

Perhaps a classic case where a guideline, intended to help, ends up causing ill effects by being religiously stuck to at all times, instead of fully understanding its meaning and when to use it.

A simple example comes to mind, of a time I was talking to a junior developer who thought nothing of putting his SQL query inside a loop. He argued it didn't matter because he couldn't see how it would make any difference in that (admittedly simple) case, to run many queries instead of one. To me, it betrays a manner of thinking. It would never have occurred to me to write it the slower way, because the faster way is no more difficult or time-consuming to write. But no, they'll just point to the mantra of "premature optimisation" and keep doing it the slow way, including all the cases where it unequivocally does make a difference.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#247

Post by kristofferR »

dgb23 wrote: post #210
mjr00 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market sells as if all goods were high-quality The phrase "high-quality" is doing work here. The implication I'm reading is that poor performance = low quality. However, the applications people are mentioning in this comment section as low performance (Teams, Slack, Jira, etc) all have competitors with much better performance. But if I ask a person to pick between Slack and, say, a a fast IRC client like Weecha…

You are comparing applications with wildly different features and UI. That's neither an argument for nor against performance as an important quality metric. How fast you can compile, start and execute some particular code matters. The experience of using a program that performs well if you use it daily matters. Performance is not just a quantitative issue. It leaks into everything, from architecture to delivery to us…

> You are comparing applications with wildly different features and UI. That's neither an argument for nor against performance as an important quality metric.

Disagree, the main reason so many apps are using "slow" languages/frameworks is precisely that it allows them to develop way more features way quicker than more efficient and harder languages/frameworks.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#248

Post by thijson »

dahart wrote: post #217
caseyy wrote: post #91

There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make. It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality g…

The dumbest and most obvious of realizations finally dawned on me after trying to build a software startup that was based on quality differentiation. We were sure that a better product would win people over and lead to viral success. It didn’t. Things grew, but so slowly that we ran out of money after a few years before reaching break even. What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, are a compe…

I kind of see this in action when I'm comparing products on Amazon. When comparing two products on Amazon that are substantially the same, the cheaper one will have way more reviews. I guess this implies that it has captured the majority of the market.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#249

Post by cogman10 »

caseyy wrote: post #91

There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make. It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality g…

> But IC1-3s write 99% of software, and the 1 QA guy in 99% of tech companies

I'd take this one step further, 99% of the software written isn't being done with performance in mind. Even here in HN, you'll find people that advocate for poor performance because even considering performance has become a faux pas.

That means you L4/5 and beyond engineers are fairly unlikely to have any sort of sense when it comes to performance. Businesses do not prioritize efficient software until their current hardware is incapable of running their current software (and even then, they'll prefer to buy more hardware is possible.)

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#250

Post by jmward01 »

The goal isn't optimized code, it is utility/value prop. The question then is how do we get the best utility/value given the resources we have. This question often leads to people believing optimization is the right path since it would use fewer resources and therefore the value prop would be higher. I believe they are both right and wrong. For me, almost universally, good optimization ends up simplifying things as it speeds things up. This 'secondary' benefit, to me, is actually the primary benefit. So when considering optimizations I'd argue that performance gains are a potential proxy for simplicity gains in many cases so putting a little more effort into that is almost always worth it. Just make sure you actually are simplifying though.
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