Live data from Hacker News

The computers are fast, but you don't know it

shvbsle.in

351–360 of 819 posts

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we can really blame slow languages. Implementations of languages like javascript, ruby - and I would presume python and php - are a lot faster than they used to be. I think most slowness is architectural.

Js, php are faster; ruby, python not so much

ruby is about 10 times faster than it was 10 years ago.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#352
post #348

Something all architecture astronauts deploying microservices on Kubernetes should try is benchmarking the latency of function calls. E.g.: call a "ping" function that does no computation using different styles. In-process function call. In-process virtual ("abstract") function. Cross-process RPC call in the same operating system. Cross-VM call on the same box (2 VMs on the same host). Remote call across a network sw…

I think folks often make trade offs with their working requirements. If you provide an end result response from your web app to a user's browser in 50ms-100ms (before external latency) then things like 200 microseconds vs 4 milliseconds have less of a meaningful difference. If your app makes a couple of internal service calls (over HTTP inside of the same Kubernetes cluster) it's not breaking the bank in terms of per…

MicroServices are great, when your "app" is actually 500 different apps - and the user could be none the wiser that they are talking to 500 different one man applications. You probably need a few helper services in this world for common data access, authorization, sending notifications etc. in this environmen - but these things might also be standard libraries.

When Microservices go awry, it's often because one "service" has been broken up to meet some arbitrary org structure that will change in 6 months. In these cases the extra overhead of the microservices becomes additive to the user, and hitting latency budgets becomes exceptionally difficult. Costs increase, and in 12 months the team decry's the non-sensical service boundaries.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit performance is what happens when every response to optimizations or overhead is immediately answered with "premature optimization is the root of all evil." Or the always fun "profile it!" or "the runtime will optimize it" when discussing new language features and systems. So often performance isn't just ignored, it's actively preached against. Don't question how that new runtime feature performs today or even da…

The best is "is IO bound anyway".

In my experience, one of the most common causes of slowness is IO when there should be none. I’ve managed to speed up some computations at my company by over 1000x by batching IO and keeping the main computational pathways IO-free.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#354

Something all architecture astronauts deploying microservices on Kubernetes should try is benchmarking the latency of function calls. E.g.: call a "ping" function that does no computation using different styles. In-process function call. In-process virtual ("abstract") function. Cross-process RPC call in the same operating system. Cross-VM call on the same box (2 VMs on the same host). Remote call across a network sw…

Many many years ago I wrote the companies first do not call list cleaner. Feed it a list phone numbers and it would give you the ones not on the DNC.

Converted the list to band performed a simple binary search to find it.

A basic python script. could handle about 4,000 records a second.

Corporate IT reached out to Oracle. Built a custom solution that cost probably a couple hundred thousand.

They tried to force us to use it. They were a little upset when I asked if they could up the performance by a few thousand percent.

I was on their shit list after that until I had leave.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#355
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person who uses both languages for various needs, I disagree. Things which takes minutes in optimized C++ will probably take days in Python, even if I use the "accelerated" libraries for matrix operations and other math I implement in C++. Lastly, people think C++ is not user friendly. No, it certainly is. It needs being careful, yes, but a lot of things can be done in less lines then people expect.

Which “accelerated” libraries for matrix operations are you talking about? Try writing a matmul operation in C++ and profile it against the same thing done in Numpy/Pytorch/TensorFlow/Jax. You’ll be surprised.

Aren't the fast parts of numpy written in C?

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#356
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. > ex·ter·nal·i·ty: a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved The buyer is an "other part[y]" from the seller's (edit: or better yet, developer, who might just be contracted by the ultimate seller...) perspective, and performance is basically impossible to quantify, therefore pri…

So would a less efficient engine in a car be an externality?

The pollution from such a car is undeniably an externality. Just Google "is pollution an externality".

The less efficient engine itself is not because it is priced in. Because the government made them put it on the window of every single car sold.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#357
post #352
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think folks often make trade offs with their working requirements. If you provide an end result response from your web app to a user's browser in 50ms-100ms (before external latency) then things like 200 microseconds vs 4 milliseconds have less of a meaningful difference. If your app makes a couple of internal service calls (over HTTP inside of the same Kubernetes cluster) it's not breaking the bank in terms of per…

MicroServices are great, when your "app" is actually 500 different apps - and the user could be none the wiser that they are talking to 500 different one man applications. You probably need a few helper services in this world for common data access, authorization, sending notifications etc. in this environmen - but these things might also be standard libraries. When Microservices go awry, it's often because one "serv…

I still don't get why MacroServices isn't getting popular as of today

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#358
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another consequence of our society’s reduced investment in fundamental physics - instead we go ether.

Perhaps the solution is more on the bioengineering side of things: make smaller people so they can fit in smaller rooms.

Bay Area, 1960s: "Soon we will have computers the size of a single room"

Bay Area, 2020s: "Soon we will have rooms the size of a single computer"

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#359
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which “accelerated” libraries for matrix operations are you talking about? Try writing a matmul operation in C++ and profile it against the same thing done in Numpy/Pytorch/TensorFlow/Jax. You’ll be surprised.

Aren't the fast parts of numpy written in C?

And fortran. Which really doesn't matter that much as long as that doesn't leak to the users of numpy, and it doesn't really. The only issue is that it means if you're doing something that doesn't fit the APIs exposed by the native code (in a way where the hot loops are in native code) it's roughly as slow as normal python.

Re: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the solution is more on the bioengineering side of things: make smaller people so they can fit in smaller rooms.

That would have a nice side benefit or making space exploration much more economical. Faster too if you can bioengineer higher G resistance at the same time. Maybe someday the outer planets will be colonized by tiny humans measured in millimeters, with 125mm humans darting around the various moons shot out of repurposed tank canons, all laughing at the slow giants stuck down the gravity well on Earth.

Then how will tinder be? "If you're less than 10 cm don't talk to me midget".

OTOH can the heart perform equally good if human get miniaturized?

Post reply on HN