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Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

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371–380 of 515 posts

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#371
post #90

In my MacOS Passwords I have ±3400 entries. A roughly 341KB CSV. Searching in that list in the preference panel or Keychain app is dog-slow on my M1 Pro Studio or on my M3 MacBook Air. How??

SwiftUI and Catalyst. Somebody has probably implemented that list and try to rebuild the app UI at every keystroke (I think the UI is a single thread on macOS). There are optimizations, but that requires being aware that beneath the declarative world, it's an imperative foundation.

No, it's been slow long before that, that's just one of the many abandoned apps from the golden age of efficiency and superior UI

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#372
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is a very HN-bubble thought. Even if people here actually think that, just look at Google's revenue or usage numbers. Clearly a "few" people are still using it! People here might say that Google has gotten terrible, but I would bet 99% of HNers still user Google dozens of times a day, just like everybody else in the world.

The HN-crowd tends to be more demanding and sometimes ahead of the curve, but it's a general trend. I also wonder how much people enjoy using Google vs suffers through it because they don't know any alternatives. I remember reading that even Google is worried about how crappy their results are becoming and at least some of the company sees it as a threat to itself. But yes, you're right, Google is still very much mai…

Eh. I've been hearing of this "general trend" for 15 years. I'm pretty sure if you look at HN in 2010, you'd find plenty of people speaking of the decline of Google search results and how they spell the downfall of Google.

(It might even be true! I'm just saying it's not new.)

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#373
post #27

Office 365 probably would have worked. Microsoft's proprietary format is handled best by Microsoft. Also, cloud-based synchronization using CRDTs is a complex problem that is significantly more complex than just loading the document. Can't claim we are going backwards when comparing apples and oranges.

It's not a proprietary format, nor should sync take that much in resources in UI thread

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#374
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On which platform? On Apple's there cost is part of the premium you pay for the device. Cheapest Mac is $599. Cheapest windows machine is $199? $99. So arguably some of tbat $400-500 is for the extra software. Or would compare against Linux where you could also get a machine for $25

You don't have to buy a brand new Mac. Older M1 devices which are still very fast are available for much cheaper.

"Much cheaper" is still very relative. I got a second hand 8GB M1 MBP last year for $900, as is the standard price in my region. The cheapest M2 Air brand new retails for ~$1200. Meanwhile I've just ordered a new non-mac machine with up to 5GHz boost and 32GB RAM for a whopping... $1000, including extended warranty and delivery fee.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#375
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't sign your binaries on macOS, the friction for the user to run your app is prohibitive, outside of developer-focused communities.

I’m not sure what is “prohibitive” about pressing literally one button.

It's often not just one button. It's a button, then opening the settings, manually navigating to the right section, clicking Open Anyway and then entering your password.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#376
post #347
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is 4,200-6,000 $/yr. In the US, a junior developer in a software company costs (all-inclusive, not just salary) around 150,000-200,000 $/yr. That is 2-4% of yearly cost on tooling. That is not very much. It might not be worth the price, but that is hardly ridiculous. It is quite believable to get a 4% productivity improvement from appropriate tooling. You need to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the answe…

No they'd rather spend weeks to reimplement scrolling.

Lol scrolling on qt is worse than on the web. I mean, you can use normal scrolling super easily on both (you don't have to do anything, and it just works). But truly custom scrolling is much harder on qt than web. In a way that's a good thing, but again, the default is just as easy on the web as it is on QT. Plus you don't have to deal with the qtquick/qtwidgets/etc thing and the non open source parts of qt

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every company selling goods and services to European customers needs to collect value-added tax (VAT), even if their business is not established in Europe. https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-eu-vat-and-vat-oss

> Enforcement of judgments issued by foreign courts in the United States is governed by the laws of the states. Enforcement cannot be accomplished by means of letters rogatory in the United States. Under U.S. law, an individual seeking to enforce a foreign judgment, decree or order in this country must file suit before a competent court. The court will determine whether to recognize and enforce the foreign judgment.…

The operating idea from governments is that in the digital age, when you sell something to a customer abroad, you're selling to them on their turf and not yours. That's why you're considered liable for sales tax in the first place. Doesn't matter that your own country of residence may or may not care. For all intents and purposes it's as if you physically flew to the country and hand-delivered your software/product to your customer.

It's clearly an awful "patch" to outdated concepts on how commerce works compared to pre-internet, but it's what we have right now.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#378
post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

Just stop making apps for Apple, Microsoft, Google platforms. Truth is everything except Linux is just somebody else's digital fiefdom where we developers are but serfs and the users are even lower. It's either Linux or the web.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not discounting your lament about memory use, this caught my eye: > I would throw my computer out of the window if it takes more than a minute to boot up, even Windows 98 was faster! Sure, Windows has grown a lot in size (as have other OSes). But startup is typically bounded by disk random access, not compute power or memory (granted, I don't use Windows, if 8GB is not enough to boot the OS then things are much worse…

But that is true. My laptop with windows, i7, nvme, 32gb ram now feels the same as my old laptop with i7, SSD and 16gb ram did 7 years ago. Bloat ware everywhere, especially browsers.

A brand new mid-range business PC is not as snappy as they were brand new 20 years ago with XP.

And that was on an IDE HDD, with memory speed, processor speed and cores a fraction of today, and 512MB of graphics memory or less.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#380
post #301
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I moved to Javascript web development after many years as C/C++ dev, and after the hell of making iphone apps for Apples appstore - you dont have to get a licence, get approval or make an installer, if you ship a web 'app'.

You don’t have to do any of that for native apps either. What on earth is happening in this comment section?

People aren't ignoring Apple hard enough. Why americans bother with it is way beyond me.
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