Lots of interesting data, but for me, clear examples of why histograms are not particularly useful for comparing performance. Box plots would have been much more informative, particularly for comparisons of M2/M3 and memory effects, where the histograms look a little different, but it is unclear how different.
Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
391–400 of 432 posts
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too come from Blaze and tried to use Bazel for my personal project which involves backend + frontend dockerized, the build rules got weird and niche real quick and I was spending lots of time working with the BUILD files making me question the value against plain old Makefiles, this was 3 years ago, maybe the public ecosystem is better now.
I use Basel for C++. I would write normal dockerfile if I need it. Bazel docker support is an atrocity. For JS builds I also use regular TSC.
rules_docker is now deprecated but rules_oci[0] is the replacement and so far I find it much nicer
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Network full builds might be faster, but would incremental builds be? Would developers still be able to use their favourite IDE and OS? Would developers be able to work without waiting in a queue? Would developers be able to work offline? If you have a massive, monolithic, single-executable-producing codebase that can't be built on a developer machine, then you need network builds. But if you aren't Google, building…
i hate to say it but working offline is not really a thing at work anymore. it is no one thing, but a result of k8s by and large. i think a lot of places got compliant when you could just deploy a docker image, fuck how long that takes and how slow it is on mac
That depends entirely on the tech stack, and how much you care about enabling offline development. You can definitely run something like minikube on your laptop.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d be careful with Hetzner. I was doing nothing malicious and signed up. I had to submit a passport which was valid US. It got my account cancelled. I asked why and they said they couldn’t say for security reasons. They seem like an awesome service, I don’t want knock them I just simply asked if I could resubmit or something the mediate and they said no. I don’t blame them just be careful. I’m guessing my passport a…
You have to give a hosting company a copy of your passport?!? (And hope they delete it… eventually?)
Only if you triggered some risk checking systems.
I didn't need to provide anything when I signed up this year.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are fair points, and definitely a rough spot. Eg at work we use M1/M2 macs and dev on those using docker - so that’s a Linux VM essentially with some nice tooling wrapped around it. We certainly see differences - mostly around permissions (as docker for Mac doesn’t really enforce any access checks on files on the host), but we also mostly deploy to ARM Linux on AWS. We went Mac only from a mix of Linux, Windows…
> Linux we had issues finding nice laptops This is the same issue as before. Laptops are shiny so people don’t even bother considering a regular desktop machine. And yet desktops can be so much more powerful simply because they don’t have the thermal and power delivery restrictions that desktops have.
Laptops have advantages though - for a remote team, they're often a lot more convenient. A lot of people don't have space for a full permanent desk setup for a work desktop on top of their personal use - UK houses aren't huge!
Desktops work if you have an office, but our dev team is entirely remote. But you can't take a desktop into a meeting, or take a desktop on the train to our office for in-person meetings/events.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#396Bro if you have time to do this you have too many developers.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because that's usually the data scientist's job, and most eng infra teams don't have a data scientist and don't really need one most of the time. Most of the time they deal with data the way their tools generally present data, which correlate closely to most analytics, perf analysis and observability software suites. Expecting the average software eng to know what a CDF is the same as expecting them to know 3d g…
>Expecting the average software eng to know what a CDF is the same as expecting them to know 3d graphics basics like quaternions and writing shaders. I did write shaders and used quaternions back in the day. I also worked on microcontrollers, did some system programming, developed mobile and desktop apps. Now I am working on a rather large microservice based app.
you’re a unicorn
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't see any analysis of network building as an alternative to M3s. For my project, ~40 million lines, past a certain minimum threshold, it doesn't matter how fast my machine is, it can't compete with the network build our infra-team makes. So sure, an M3 might make my build 30% faster than my M1 build, but the network build is 15x faster. Is it possible instead of giving the developers M3s they should have inves…
That is a very large company if you have a singular 40 million line codebase, maybe around 1000 engineers or greater? Network builds also takes significant investment in adopting stuff like bazel and a dedicated devex team to pull off most of the time. Setting up build metrics to determine a build decision and the other benefits that come from it is a one month project at most for one engineer. It's like telling an i…
1,000 is a small company.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#399As a scientist, I'm interested how computer programmers work with data. * They drew beautiful graphs! * They used chatgpt to automate their analysis super-fast! * ChatGPT punched out a reasonably sensible t test! But: * They had variation across memory and chip type, but they never thought of using a linear regression. * They drew histograms, which are hard to compare. They could have supplemented them with simple me…
It's because that's usually the data scientist's job, and most eng infra teams don't have a data scientist and don't really need one most of the time. Most of the time they deal with data the way their tools generally present data, which correlate closely to most analytics, perf analysis and observability software suites. Expecting the average software eng to know what a CDF is the same as expecting them to know 3d g…
A standard CS program will cover statistics (incl. calculus-based stats e.g. MLEs), and graphics is a very common and popular elective (e.g. covering OpenGL). I learned all of this stuff (sans shaders) in undergrad, and I went to a shitty state college. So from my perspective an entry level programmer should at least have a passing familiarity with these topics.
Does your experience truly say that the average SWE is so ignorant? If so, why do you think that is?
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#4001. If, and only if, you are doing ML or multimedia, get a 128GB system and because of the cost of that RAM, it would be foolish not to go M3 Max SoC (notwithstanding the 192GB M2 Ultra SoC). Full Stop. (Note: This is also a good option for people with more money than brains.) 2. If you are doing traditional heavyweight software development, or are concerned with perception in an interview, promotional context or just…
> and the much bigger systems like M3 Max will be slower (bc they need time to ramp up multiple cores and that’s not happening with bursty incremental builds) Is there some microbenchmark that illustrates the problem, or is this just wild extrapolation from some deep misunderstanding (maybe a bad car analogy about turbo lag?)
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