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A single line of code cost $8000

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Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#391

Post by Chaosvex »

jbverschoor wrote: post #242
rvz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, given it's a Mac app, just have the Mac app store take care of updates. That's part of the value that using the app store service gives you, And pay Apple their 30% cut on your revenue? No thanks. > the other one being not spending thousands in accidental data transfer when you do auto updates wrong. Or just actually write proper automated tests for basic features first, before a large refactor to prevent intro…

2% of that already goes to stripe or whatever you use. after a year it's 15%. It also gives your both a distribution and marketing channel. It was good enough for netflix etc. *I* don't want applications to be able to update itself. Look at malware zoom for example. It's funny that people don't like telemetry, but at the same time they're ok with regular software update checks + installs.

The same Netflix that's been spats with Apple over avoiding app store fees by flouting policies that had other apps kicked out of the store? I'd suggest that it was, in fact, not good enough for Netflix.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#392

Post by Chaosvex »

londons_explore wrote: post #388
Chaosvex wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those are abstraction over a TCP socket and introduce more complexity than you'd need for something like this. There's nothing wrong with occasionally polling for updates.

Web push, FCM, APNS, etc are free because they only have a single systemwide TCP channel open - and that channel is already open whether or not your app chooses to use it. Your app can also be ready to receive notifications even when the app isn't running - using zero RAM. Inetd on Linux allows similar stuff (although no ability to handle ip changes or traverse NAT makes it fairly useless in the consumer world). This…

That's a lot of abstraction to implement a simple update check and I suspect it's very much not worth it to save a minuscule amount of battery life on a laptop. This is ignoring that you're incorrect about how Web Push works, so you'd need that extra TCP connection anyway and at that point, there's no point in bothering with Web Push. FCM is the same deal (and now you get to pay for extra stuff for a trivial problem, woo) and APN seems like the wrong solution to auto-updates.

Just poll every launch or 24 hours and move on.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#393

Post by mudkipdev »

>Add special signals you can change on your server, which the app will understand, such as a forced update that will install without asking the user.

Seems like a great idea, surely nothing can go wrong with that which will lead to another blog post in the near future

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#394

Post by ljm »

monkeyelite wrote: post #327
ljm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The up-front cost of code review can be easily be tripled or quadrupled when it’s distributed over several weeks after the fact in the form of unplanned work, each instance of which incurs its own cost of context switching, as well as the cost of potential rework. The purpose of such a review is a deliberate bottleneck in the earlier stage of development to stop it becoming a much larger bottleneck further down the l…

> The up-front cost of code review can be easily be tripled or quadrupled when it’s distributed over several weeks You’re taking a more extreme position than the one I’m stating. You can review every day or every hour if you want. > a deliberate bottleneck in the earlier stage Wouldn’t it be better if we could catch bugs AND avoid the bottleneck? That’s the vision. Good intentions may disagree about how to accomplish…

To catch bugs and avoid the bottleneck that is code review, you’re just moving the bottleneck to some point after merging the code, not before.

Like it or not you still have to stop what you’re doing to identify a bug and then fix it, which takes time away from planned feature work. You’re not optimising anything, you’re just adding fragility to the process.

As I said before, an issue localised to a PR in review blocks one person. An issue that has spread to staging or prod blocks the entire team.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#395

Post by londons_explore »

reassess_blind wrote: post #390
londons_explore wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web push, FCM, APNS, etc are free because they only have a single systemwide TCP channel open - and that channel is already open whether or not your app chooses to use it. Your app can also be ready to receive notifications even when the app isn't running - using zero RAM. Inetd on Linux allows similar stuff (although no ability to handle ip changes or traverse NAT makes it fairly useless in the consumer world). This…

An android phone on airplane mode has a battery life of 45 days?

Airplane mode and the scheduler disabled, yes (ie. So Apps don't wake up every 5 mins and attempt to contact the network).

It's actually required by the qualification process for lots of carriers. The built in apps have pretty much no polling for this reason.

During the qualification test, it's actually connected to both LTE and WiFi, but not actually transferring any data.

They cheat a little - the phone is not signed into a Google account, which makes pretty much all Google apps go idle.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#396

Post by dchftcs »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #227
benwilber0 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes

>> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes > How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes How on earth is a screen recording app on a OS where the API to record the screen is built directly into the OS 250 megabytes? It is extremely irresponsible to assume that your customers have infinite cheap bandwidth. In a previous life I worked with customers with remote sites (think mines…

For a long time iOS did not have features to limit data usage on WiFi. They did introduce an option more recently for iPhone, but it seems such an option is not available to MacOS. Windows supported it as far as I could remember using it with tethering.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#397

Post by jcgl »

hi_hi wrote: post #374
benwilber0 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes

For context, the latest iOS update is ~3.2GB, and the changelog highlights are basically 8 new emojis, some security updates, some bug fixes. It makes me want to cry.

That 3.2G is some sort of compressed OS image though, right? So it’d be of a constant size relative to whatever changes or updates it brings.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#398

Post by thinkingemote »

londons_explore wrote: post #395
reassess_blind wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An android phone on airplane mode has a battery life of 45 days?

Airplane mode and the scheduler disabled, yes (ie. So Apps don't wake up every 5 mins and attempt to contact the network). It's actually required by the qualification process for lots of carriers. The built in apps have pretty much no polling for this reason. During the qualification test, it's actually connected to both LTE and WiFi, but not actually transferring any data. They cheat a little - the phone is not sign…

How does a user disable the scheduler?

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#399

Post by goodpoint »

thornewolf wrote: post #372
xxr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a code review a couple of years ago, I had to say "no" to a dev casually including pandas (and in turn numpy) for a one-liner convenience function in a Django web app that has no involvement with any number crunching whatsoever.

To push back on this, I consider pandas/numpy so crucial to Python as a whole they are effectively stdlib to me. I wouldn't blink at this because it would happen sooner or later. Unless is was absolutely critical the server have as small as a footprint as humanly possible and it was absolutely guaranteed there would never need to be included in the future of course. However, that first constraint is the main one.

You forgot the "/s"?

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#400

Post by goodpoint »

yojo wrote: post #119
Nition wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're listing complaints... 250MB for a screen recorder update?

That’s pretty much the floor for an Electron app. If you’re a small shop or solo dev, it is real hard to justify going native on three platforms when electron gives it for (near) free. And outside of HN, no one seems to blink at a 250MB bundle. There are alternatives like Tauri that use the system browser and allow substantially smaller bundles, but they’re not nearly as mature as Electron, and you will get cross pla…

> And outside of HN, no one seems to blink at a 250MB bundle.

Except like 1 or maybe 2 billion people with slow or expensive internet.

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