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Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

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

#471

Post by mardifoufs »

rini17 wrote: post #400
mardifoufs wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because subverting users' expectations about scrolling is the step 0 of efficient software. /s

That's why I said it might be a good thing. My main point was that it's just as easy on the web for standard scrolling. But even if you don't want standard scroll behavior, it's still easier. There's nothing easier to do on qt than on web. Compare a qtgraphicsview or qt3dcanvas to a webgl canvas and again, it's fighting against the framework versus stuff just working. Now sure qt is much better for tons of other stuff, but I just found it weird that the comment I was replying to mentioned wasting time on customizing stuff as being the downside of web apps, as if it's not a much more difficult task to do in qt.

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

#472

Post by zrn900 »

Yes: Endless amounts of investments and inflated stock prices enabled by the zero-interest economy caused the cash-awash tech organizations to become more like research institutions, churning out interesting, promising, but esoteric and complicated concepts and software that has scarce applications in the real world and business. They became a cross between actual companies that do business and extensions of grad schools. Like a continuation of the college that you went to. And some companies openly pursued that mix and advertised themselves as such to attract talent even.

Now that the zero-interest economy is over, the entire tech sector is readjusting.

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

#473

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

jongjong wrote: post #203

The answer is yes. Software developers themselves have lost the ability to recognize or value efficient architecture. Software architects have been wiped off the face of the earth and replaced by a combination of script kiddies and scrum masters. Fast forward 10 years, we can see the results. Now we just have to wait to see what happens 10 years from now. Sad for me who wanted to be a software architect. I had to wat…

Non-sarcastic question--how do you define "software architect"?

Typically the "architect" title I see thrown around today pertains to gluing together some abominations of "systems", typically cloud services to do web stuff at "scale"

Architect today seems == "cloud infrastructure decision maker" and has no bearing on the code written, libs/frameworks/whatever used

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

#474

Post by fennecbutt »

I don't mind many things being written in higher level languages and being less efficient, makes turnaround time cheaper.

But what are companies doing with this fast turnaround time? Features suck and are largely incomplete in modern software. For example: Sonos speakers, if the WiFi goes down they don't reconnect. Why? Why is basically every device and every bit of software chock full of obvious stuff like that? Do we really need AI or something to tell us how to build something properly?

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

#475

Post by saulpw »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #81
EGreg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine same but with AI killer bot swarms. Slaughterbots. Because we could ! As long as we have COMPETITION as the main principle for all tech development — between countries or corporations etc. — we will not be able to rein in global crises such as climate change, destruction of ecosystems, or killer AI. We need “collaboration” and “cooperation” at the highest levels as an organizing principle, instead. Compet…

What we really need is some way to force competition to be sportsmanlike. EG: cooperating to compete, just like well adjusted competitors in a friendly tournament who actually care about refining their own skills and facing a challenge from others who feel the same way instead of cutting corners and throats to get ahead. Cooperation with no competition subtracts all urgency because one must prioritize not rocking the…

I like this viewpoint of "cooperate to compete". It's what we've been doing on a global scale as ~all nations have agreed to property rights, international trade, and abiding by laws they've written down. And in fact some would say that at the largest business scale, there is this cooperation--witness the collusion between AAPL/GOOG/etc not to poach each others' employees. But there doesn't seem to be the same respect for "smaller" businesses, as they are viewed as prey instead of weaker hunters.

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

#476

Post by littlestymaar »

zer00eyz wrote: post #113
littlestymaar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when using Stripe (which is a premium payment service that's more expensive than most options) you'd be better off than the 15% from Apple as long as you sell for more than $2.5. And that's not even counting the up from cost that come with Apple (subscription + the need to buy a Mac). How is chargeback being managed on Apple? I doubt they are swallowing the cost on their side, so I don't really see the differenc…

At 5 bucks a customer, you need 200k new ones a year to break a million bucks. TO break even with apple you have about 80k a year all in cost to deal with all your refunds and charge backs.... after taxes, insurance and overhead that's 40-60k take home for a CS agent. What is the charge back rate on digital goods? Im going to tell you that if your a small player it will be WAY higher than apple. Apple will cut a cons…

> At 5 bucks a customer, you need 200k new ones a year to break a million bucks.

But at $5 per user Apple is already much more expensive below the million threshold. It gets worse after a million, but it's already costing you tens of thousands before that. And again, you are comparing with one of the most expensive option on the market!

> after taxes, insurance and overhead that's 40-60k take home for a CS agent

Which, almost anywhere in the world, is more than you need to hire someone full time to work on your customer support! And no, what Apple provides is definitely not superior to a full time consumer support person.

The “value” that you pay for when dealing with Apple is access to their walled-off user base.

> the open question is "do I do enough business to negotiate with apple

This isn't an “open question”, it's a closed one: Apple isn't going to talk to you unless they think not giving you special treatment would get them antitrust issues. In your case or mine, it's not gonna happen.

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

#477

Post by eviks »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #452
eviks wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ultimately need money, not apps or platforms, so this is exactly how they achieve that ultimate benefit, no top-level logic will just justify free here

I mean by that logic, no top level logic will justify a cut of all revenue. They want to be feudal lords, requiring us to pay a tithing for the privilege of selling something to customers.

you're right, no top level logic would help you settle on any specific price, hence you need to engage with actual reality instead of simply noticing one party that benefits while ignoring the other that also "ultimately benefits" and "needs the platform to run apps on".

You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hardware sales to you since you advance "their ultimate benefit" (they wouldn't sell any hardware without software)

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

#478

Post by _aavaa_ »

eviks wrote: post #477
_aavaa_ wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean by that logic, no top level logic will justify a cut of all revenue. They want to be feudal lords, requiring us to pay a tithing for the privilege of selling something to customers.

you're right, no top level logic would help you settle on any specific price, hence you need to engage with actual reality instead of simply noticing one party that benefits while ignoring the other that also "ultimately benefits" and "needs the platform to run apps on". You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hard…

> You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right

If someone buys an iPhone, Apple does not have the right to interpose themselves between that person and what they want to do with the iphone they bought. They have no right to a cut of the sales any more than the power company that provided the electrons to charge the battery.

What I want is for Apple to get out of the way.

> while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hardware sales to you since you advance

What I want them to do, for a start, is to the same thing on ios that they already do on macos. I can already write a piece of software an sell it without forking 30% over to Apple.

The current situation where they feel entitled to a cut of every software sale that happens on ios, and veto power over it, is a wet dream that even Microsoft in the 90s wouldn't have thought they'd get away with.

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

#479

Post by cosmotic »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #283
cosmotic wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: you now get a lot of tooling for 'free', which used to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Yeah that doesn't quite work. I agree that the cost of tooling has gone to nearly zero in most cases, but not giving it away will limit the people willing to even try to develop code for your platform.

Microsoft charged ~$1000 a seat for Visual Studio and at the same time they had an effective monopoly eventually leading to United States v. Microsoft Corp.

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

#480

Post by telotortium »

mike_hearn wrote: post #424
skydhash wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's just using the wrong tool for the job. With Google's resources, they could build a UI framework that runs on top of OpenGL and have people download an app built with it instead. Next, we'd have people building interfaces on top of latex.

They already built several UI frameworks that run on top of OpenGL. Most obviously, Blink Chrome's HTML renderer runs on top of OpenGL :) Also, Docs uses a custom UI framework already. It implements all the UI controls itself, the browser is only really used for rendering text and styled boxes. I remember the first version of Docs when it was called Writely used the browser's built in editing support but they had to…

Google Docs has switched entirely to Canvas for several years at this point: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/05/Google-Docs-...
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