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We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

theguardian.com

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Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#71

Post by johnny22 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #33
zozbot234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost 30k$/mo That's like, a couple full-time developers, AIUI? Maybe even less than that. Perhaps the people who say "people are more expensive than hardware" have a point - at least in the Bay Area. Or you can move to the Rust Belt if you'd like a change.

Sure, but my point was that they cut that bill with 20k PER month by giving me 5k one off... They gave me 10k runway to poke around but 5k was enough to fix it; it was simply that bad to start with. The low hanging fruit in most systems I see is really trivial to fix; they just have no one to do it... I bet other people here have seen that before when thrown into an existing project (and I read Spolsky at an impressi…

seems like you deserve more of a cut than that.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#72

Post by userbinator »

ac29 wrote: post #66
majewsky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's designed to work at human speed. It would be great if most applications worked at human speed. Instead we have web applications taking 5 seconds to load what is basically 3 records from a small database.

That is human speed though (better than human speed, even). For most human tasks that need to be done, 5ms versus 5s doesn't really matter. Consider also that spending an hour at the DMV for them to update a database entry or two is also human speed.

No, it really really matters. Small things add up, when you're forced to do them multiple times every day.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#73

Post by zozbot234 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #39
ledauphin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quite right that there's plenty to optimize. It's not that there isn't money in optimizing. It's that there's often not _enough_ money in optimizing to rise to the level of the top N priorities for a business.

And ofcourse, there is a limit to what you want to spend even if it might make some profit long term. You need to be able to find programmers to maintain things etc as well. If I needed something handling massive traffic while handling real business logic but not allowed to cost more than a few bucks in hosting, I would use something like [0]. But that would be silly for maintenance reasons alone. Does anyone know a…

> Does anyone know a modern (well maintained I mean really) equivalent though? I played around with this a long time ago and it is incredibly efficient.

https://diesel.rs ? Maybe https://tql.antoyo.xyz/ if you care more about ease of use.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#74

Post by userbinator »

majewsky wrote: post #36
ledauphin wrote: post #10

I just don't buy this. I cut my teeth as a HPC programmer working with C and writing no-lock algorithms. There will always be a need for that, but realistically the vast majority of software being developed is simply not performance-critical. It's designed to work at human speed. Advances in language, compiler, and runtime implementations will continue to keep up with any growth in the need for performant application…

> It's designed to work at human speed. It would be great if most applications worked at human speed. Instead we have web applications taking 5 seconds to load what is basically 3 records from a small database.

...or "instant"(!) messaging applications taking gigabytes of memory and a full CPU core, and yet still can barely keep up with how fast a human can type.

I've often complained out loud with coworkers, while waiting for some horrible webapp to do its thing: "This computer can execute over a billion instructions every second. How many instructions does it take to render some formatted text!?!?"

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001407

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#75

Post by zozbot234 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #40
jryb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s critical for a lot of scientific and industrial applications. Too many things just can’t be done without a supercomputer.

Can these areas really be optimized on the code level? Aren't serious computation algorithms already implemented the best way known to computer science and optimized to the hardware architecture? I agree most of the software is bloated but I don't know if scientific computation software in particular is. And by the way I believe the software code is not the only place which could be made more efficient. What if we re…

How many 'serious computation algorithms' are written in FORTRAN 77? They may be "implemented the best way known to computer science and optimized to the hardware architecture", but they're also a full 40 years (and counting) out of date.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#76

Post by [deleted] »

tluyben2 wrote: post #21
falcolas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the software only needs to respond at a certain speed, scale will quickly make you either pay through the nose for better hardware or optimize the software so that it can respond in a small fraction of the original speed. The trick, as always, is finding balance between paying for hardware and paying developers.

But that is the case now too and in my experience it swung to paying through the nose for hardware in general; as more or less a sidetrack I take on projects where I optimise (mostly online) systems. Example; a few weeks ago a startup asked me to check out their setup as they were spending almost 30k$/mo on AWS. I spent a few days optimising and now they are down to less than 10k$. With some more work it will be a fe…

[deleted]

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#77

Post by zozbot234 »

matt2000 wrote: post #38

It seems like there might be a pretty straight up tradeoff between difficulty of developing software and quantity of software produced. So the more we attempt to optimize at a lower level, the more time it takes to develop, and the less software someone can make and maintain. So, given that - would you rather lose 30-40% of the apps you use and like, but the rest are faster? Or keep using everything you have now? The…

That's just not true. In fact, we're losing 30%-40% of the software we use and like every single day simply because people write utter crap and then pointlessly rewrite it over and over. If we placed more focus on having sane development practices and good computer assists for developers, we'd ultimately find it easier to develop software and maintain it over time, such that there'd be little or no need to throw stuff away altogether.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#78

Post by throwaway17_17 »

quotemstr wrote: post #44
sumanthvepa wrote: post #2

The renewed interest in C++ and other compiled languages is an indication of the need to get more efficient. Programmer skill will become more important in the future. But they won't be today's skills. I expect that programming in the future will be more about getting the AI to do what you want rather than writing code directly.

I don't think the new interest in compiled language reflects anything other than ongoing cyclical changes in fashion. Neither "compiled" nor "interpreted" language families (the terms are vague and the same language can fall in both categories) has a slam dunk performance advantage over the other. > I expect that programming in the future will be more about getting the AI to do what you want rather than writing code…

It’s a small semantic nitpick, but I think that you have to qualify the domain of conversation in stating: ‘neither “compiled” or “interpreted” language families ... has a slam dunk performance advantage over the other.’

If this is universally qualified, where are the scientific HPC simulations written in python, AAA video games written in Haskell, and fin tech trading apps written in Lisp?

I am not stating that there are no places where compiled vs interpreted can never produce acceptable results, it’s just more nuanced than a forall type proposition.

Addendum: I am aware C# could sort of be ‘interpreted’ and Unity is C#, so there is at least some evidence in the game category, but I’d quibble over the best-in-class C#/Unity game being considered 100% C#.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#79

Post by behindsight »

yoz-y wrote: post #67
michaelbrave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter looks promising for solving a lot of the platform conflict problems.

Any multi platform framework will inevitably hit the hurdle of supporting only the common denominator. For many applications this is fine, but for the sake of consistency I hope native applications will still live for a while.

Having worked with React Native and Xamarin: wherever platform specific problems come up, there is some sort of "escape hatch" you can use to tailor to it.

Still room for improvement but it's not so restrictive about the common denominator.

Re: We’re approaching the limits of computer power – we need new programmers

#80

Post by tluyben2 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #73
tluyben2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ofcourse, there is a limit to what you want to spend even if it might make some profit long term. You need to be able to find programmers to maintain things etc as well. If I needed something handling massive traffic while handling real business logic but not allowed to cost more than a few bucks in hosting, I would use something like [0]. But that would be silly for maintenance reasons alone. Does anyone know a…

> Does anyone know a modern (well maintained I mean really) equivalent though? I played around with this a long time ago and it is incredibly efficient. https://diesel.rs ? Maybe https://tql.antoyo.xyz/ if you care more about ease of use.

Datadraw is not an ORM; it is more comparable to a statically compiled Redis. So it is far less flexible, but it is very efficient/fast.

One of the purposes of Datadraw is for instance to build SQL databases on top of.

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