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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#711

Post by Grazester »

andrehacker wrote: post #589
cheema33 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investing in engineering quality is pointless if there is no headroom to deliver experiences that will make a customer say "Wow, I need to have that." This. Per your example, this is exactly what it was like when most of us first used Google after having used AltaVista for a few years. Or Google Maps after having used MapQuest for a few years. Google invested their resources correctly in building a product that was…

>> Or Google Maps after having used MapQuest for a few years. Google invested their resources correctly in building a product that was head and shoulders above the competition. Except that they didn't: they bought a company that had been building a product that was head and shoulders above the competition (Where 2 Technologies), then they also bought Keyhole which became Google Earth. Incidentally they also bought, n…

Android was nothing like the Android today when it was bought. The real purchase was the talent that came with Android and not the product at the time.

YouTube now, well only someone with deep pockets could have made it what it is today(unlimited video uploads and the engineering to support it). It was nothing special.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#712

Post by dijit »

vel0city wrote: post #374
titzer wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

64MB is about the size of (a big) L3 cache. Today's L3 caches have a latency of 3-12ns and throughput measured in hundreds of gigabytes per second . And yet we can't manage to get responsive UIs because of tons of crud.

My modern machine running a modern OS is still way snappier while actually loading the machine and doing stuff. Sure, if I'm directly on a tty and just running vim on a small file its super fast. The same on my modern machine. Try doing a few things at once or handle some large dataset and see how well it goes. My older computers would completely lock up when given a large task to do, often for many seconds. Scanning…

I struggle because everything you're saying is your subjective truth, and mine differs.

Aside from the seminal discussion about text input latency from Dan Luu[0] there's very little we can do to disprove anything right now.

Back in the day asking my computer to "do" something was the thing I always dreaded, I could navigate, click around, use chat programs like IRC/ICQ and so on, and everything was fine, until I opened a program or "did" something that caused the computer to think.

Now it feels like there's no distinction between using a computer and asking it to do something heavy. The fact that I can't hear the harddisk screaming or the fan spin up (and have it be tied to something I asked the computer to do) might be related.

It becomes expectation management at some point, and nominally a "faster computer" in those days meant that those times I asked the computer to do something the computer would finish it's work quicker. Now it's much more about how responsive the machine will be... for a while, until it magically slows down over time again.

[0]: https://danluu.com/input-lag/

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#713

Post by hermitShell »

agentultra wrote: post #158

I heartily agree. It would be nice if we could extend the lifetime of hardware 5, 10 years past its, "planned obsolescence." This would divert a lot of e-waste, leave a lot of rare earth minerals in the ground, and might even significantly lower GHG emissions. The market forces for producing software however... are not paying for such externalities. It's much cheaper to ship it sooner, test, and iterate than it is to…

Point 1 is why growth/debt is not a good economic model in the long run. We should have a care & maintenance focused economy and center our macro scale efforts on the overall good of the human race, not perceived wealth of the few.

If we focused on upkeep of older vehicles, re-use of older computers, etc. our landfills would be smaller proportional to 'growth'.

I'm sure there's some game theory construction of the above that shows that it's objectively an inferior strategy to be a conservationist though.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#714

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

WillAdams wrote: post #443

Wirth's Law: >software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

Unfortunately there is a distinct lack of any scientific investigation or rigorous analysis into the phenomenon allegedly occurring that is called “Wirth’s Law” unlike, say, Moore’s Law despite many anecdotal examples. Reasoning as if it were literally true leads to absurd conclusions that do not correspond with any reality that I can observe so I am tempted to say that as a broad phenomenon it is obviously false and that anyone who suggests otherwise is being disingenuous. For it to be true there would have to have been no progress whatever in computing-enabled technologies, yet the real manifestations of the increase in computing resources and the exploitation thereof permeates, alters and invades almost every aspect of society and of our personal day to day lives at a constantly increasing rate.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#715

Post by MonkeyClub »

billfor wrote: post #243
titzer wrote: post #12

I like to point out that since ~1980, computing power has increased about 1000X. If dynamic array bounds checking cost 5% (narrator: it is far less than that), and we turned it on everywhere, we could have computers that are just a mere 950X faster. If you went back in time to 1980 and offered the following choice: I'll give you a computer that runs 950X faster and doesn't have a huge class of memory safety vulnerabi…

I made a vendor run their buggy and slow software on a Sparc 20 against their strenuous complaints to just let them have an Ultra, but when they eventually did optimize their software to run efficiently (on the 20) it helped set the company up for success in the wider market. Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage, perhaps in some cases one of the most important.

> Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage

That's just so true!

The right optimizations at the right moment can have a huge boost for both the product and the company.

However the old tenet regarding premature optimization has been cargo-culted and expanded to encompass any optimization, and the higher-ups would rather have ICs churn out new features instead, shifting the cost of the bloat to the customer by insisting on more and bigger machines.

It's good for the economy, surely, but it's bad for both the users and the eventual maintainers of the piles of crap that end up getting produced.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#716

Post by hermitShell »

archargelod wrote: post #549
mamcx wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software In fact, the realization is that the market buy support . And that includes google and other companies that lack much of human support. This is the key. Support is manifested in many ways: * There is information about it (docs, videos, blogs, ...) * There is people that help me ('look ma, this is how you use google') * There…

So you're telling me that if companies want to optimize profitability, they’d release inefficient, bug-ridden software with bad UI—forcing customers to pay for support, extended help, and bug fixes? Suddenly, everything in this crazy world is starting to make sense.

Suddenly, Microsoft makes perfect sense!

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#717

Post by jen20 »

CelestialMystic wrote: post #695
ninalanyon wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. And the Norwegian made and designed low flow toilets in my house flush perfectly every time. Have the flush volumes reduced further in the last fifteen years?

> My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. I don't believe you and it besides the point because I suspect that it is an expensive vacuum cleaner. I don't want to put any thought into a vacuum cleaner. I just want to buy the most powerful (bonus points if it is really loud), I don't care ab…

> I want the choice to buy something that makes a dent in my electricity bill if I so choose to.

Have you considered that the market for such a thing is effectively zero? Why would anyone make this?

Dysons are fine, even if the founder is a total tool.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#718

Post by jen20 »

maccard wrote: post #119
Gigachad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

Slack, teams, vs code, miro, excel, rider/intellij, outlook, photoshop/affinity are all applications I use every day that take 20+ seconds to launch. My corporate VPN app takes 30 seconds to go from a blank screen to deciding if it’s going to prompt me for credentials or remember my login, every morning. This is on an i9 with 64GB ram, and 1GN fiber. On the website front - Facebook, twitter, Airbnb, Reddit, most news…

> This is on an i9

On which OS?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#720

Post by MonkeyClub »

scotty79 wrote: post #219
bluGill wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago when I was at McDonalds there would be several customers per shift (so many 1 in 500?) who didn't know what they wanted and asked for a recommendation. Since I worked there I ate there often enough to know if the special was something I liked or not.

Bless your souls. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I just personally had only bad experiences so I actively avoid human interactive input in my commercial activity.

> I actively avoid human interactive input in my commercial activity

Not to mention that the "human input" can be pre-scripted to urge you to purchase more, so it's not genuinely a human interaction, it's only a human delivering some bullshit "value add" marketing verbiage.

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