4 ms·
Protocols are getting more complicated. Sometimes needlessly - XMPP; sometimes out of necessity - we can't let you poke bits in the framebuffer directly, becaus
by anon4 11y ago
Protocols are getting more complicated. Sometimes needlessly - XMPP; sometimes out of necessity - we can't let you poke bits in the framebuffer directly, because the graphics card is now this almost-blackbox superscalar coprocessor that only incidentally maybe has a display hooked to a tiny little region of memory that you could perhaps think of as a "framebuffer", but the framebuffer is actually not linear, but tiled in some weird way for performance.
Actually making the complex and simple stuff coexist on the same system is a very... complicated challenge.
- colechristensen 11y agoSo here's a question (and a personal manifesto) Would things be better if they were worse? That is, what if we gave a little bit less of a shit about optimizations and preferred simple over fast? We live in a world of magical black boxes that even experts in the field have trouble manipulating. We need to protect and promote the Freedom to Tinker and that means carefully considering when optimizations are really critical hindrances.