6 ms·

This is a wonderful post that no-one will care about. This may be the only post. Today, programmers are more interested in the rate they can turn out "Just Wor

This is a wonderful post that no-one will care about. This may be the only post. Today, programmers are more interested in the rate they can turn out "Just Works" code. These kinds of details are fare fare to down in the weeds for a continuous development artists.

detaro 11y ago
> This is a wonderful post that no-one will care about. This may be the only post. I think you are underestimating the crowd here. Last time it was posted it got quite a few responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873250 (already a while back, but might be interesting for reference/to bring topics up again)
- lfowles 11y ago
  There also seems to be a constant barrage of assembly/CPU posts (I counted 4 posts including this one earlier on the front page) , I'm not sure where GP gets the idea that no one here cares.
- dang 11y ago
  Seven months ago is well within duplicate range, but let's leave this one up: first to show how much the HN community does care about wonderful posts, and second to thank luu for tirelessly posting (not to mention writing) so many high-quality articles here. If any of you want to see an example of how much difference a single user can make to HN, look at https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=luu https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=luu. Thank you, Dan!
- mgrennan 11y ago
  Yes. I should have considered the crowd I was writing. I'm here. 35+ years of systems work starting with a 4004. I was inditing the new culture of "released and poor is better than not release and good" and "if it runs slow just scale it over more processors". In 1988 I did more in 48k of memory with 500k of disk then can be done in 4G mem and 500M of disk today.
javajosh 11y ago
Two responses. First, once we find "Just Works" components that we like then they can be optimized. Second, we can use inspiration from articles like this to describe "Just Works" approaches and patterns that "go with the grain" of what Earth's real fabrication capabilities are actually producing. For example, I found the discussion of how cores coordinate access to main memory on a shared bus to be quite fascinating; an easy insight there was that our programming patterns should support hard data partitions (less shared main memory than parallel main memory). One naive way to get there is to use N processes where N is something like the number of cores on the machine, and one of them serves as a message router. Something like what `httpd` does. I really wouldn't mind if someone who knows more about the JVM implementation could talk about how and why the JVM threading model is better than native processes, for example, especially in light of memory contention.
- eru 11y ago
  > I really wouldn't mind if someone who knows more about the JVM implementation could talk about how and why the JVM threading model is better than native processes, for example, especially in light of memory contention. The JVM can assume that JVM threads cooperate. The operating system has to assume native processes are hostile.
mikeash 11y ago
By writing articles like this, and linking to them, people are trying to fight that. By stating that nobody will care, you're just encouraging the problem.
dang 11y ago
All: I had a negative reaction to this comment too at first, but on reflection it reads less like a jab and more like a rueful lament about mainstream programming culture. The fact that mgrennan loved the article and was so perfectly wrong about it not being appreciated here suggests that he or she just hasn't realized yet how much passion this community shares for the craft. It's depressing to feel like you're the only one who cares, and when one has felt like that for a long time, curmudgeonly biases develop. So mgrennan, please get to know your fellow HNers, who love this stuff. And HN, let's be charitable to mgrennan, who may have been mistaken but whose heart is probably in the right place.
- qznc 11y ago
  I think it is simply a business thing. For most businesses time to market is more important than performance or correctness. If you prefer working for performance or correctness, try a conservative niche: compiler, realtime, HPC, etc
- scott_s 11y ago
  I'm coining a new term! dang charitable: being charitable in interpretation even in the face of aggressive uncharitableness.
  - dang 11y ago
    It's really just a question of absorbing the hit of one's initial reflex and then looking again.
scott_s 11y ago
Highly technical posts on HN have a tendency to accrue a lot of upvotes before a discussion develops. I attribute this to (perhaps optimistically) people actually taking the time to read the post. When something is so technically dense, it can also be difficult for people to add anything to it; hence it takes a while before a real discussion starts.
mgrennan 11y ago
Good to see I was wrong.

detaro 11y ago

> This is a wonderful post that no-one will care about. This may be the only post. I think you are underestimating the crowd here. Last time it was posted it got quite a few responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873250 (already a while back, but might be interesting for reference/to bring topics up again)

lfowles 11y ago
There also seems to be a constant barrage of assembly/CPU posts (I counted 4 posts including this one earlier on the front page) , I'm not sure where GP gets the idea that no one here cares.
dang 11y ago
Seven months ago is well within duplicate range, but let's leave this one up: first to show how much the HN community does care about wonderful posts, and second to thank luu for tirelessly posting (not to mention writing) so many high-quality articles here. If any of you want to see an example of how much difference a single user can make to HN, look at https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=luu https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=luu. Thank you, Dan!
mgrennan 11y ago
Yes. I should have considered the crowd I was writing. I'm here. 35+ years of systems work starting with a 4004. I was inditing the new culture of "released and poor is better than not release and good" and "if it runs slow just scale it over more processors". In 1988 I did more in 48k of memory with 500k of disk then can be done in 4G mem and 500M of disk today.

javajosh 11y ago

Two responses. First, once we find "Just Works" components that we like then they can be optimized. Second, we can use inspiration from articles like this to describe "Just Works" approaches and patterns that "go with the grain" of what Earth's real fabrication capabilities are actually producing. For example, I found the discussion of how cores coordinate access to main memory on a shared bus to be quite fascinating; an easy insight there was that our programming patterns should support hard data partitions (less shared main memory than parallel main memory). One naive way to get there is to use N processes where N is something like the number of cores on the machine, and one of them serves as a message router. Something like what `httpd` does. I really wouldn't mind if someone who knows more about the JVM implementation could talk about how and why the JVM threading model is better than native processes, for example, especially in light of memory contention.

eru 11y ago
> I really wouldn't mind if someone who knows more about the JVM implementation could talk about how and why the JVM threading model is better than native processes, for example, especially in light of memory contention. The JVM can assume that JVM threads cooperate. The operating system has to assume native processes are hostile.

mikeash 11y ago

By writing articles like this, and linking to them, people are trying to fight that. By stating that nobody will care, you're just encouraging the problem.

dang 11y ago

All: I had a negative reaction to this comment too at first, but on reflection it reads less like a jab and more like a rueful lament about mainstream programming culture. The fact that mgrennan loved the article and was so perfectly wrong about it not being appreciated here suggests that he or she just hasn't realized yet how much passion this community shares for the craft. It's depressing to feel like you're the only one who cares, and when one has felt like that for a long time, curmudgeonly biases develop. So mgrennan, please get to know your fellow HNers, who love this stuff. And HN, let's be charitable to mgrennan, who may have been mistaken but whose heart is probably in the right place.

qznc 11y ago
I think it is simply a business thing. For most businesses time to market is more important than performance or correctness. If you prefer working for performance or correctness, try a conservative niche: compiler, realtime, HPC, etc
scott_s 11y ago
I'm coining a new term! dang charitable: being charitable in interpretation even in the face of aggressive uncharitableness.
- dang 11y ago
  It's really just a question of absorbing the hit of one's initial reflex and then looking again.

scott_s 11y ago

Highly technical posts on HN have a tendency to accrue a lot of upvotes before a discussion develops. I attribute this to (perhaps optimistically) people actually taking the time to read the post. When something is so technically dense, it can also be difficult for people to add anything to it; hence it takes a while before a real discussion starts.

mgrennan 11y ago

Good to see I was wrong.