5 ms·

I disagree. You're painting modern computing as either hard number crunching or the most basic of browsing. Modern phones can barely handle WebGL, are abysmal

by mtrpcic 11y ago

I disagree. You're painting modern computing as either hard number crunching or the most basic of browsing. Modern phones can barely handle WebGL, are abysmal at multitasking, and definitely aren't able to handle editing source code of the magnitude that I deal with daily at work. Then there's gaming, video editing, large scale image editing (read: Photoshop/Sketch), and many more. There are use cases for the in-between, and I'd argue they're a larger market segment than the two tails combined.

AlphaSite 11y ago
That's more of a fault of webgl than the performance of the hardware.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Let's not blame WebGL for what really is the fault of the entire web stack. Decades of layering got us to this point.
  - AlphaSite 11y ago
    Well yes, but webgl is just another layer. So it is also complicit.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  The point is that there are a lot of people in the general (non-scientific) public for whom performance matters. Whose "fault" it is that performance matters for them is irrelevant.
swiley 11y ago
I honestly don't know what you mean by saying mobile phones are abysmal at multitasking (multi threading? Multiple processes? Drawing Multiple UIs?). Mine doesn't seem to have a problem with multi threading or multiple processes and the only reason I don't use it more is because the UI is horrible and I can't replace it. Also if your source files are long enough to slow your editor down you should probably start factoring stuff out (long files are hard to read), but I've never heard of or seen that actually happening IRL.
- ksml 11y ago
  You're probably being downvoted because you're nitpicking language and missing the entire point of what the parent comment is saying, which is that there are more types of compute-intense workloads than raw "number crunching" and these workloads cannot or should not be offloaded to the cloud.
  - swiley 11y ago
    I suppose there's compiling but I've built kernels and other large things on my phone and it wasn't noticeably worse than my laptop.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- wernercd 11y ago
  @swiley so all YOU do is 1) something on your phone, 2) compile something to send to 3) a cloud super computer... And you completely ignore all the other reasons for power given: Photoshop, Video Editing, Gaming (not Farmville), CAD, etc... all using various shades of gray between "Internet browsing" and "Super Computer Number Crunching" That willful? ignorance is why you are getting downvoted into oblivion.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  The only things you can think of related to software development are compiling small applications and opening single text files in editors? What about an IDE that does partial compilation/indexing every time you change a line? What about searching through large codebases? Etc.
chadgeidel 11y ago
This is absolutely correct. A non-technical friend's circa-2010 15" MBP with 8GB and hybrid Fusion drive (custom, by me) runs at full memory usage and high cpu utilization and is quite sluggish from my perspective. The reason? 150+ tabs open in Safari. I'm not certain said friend is aware that many tabs are open or even cares, but web browsing is quite cpu and memory intensive, and can cripple even fast machines.
- marpstar 11y ago
  browsing the web used to be "viewing HTML documents", now it's more like a virtual machine being used to host applications.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- umanwizard 11y ago
  Has {s,}he tried other browsers? I vaguely remember that in Firefox or Chrome, memory for a tab is kept together (tabs don't stomp on each other's pages) so the OS will naturally page it out when you haven't looked at that tab in a while. This might not be true but I thought I'd make the suggestion.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    Firefox remembers your tab icons and names between sessions but won't load the pages unless you interact with that tab. Most folks with 150 tabs open never look at more than a handful of them. Note that pinned tabs will always be loaded as the assumption is you're using them for chat or something similar which needs to be loaded each time (messenger.com, hangouts.google.com, etc).
bluedino 11y ago
Javascript VM performance is what makes a computer seem fast these days. People talk about being able to use a C2D still or even a Pentium 4, they'll go on and on about how a 8-10 year old machine is still usable. But even a not-quite 8 year old Penryn system with 4GB of RAM and an SSD is going to chug and chug on today's websites. The same site is pretty decent on a recent i3/i5 but it's painful to use those older C2D systems these days.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  Usually the time spent in the rest of the browser engine outweighs the time spent in JS computation. Here's a fun experiment: open Firefox and turn off the JIT in about:config. See how much of a difference it makes in your daily browsing. (NB: I'm not claiming JS performance doesn't matter--merely that it's only one part of the huge landscape of overall browser performance.)
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > But even a not-quite 8 year old Penryn system with 4GB of RAM and an SSD is going to chug and chug on today's websites. The same site is pretty decent on a recent i3/i5 but it's painful to use those older C2D systems these days. A modern Core i3 is approximately twice as fast as Core 2 Duo per clock per thread. You can certainly notice the difference, but there aren't a lot of things you can reasonably do with one but not the other. The real problem is a lot of today's websites are so miserable they'll even choke the Core i3.

by mtrpcic 11y ago

AlphaSite 11y ago

That's more of a fault of webgl than the performance of the hardware.

scrollaway 11y ago
Let's not blame WebGL for what really is the fault of the entire web stack. Decades of layering got us to this point.
- AlphaSite 11y ago
  Well yes, but webgl is just another layer. So it is also complicit.
umanwizard 11y ago
The point is that there are a lot of people in the general (non-scientific) public for whom performance matters. Whose "fault" it is that performance matters for them is irrelevant.

swiley 11y ago

I honestly don't know what you mean by saying mobile phones are abysmal at multitasking (multi threading? Multiple processes? Drawing Multiple UIs?). Mine doesn't seem to have a problem with multi threading or multiple processes and the only reason I don't use it more is because the UI is horrible and I can't replace it. Also if your source files are long enough to slow your editor down you should probably start factoring stuff out (long files are hard to read), but I've never heard of or seen that actually happening IRL.

ksml 11y ago
You're probably being downvoted because you're nitpicking language and missing the entire point of what the parent comment is saying, which is that there are more types of compute-intense workloads than raw "number crunching" and these workloads cannot or should not be offloaded to the cloud.
- swiley 11y ago
  I suppose there's compiling but I've built kernels and other large things on my phone and it wasn't noticeably worse than my laptop.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
wernercd 11y ago
@swiley so all YOU do is 1) something on your phone, 2) compile something to send to 3) a cloud super computer... And you completely ignore all the other reasons for power given: Photoshop, Video Editing, Gaming (not Farmville), CAD, etc... all using various shades of gray between "Internet browsing" and "Super Computer Number Crunching" That willful? ignorance is why you are getting downvoted into oblivion.
umanwizard 11y ago
The only things you can think of related to software development are compiling small applications and opening single text files in editors? What about an IDE that does partial compilation/indexing every time you change a line? What about searching through large codebases? Etc.

chadgeidel 11y ago

This is absolutely correct. A non-technical friend's circa-2010 15" MBP with 8GB and hybrid Fusion drive (custom, by me) runs at full memory usage and high cpu utilization and is quite sluggish from my perspective. The reason? 150+ tabs open in Safari. I'm not certain said friend is aware that many tabs are open or even cares, but web browsing is quite cpu and memory intensive, and can cripple even fast machines.

marpstar 11y ago
browsing the web used to be "viewing HTML documents", now it's more like a virtual machine being used to host applications.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
umanwizard 11y ago
Has {s,}he tried other browsers? I vaguely remember that in Firefox or Chrome, memory for a tab is kept together (tabs don't stomp on each other's pages) so the OS will naturally page it out when you haven't looked at that tab in a while. This might not be true but I thought I'd make the suggestion.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Firefox remembers your tab icons and names between sessions but won't load the pages unless you interact with that tab. Most folks with 150 tabs open never look at more than a handful of them. Note that pinned tabs will always be loaded as the assumption is you're using them for chat or something similar which needs to be loaded each time (messenger.com, hangouts.google.com, etc).

bluedino 11y ago

Javascript VM performance is what makes a computer seem fast these days. People talk about being able to use a C2D still or even a Pentium 4, they'll go on and on about how a 8-10 year old machine is still usable. But even a not-quite 8 year old Penryn system with 4GB of RAM and an SSD is going to chug and chug on today's websites. The same site is pretty decent on a recent i3/i5 but it's painful to use those older C2D systems these days.

pcwalton 11y ago
Usually the time spent in the rest of the browser engine outweighs the time spent in JS computation. Here's a fun experiment: open Firefox and turn off the JIT in about:config. See how much of a difference it makes in your daily browsing. (NB: I'm not claiming JS performance doesn't matter--merely that it's only one part of the huge landscape of overall browser performance.)
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> But even a not-quite 8 year old Penryn system with 4GB of RAM and an SSD is going to chug and chug on today's websites. The same site is pretty decent on a recent i3/i5 but it's painful to use those older C2D systems these days. A modern Core i3 is approximately twice as fast as Core 2 Duo per clock per thread. You can certainly notice the difference, but there aren't a lot of things you can reasonably do with one but not the other. The real problem is a lot of today's websites are so miserable they'll even choke the Core i3.