5 ms·
A fascinating document, but I find it far-fetched that every programmer needs be intimately familiar with capacitor timing to use RAM efficiently, let alone wri
by fnovd 9y ago
A fascinating document, but I find it far-fetched that every programmer needs be intimately familiar with capacitor timing to use RAM efficiently, let alone write efficacious programs.
As languages without MMM become more popular, it's really up to the compiler authors (or at least a subset of them) to get all of these details right.
- sigjuice 9y agoWhat is a language without (or with) DMA? The document's mention of DMA does not seem language related.
- fnovd 9y agoSorry, I mean't manual memory management. It seems like I'm having some problems with DMA myself!
- FLUX-YOU 9y agoThis kind of article title was always vacuous. It's essentially click bait. I don't think any of us have actually learned each thing that every article says that every programmer should know.
- sqeaky 9y agoThis is a 114 page paper that describes the extreme details of squeezing every ounce of performance out of memory. While I agree every programmer does not need to know, calling it vacuous without reading is deeply insulting to such a useful document. I read every page of it some years ago and will likely re-read it again soon as details fade.
- savanaly 9y agoHe called the title vacuous. Big difference.
- sqeaky 9y agoIt is not important, but I would argue even that, at worst its dated. The success of this paper seems to be what kicked off the trend of "Everything about <blah> every programmer [needs|should] know". Just like I wouldn't consider the "Goto's considered harmful" title to be vacuous despite the endless parade of copycats with "<Blah> considered harmful" articles and papers.
- sqeaky 9y agoI agree that not every programmer needs to know the contents of this giant paper. It be useful for any programmer wanting to learn more about how memory and allocations affect performance and correctness. Since there are so few things that every programmer actually needs, please enjoy these latency numbers that I think will benefit just about every programmer: https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832 https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832
- mamcx 9y agoThink this way: Imagine is "What every scientist should know about relativity" and it point to the most complete book about it (which I don't know what is it). Obviously is not about know every detail, but read the whole book will be more beneficial that read a small summary like: "This 10 weird tricks about relativity will make you popular!"