5 ms·

> You get three choices I dont agree the you should judge by these criteria. - program size: Who cares? A somewhat decent laptop has 500GB+ SSD storage, I don

by sydd 9y ago

> You get three choices I dont agree the you should judge by these criteria. - program size: Who cares? A somewhat decent laptop has 500GB+ SSD storage, I dont care if my editor is 5MB or 50. - virtual efficiency (RAM usage, and again disk space??): Again who cares if it uses 5MB or 500 RAM? Dev machines have at least 8GB I care a lot more about stuff like typing lag or autocomplete support.

oh_sigh 9y ago
8GB seems like a lot until you try to run Eclipse and chrome with 3 tabs open.
- laumars 9y ago
  While I don't disagree that 8GB isn't much for a developer machine these days I do also think your claim is a little exaggerated. I certainly don't have any issues running a couple of intelliJ instances + Chrome with at least a dozen tabs open (seriously; I'm terrible for leaving tabs open). What I find kills my machine is trying to run Chrome and Firefox concurrently. Particularly if I still have IntelliJ open.
  - zenhack 9y ago
    I do most of my work on a laptop with 4GiB of memory (manufactured in 2009). Probably the last time I did anything dev related that meaningfully stressed the machine was when I decided to give android studio a shot. Just sitting there, with nothing else open, the machine was completely unusable. I cannot recall anything else I have done with the machine in it's lifetime that's been a real problem. This includes running firefox and chromium concurrently, plus a couple virtual machines .
    - laumars 9y ago
      Like always when people start comparing system performance, there are so many variables at play (CPU make / model / age / cache / n cores, bus speed, RAM type, OS / distro / package versions / compiled flags, swap space, running daemons / services or other background processes, number of browser tabs and even the specific sites left open, etc etc).... But for me it's the Flash plugin container for Firefox that really does the damage when it comes to concurrency. A few Firefox tabs open running YouTube (or another video streaming service) and my fan already starts spinning up louder than a revving motorbike. If I have much more open aside Firefox then the system will just lock up without warning. I suspect Flash is thrashing both CPU and RAM though but it's consistent enough behaviour that I tend to avoid it rather than investing time debugging and fixing (though since it is Flash that kills it, I suspect any such "fix" would just be altering the behaviour of the softwares end user (ie me) anyway).
      - Majora320 9y ago
        I thought YouTube used HTML5 video, not flash...
        zenhack 9y ago
        It does. I also don't have flash installed, which probably helps. Can't remember the last time not having it caused a problem; good riddance.
        laumars 9y ago
        To be honest what I really wanted to say was "porn sites" but instead picked a worksafe (and less accurate) example.
      - laumars 9y ago
        I get modded down for the oddest reasons these days. I can't even fathom why anyone might disagree with this post.
  - setr 9y ago
    >with at least a dozen tabs open (seriously; I'm terrible for leaving tabs open). Come back when you have 150 tabs open. Anyways, somewhere around 200 across 4 windows is where i start seeing about 10GB ram used, with os and other apps. RAM never seems to be much of an issue unless im abusing things; its cpu/disk that kills me, particularly when some background process goes out of control.
    - laumars 9y ago
      Been there, done that. I was constantly losing documents I wanted saved because the browser would crash etc. So then I realised my behavior was counterproductive and thus since employed a more sane approach to tab usage. Honestly; having more than a dozen tabs open doesn't make you a hero. It just makes your life a little less convenient.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      I'm horrible about tabs too. But I mostly use it as a "I'll use this page again in a moment". Often that's true, but often I also just end up leaving it around. My solution was the OneTab extension for Chrome. It gives you a button to click to close all tabs (with some ways of marking exceptions), and adds them to a page, so you won't lose them. It groups it by date, from newest to oldest. It makes it easy to come back to the things I left in tabs "in case", while keeping the tab count down. In effect I find I come back to quite few of them, but knowing I can makes it a lot easier mentally to press that button. (And now I'm off to do just that before doing some work)
    - krylon 9y ago
      > its cpu/disk that kills me CPU is rarely an issue for me, but disks are a constant source of annoyance. The turning point for me was when I got a new PC at home that has an SSD. I used to think people exaggerated the benefits of SSDs, or that they were just very impatient. ... Now I am spoiled.
- cs02rm0 9y ago
  8GB seems like a lot until you try to run Eclipse and chrome with 3 tabs open. Add in a time machine backup at the same time as a slack video call and it's game over.
geodel 9y ago
A lot of people care resource usage of software. It is good though that you get a loaded machine for your work.
jstimpfle 9y ago
You care a lot. A smaller program has a clearer model, contains less bugs, and can be more flexibly evolved in different directions.
- connorelsea 9y ago
  Not necessarily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf
  - always_good 9y ago
    Let's not assume everyone is so stupid that they need their statement taken to the extreme pointed out to them as an exception. I've noticed an increase in obnoxious disclaimers like "there are exceptions of course" and "it's just my opinion of course" as people get tired of responding to pointless responses that point those statements out. That's just my opinion though. There are certainly exceptions. Feel free to disagree!
    - politician 9y ago
      I absolutely agree sometimes. YMMV. Happy to hear your thoughts. If only we had the ability to (literally) check boxes to include these disclaimers as flair on our comments. Then they might add disclaimer packs for the most controversial topics so that folks don't have to click too many boxes. Obviously, there might be exceptions. Some folks might not want this feature. Others may. Who knows? Certainly not me.
CNJ7654 9y ago
500MB of ram is half of my VPS :)
vidarh 9y ago
While I care a lot about typing lag (but not at all about autocomplete), if an editor doesn't start fast, or at least has a client-server model where the client starts fast, I'd drop it after 5 minutes. That's one reason to care about program size, though less so about the basic binary as about how many extra dependencies it has, and certainly what else it does during initialization matters (e.g. many Emacs configs does DNS requests synchronously in the critical path on startup, and end up hanging until timeouts trigger if your network is down... Fun times) RAM usage I agree matters less. I can't remember the last time Emacs warned me I was about to open a large file. My own editor is so RAM inefficient it'd bring my laptop to its knees in no-time if I were to open a huge file. I'm happy to fall back on another editor i I for some reason ever need that. Though with many application RAM usage is large for all the wrong reasons (my editor would be in that category for other people; for me it's the right reason: it keeps it tiny and fast for me to hack on for the time being - but I don't inflict it on other people (yet)). But it's still useful to evaluate on these criteria, as they may matter more for others.

by sydd 9y ago

oh_sigh 9y ago

8GB seems like a lot until you try to run Eclipse and chrome with 3 tabs open.

laumars 9y ago
While I don't disagree that 8GB isn't much for a developer machine these days I do also think your claim is a little exaggerated. I certainly don't have any issues running a couple of intelliJ instances + Chrome with at least a dozen tabs open (seriously; I'm terrible for leaving tabs open). What I find kills my machine is trying to run Chrome and Firefox concurrently. Particularly if I still have IntelliJ open.
- zenhack 9y ago
  I do most of my work on a laptop with 4GiB of memory (manufactured in 2009). Probably the last time I did anything dev related that meaningfully stressed the machine was when I decided to give android studio a shot. Just sitting there, with nothing else open, the machine was completely unusable. I cannot recall anything else I have done with the machine in it's lifetime that's been a real problem. This includes running firefox and chromium concurrently, plus a couple virtual machines .
  - laumars 9y ago
    Like always when people start comparing system performance, there are so many variables at play (CPU make / model / age / cache / n cores, bus speed, RAM type, OS / distro / package versions / compiled flags, swap space, running daemons / services or other background processes, number of browser tabs and even the specific sites left open, etc etc).... But for me it's the Flash plugin container for Firefox that really does the damage when it comes to concurrency. A few Firefox tabs open running YouTube (or another video streaming service) and my fan already starts spinning up louder than a revving motorbike. If I have much more open aside Firefox then the system will just lock up without warning. I suspect Flash is thrashing both CPU and RAM though but it's consistent enough behaviour that I tend to avoid it rather than investing time debugging and fixing (though since it is Flash that kills it, I suspect any such "fix" would just be altering the behaviour of the softwares end user (ie me) anyway).
    - Majora320 9y ago
      I thought YouTube used HTML5 video, not flash...
      - zenhack 9y ago
        It does. I also don't have flash installed, which probably helps. Can't remember the last time not having it caused a problem; good riddance.
      - laumars 9y ago
        To be honest what I really wanted to say was "porn sites" but instead picked a worksafe (and less accurate) example.
    - laumars 9y ago
      I get modded down for the oddest reasons these days. I can't even fathom why anyone might disagree with this post.
- setr 9y ago
  >with at least a dozen tabs open (seriously; I'm terrible for leaving tabs open). Come back when you have 150 tabs open. Anyways, somewhere around 200 across 4 windows is where i start seeing about 10GB ram used, with os and other apps. RAM never seems to be much of an issue unless im abusing things; its cpu/disk that kills me, particularly when some background process goes out of control.
  - laumars 9y ago
    Been there, done that. I was constantly losing documents I wanted saved because the browser would crash etc. So then I realised my behavior was counterproductive and thus since employed a more sane approach to tab usage. Honestly; having more than a dozen tabs open doesn't make you a hero. It just makes your life a little less convenient.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    I'm horrible about tabs too. But I mostly use it as a "I'll use this page again in a moment". Often that's true, but often I also just end up leaving it around. My solution was the OneTab extension for Chrome. It gives you a button to click to close all tabs (with some ways of marking exceptions), and adds them to a page, so you won't lose them. It groups it by date, from newest to oldest. It makes it easy to come back to the things I left in tabs "in case", while keeping the tab count down. In effect I find I come back to quite few of them, but knowing I can makes it a lot easier mentally to press that button. (And now I'm off to do just that before doing some work)
  - krylon 9y ago
    > its cpu/disk that kills me CPU is rarely an issue for me, but disks are a constant source of annoyance. The turning point for me was when I got a new PC at home that has an SSD. I used to think people exaggerated the benefits of SSDs, or that they were just very impatient. ... Now I am spoiled.
cs02rm0 9y ago
8GB seems like a lot until you try to run Eclipse and chrome with 3 tabs open. Add in a time machine backup at the same time as a slack video call and it's game over.

geodel 9y ago

A lot of people care resource usage of software. It is good though that you get a loaded machine for your work.

jstimpfle 9y ago

You care a lot. A smaller program has a clearer model, contains less bugs, and can be more flexibly evolved in different directions.

connorelsea 9y ago
Not necessarily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf
- always_good 9y ago
  Let's not assume everyone is so stupid that they need their statement taken to the extreme pointed out to them as an exception. I've noticed an increase in obnoxious disclaimers like "there are exceptions of course" and "it's just my opinion of course" as people get tired of responding to pointless responses that point those statements out. That's just my opinion though. There are certainly exceptions. Feel free to disagree!
  - politician 9y ago
    I absolutely agree sometimes. YMMV. Happy to hear your thoughts. If only we had the ability to (literally) check boxes to include these disclaimers as flair on our comments. Then they might add disclaimer packs for the most controversial topics so that folks don't have to click too many boxes. Obviously, there might be exceptions. Some folks might not want this feature. Others may. Who knows? Certainly not me.

CNJ7654 9y ago

500MB of ram is half of my VPS :)

vidarh 9y ago

While I care a lot about typing lag (but not at all about autocomplete), if an editor doesn't start fast, or at least has a client-server model where the client starts fast, I'd drop it after 5 minutes. That's one reason to care about program size, though less so about the basic binary as about how many extra dependencies it has, and certainly what else it does during initialization matters (e.g. many Emacs configs does DNS requests synchronously in the critical path on startup, and end up hanging until timeouts trigger if your network is down... Fun times) RAM usage I agree matters less. I can't remember the last time Emacs warned me I was about to open a large file. My own editor is so RAM inefficient it'd bring my laptop to its knees in no-time if I were to open a huge file. I'm happy to fall back on another editor i I for some reason ever need that. Though with many application RAM usage is large for all the wrong reasons (my editor would be in that category for other people; for me it's the right reason: it keeps it tiny and fast for me to hack on for the time being - but I don't inflict it on other people (yet)). But it's still useful to evaluate on these criteria, as they may matter more for others.