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I feel like the more I learn, the more convinced I become that computing is because we build stupidly impenetrable abstractions that keep us from shooting our f
by flamedoge 9y ago
I feel like the more I learn, the more convinced I become that computing is because we build stupidly impenetrable abstractions that keep us from shooting our feet. Yet I can't shake the feeling that we are leaving so much room for optimization on the table.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat's true, but optimization is always an exercise in economy. If the money is there someone will do the optimization, for instance, in the Bitcoin mining arms race you could see the writing on the wall for CPUs long before the jump to GPU's, FPGA's and eventually ASIC's. In mobile phones I always expected battery life to cause a resurgence of things like assembly programming but it never happened, people are happy to recharge their phones. I wonder what would happen if someone introduced a smartphone OS based on old school principles jacking up the battery life to 5 days or so.
- jl6 9y agoIt could still happen. Mobile phones have been riding the CPU speed improvement gravy train for a decade or so, but there are signs that this is coming to an end like it did for desktop CPUs. There will be increased demand for faster software when the hardware stops getting faster. Optimization is vertical integration. Guess which mobile phone manufacturer is best placed to pull that off!