4 ms·

People won't pay for efficiency. People buy solutions to their problems (features), not efficiency. If it needs to be efficient, it will be (the games example)

People won't pay for efficiency. People buy solutions to their problems (features), not efficiency. If it needs to be efficient, it will be (the games example). The death of Moore's Law may rejuvenate efficient software. BTW If you use old unix tools on a phone, it's super fast (in a terminal emulator like http://termux.com http://termux.com). Sadly, the idea of abstractions enabling you to think better (like Alan Kay's point of view is worth 80 IQ points and maybe Jobs' bicycle for the mind) doesn't seem to work, at least for software abstractions. It's far more work than can be justified - more appropriate for pure research (which is instead preoccupied things like esoteric type systems with nice mathematical properties).

pjmlp 8y ago
> If you use old unix tools on a phone, it's super fast Of course it is fast, software designed for a PDP-11 running on a pocket Cray.
throwaway080383 8y ago
Just a few months ago, a very senior engineer on my team made this same observation about Moore's Law after I lamented that bit twiddling tricks and knowledge of obscure algorithmic speedups don't often end up being useful in practice.
class4behavior 8y ago
>If it needs to be efficient, it will be (the games example). Yeeah, no. Definitely a no. >People won't pay for efficiency. People buy solutions to their problems (features), not efficiency. Not wrong. Businesses pay for efficiency.
xchaotic 8y ago
The only sane reason that AirBnb or Uber are worth as much is that they promise to be more efficient than traditional companies. SO the 'market' pays for efficiently and a lot of digital revolution has been all about making existing processes slightly more efficient (Amazon online shopping experience vs physically going to the different shops etc) So the market definitely value the efficiency where the cost of developing that efficiency does not outweigh the benefits. Typing speed and cursor refresh are not limiting factors for programmers so there's diminishing return in making text editors refresh >120hz. Simple business logic and OP can lament as much as he wants to but we have limited resources, mostly time and that time is usually better spent writing business logic than optimising text editor for the 100th time.

pjmlp 8y ago

> If you use old unix tools on a phone, it's super fast Of course it is fast, software designed for a PDP-11 running on a pocket Cray.

throwaway080383 8y ago

Just a few months ago, a very senior engineer on my team made this same observation about Moore's Law after I lamented that bit twiddling tricks and knowledge of obscure algorithmic speedups don't often end up being useful in practice.

class4behavior 8y ago

>If it needs to be efficient, it will be (the games example). Yeeah, no. Definitely a no. >People won't pay for efficiency. People buy solutions to their problems (features), not efficiency. Not wrong. Businesses pay for efficiency.

xchaotic 8y ago

The only sane reason that AirBnb or Uber are worth as much is that they promise to be more efficient than traditional companies. SO the 'market' pays for efficiently and a lot of digital revolution has been all about making existing processes slightly more efficient (Amazon online shopping experience vs physically going to the different shops etc) So the market definitely value the efficiency where the cost of developing that efficiency does not outweigh the benefits. Typing speed and cursor refresh are not limiting factors for programmers so there's diminishing return in making text editors refresh >120hz. Simple business logic and OP can lament as much as he wants to but we have limited resources, mostly time and that time is usually better spent writing business logic than optimising text editor for the 100th time.