6 ms·

Too high compared to similarly featured (or even more full featured) programs built on other technologies. 3% on an Electron chat app here, 5% on an Electron t

Too high compared to similarly featured (or even more full featured) programs built on other technologies. 3% on an Electron chat app here, 5% on an Electron text editor there, and pretty soon you’ve managed to replace what could’ve been several apps with small memory footprints plus several gigs of efficient file caching in a users’ RAM with just a few bloated programs crowding out the cache, and made their entire machine considerably less responsive.

harryh 7y ago
If someone is running so much stuff that an app (or a few apps) using ~250MB of ram instead of ~100MB (or whatever) of ram is a huge problem they can easily spend $200 or so for an extra 8GB of ram. Ram is cheap. Usage at this scale just doesn't matter to the vast majority of users.
- thecopy 7y ago
  My RAM is soldered on.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Agree in principle, but available Ram real estate (slots) is limited, esp in mobile.
- ben509 7y ago
  Of course, if Slack thought this were true, they wouldn't have bothered with this rewrite. Obviously no PM is going to tell customers, "just spend $200 for another 8GB of RAM to run our chat software." > Usage at this scale just doesn't matter to the vast majority of users. The usage model is that it's on all the time. So if it's draining batteries, causing paging or otherwise slowing things down, people are going to quit Slack, thus defeating the immediacy of communication, thus defeating the point of running Slack. And Slack becomes powerful when it can be required by a workplace, which is their business model. This means the "vast majority" isn't enough at any given company.
- thenewwazoo 7y ago
  RAM is cheap but slow, and CPU cache is precious.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Ram is cheap RAM is cheap...and not upgradeable on the majority of devices in the world.
- msbarnett 7y ago
  Aside from the obvious issue that a ton of devices don’t have user upgradable RAM, are we really this comfortable with feeding constant consumerist abandonment of old devices through our own sheer laziness as developers? “It only uses 8% of 8GB of RAM. If that’s an issue consumers can buy more RAM or throw away their devices and buy new ones” is soon phrased as “It only uses 8% of 16GB of RAM. If that’s an issue consumers can buy more RAM or throw away their devices and buy new ones” and soon after etc, etc At some point, preferably before we start saying “it’s just half a terabyte of RAM to run a chat app”, we may want to step back and question this circular justification for ever increasing bloat and ask ourselves when enough is enough. There’s been no real gain in functionality in the past 10-20 years of chat app churn, just an enormous explosion in RAM and CPU requirements.
  - harryh 7y ago
    If there has been no real gain in functionality, then why is Slack hugely popular while IRC is used by almost no one? Perhaps you aren't giving credit to functionality that is important to people other than yourself?
    - snazz 7y ago
      Extra features aren't the reason why Slack is so huge.
      - harryh 7y ago
        What is the reason?
    - illuminati1911 7y ago
      You could make a pile of shit popular if you had similar access to Silicon Valley funding and marketing machines.
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      > If there has been no real gain in functionality, then why is Slack hugely popular while IRC is used by almost no one? The main, really only, features that Slack has that IRC doesn’t is easy account onboarding and (crucially, for business) offboarding, and persistent messaging. This has been discussed to death, publicly, by organizations like Mozilla. They were also smart enough to offer themselves for free to startups, which largely undermined hipchat, which had the same basic value proposition over IRC, and allowed them to build a hip reputation and network effects in the startup crowd. Are we really going to pretend that those features are why the Slack client consumes tons of RAM and a fuckload of CPU cycles? They’re entirely server side, for christ’s sake. ICQ could do all of the above on a 32 Meg Mac 20 years ago. The bloat isn’t related to the reasons it “won”, or why it continues to be popular. Network effects, the fact that if your company mandates it you have no alternative, simply insulates them from suffering many ill-effects of their bloated, laggy client software.
- tjoff 7y ago
  Yeah, yeesh. So I'm in the market for an ultrabook and eventhough I had 8 GB of ram in my desktop over a frigging decade ago there still exist laptops with less than 16 GB today. Not only that, the cheapest 16 GB model is over a $1000 more expensive because now I must have an i7 and everything else. And no, not even with 16GB will I tolerate what slack uses even with their new version. Yes, I do consider upgrading the ram myself by replacing the soldered ram-chips. And do not for a second imagine I'm doing that so that I can send text messages@!
  - harryh 7y ago
    The difference between an 8GB macbook air and a 16GB maxbook air is $200, not $1000. Lot's more options in PCs obviously, but 2 minutes of googling found a 16GB XPS13 $580 more than the 8GB version. Again, not $1000. I'm sure with slightly more searching there are cheaper options as well.
    - tjoff 7y ago
      Yeah, as said the problem isn't just the ram price it's whatever else you might need to buy to get it. But 580 is also pretty darn depressing for 8GB. For reference I bought 64GB for my workstation for less than $400 a few years ago. And that's with 25% sales tax.
      - dijit 7y ago
        This isn’t a fair comparison. Desktop memory is cheaper, laptop manufacturers are rent seeking with upgrades normally, and with soldered memory they have free reign. It’s true that often the upgrades are bundled, ie; can’t get 16GiB without an i7. But I think that’s fairly rare at least. As for 16GiB, there’s a hard limit there for LPDDR3, and intel CPUs do not support LPDDR4 yet. Oh, and another thing regarding cost, there were some issues a long time ago with the factories producing them, which is why the price is still high, maybe artificially. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-entire-computer-industry-ran-out-of-memory https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-...

harryh 7y ago

If someone is running so much stuff that an app (or a few apps) using ~250MB of ram instead of ~100MB (or whatever) of ram is a huge problem they can easily spend $200 or so for an extra 8GB of ram. Ram is cheap. Usage at this scale just doesn't matter to the vast majority of users.

thecopy 7y ago
My RAM is soldered on.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
Agree in principle, but available Ram real estate (slots) is limited, esp in mobile.
ben509 7y ago
Of course, if Slack thought this were true, they wouldn't have bothered with this rewrite. Obviously no PM is going to tell customers, "just spend $200 for another 8GB of RAM to run our chat software." > Usage at this scale just doesn't matter to the vast majority of users. The usage model is that it's on all the time. So if it's draining batteries, causing paging or otherwise slowing things down, people are going to quit Slack, thus defeating the immediacy of communication, thus defeating the point of running Slack. And Slack becomes powerful when it can be required by a workplace, which is their business model. This means the "vast majority" isn't enough at any given company.
thenewwazoo 7y ago
RAM is cheap but slow, and CPU cache is precious.
ebg13 7y ago
> Ram is cheap RAM is cheap...and not upgradeable on the majority of devices in the world.
msbarnett 7y ago
Aside from the obvious issue that a ton of devices don’t have user upgradable RAM, are we really this comfortable with feeding constant consumerist abandonment of old devices through our own sheer laziness as developers? “It only uses 8% of 8GB of RAM. If that’s an issue consumers can buy more RAM or throw away their devices and buy new ones” is soon phrased as “It only uses 8% of 16GB of RAM. If that’s an issue consumers can buy more RAM or throw away their devices and buy new ones” and soon after etc, etc At some point, preferably before we start saying “it’s just half a terabyte of RAM to run a chat app”, we may want to step back and question this circular justification for ever increasing bloat and ask ourselves when enough is enough. There’s been no real gain in functionality in the past 10-20 years of chat app churn, just an enormous explosion in RAM and CPU requirements.
- harryh 7y ago
  If there has been no real gain in functionality, then why is Slack hugely popular while IRC is used by almost no one? Perhaps you aren't giving credit to functionality that is important to people other than yourself?
  - snazz 7y ago
    Extra features aren't the reason why Slack is so huge.
    - harryh 7y ago
      What is the reason?
  - illuminati1911 7y ago
    You could make a pile of shit popular if you had similar access to Silicon Valley funding and marketing machines.
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    > If there has been no real gain in functionality, then why is Slack hugely popular while IRC is used by almost no one? The main, really only, features that Slack has that IRC doesn’t is easy account onboarding and (crucially, for business) offboarding, and persistent messaging. This has been discussed to death, publicly, by organizations like Mozilla. They were also smart enough to offer themselves for free to startups, which largely undermined hipchat, which had the same basic value proposition over IRC, and allowed them to build a hip reputation and network effects in the startup crowd. Are we really going to pretend that those features are why the Slack client consumes tons of RAM and a fuckload of CPU cycles? They’re entirely server side, for christ’s sake. ICQ could do all of the above on a 32 Meg Mac 20 years ago. The bloat isn’t related to the reasons it “won”, or why it continues to be popular. Network effects, the fact that if your company mandates it you have no alternative, simply insulates them from suffering many ill-effects of their bloated, laggy client software.
tjoff 7y ago
Yeah, yeesh. So I'm in the market for an ultrabook and eventhough I had 8 GB of ram in my desktop over a frigging decade ago there still exist laptops with less than 16 GB today. Not only that, the cheapest 16 GB model is over a $1000 more expensive because now I must have an i7 and everything else. And no, not even with 16GB will I tolerate what slack uses even with their new version. Yes, I do consider upgrading the ram myself by replacing the soldered ram-chips. And do not for a second imagine I'm doing that so that I can send text messages@!
- harryh 7y ago
  The difference between an 8GB macbook air and a 16GB maxbook air is $200, not $1000. Lot's more options in PCs obviously, but 2 minutes of googling found a 16GB XPS13 $580 more than the 8GB version. Again, not $1000. I'm sure with slightly more searching there are cheaper options as well.
  - tjoff 7y ago
    Yeah, as said the problem isn't just the ram price it's whatever else you might need to buy to get it. But 580 is also pretty darn depressing for 8GB. For reference I bought 64GB for my workstation for less than $400 a few years ago. And that's with 25% sales tax.
    - dijit 7y ago
      This isn’t a fair comparison. Desktop memory is cheaper, laptop manufacturers are rent seeking with upgrades normally, and with soldered memory they have free reign. It’s true that often the upgrades are bundled, ie; can’t get 16GiB without an i7. But I think that’s fairly rare at least. As for 16GiB, there’s a hard limit there for LPDDR3, and intel CPUs do not support LPDDR4 yet. Oh, and another thing regarding cost, there were some issues a long time ago with the factories producing them, which is why the price is still high, maybe artificially. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-entire-computer-industry-ran-out-of-memory https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-...