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> All my dev machines are underpowered I believe this is a great choice. Most of our code will live in the cloud, and will be billed by the second. If you can

by eb0la 7y ago

> All my dev machines are underpowered I believe this is a great choice. Most of our code will live in the cloud, and will be billed by the second. If you can feel if something goes slow, you can fix it before you're billed for it ;-) Fast hardware can mask performance problems. I still remember a bug I had in a Turbo Pascal code when I switched from my 286 to a Pentium: my loop counter had an extra '0' and it run unnoticed on the pentium for hours because it was too fast...

emidln 7y ago
I'd rather systematically measure and monitor my code and systems (which should be done anyway) than waste my time with slower CPUs, memory, disks, NICs, etc. I've spent some time doing embedded, and I'd never dream of using an 8mhz, 16bit machine just because that's what my target runs. If a fast cpu masks a "problem", I'd submit that it might not be a problem. Hardware is cheap, I try to save my brain cycles for stuff that matters, like HN, .emacs.d, and codegolf!
- falcolas 7y ago
  EDIT: This turned into a bit of a rant about one sentence from the parent's post. Sorry about that, this is just aimed at the "hardware is cheap" mentality. The "hardware is cheap" phrase was rampant in our company until about a year ago. A year ago an executive took a closer look at our cloud bill and, well, exploded. Now there's a huge push to reclaim those extra cycles and RAM as our "cheap hardware" bill is outrunning our overall salary costs. Being at a point where this is a problem could be considered to be a good thing; we have enough traffic to cause it to be an issue. The problem is, the MVP was cost efficient (even at scale), it's the re-write that's costing us money. At some point, you have to grow up and realize that throwing hardware at poor code is not a sustainable solution. At scale, the equation flips. Hardware becomes expensive, and any given developer's time is cheap.
  - maxmcd 7y ago
    Hardware is cheap, cloud services are expensive :)
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      The cloud is cheap, it's when you need so many clouds you can't see sunlight anymore it becomes expensive.

by eb0la 7y ago

emidln 7y ago

I'd rather systematically measure and monitor my code and systems (which should be done anyway) than waste my time with slower CPUs, memory, disks, NICs, etc. I've spent some time doing embedded, and I'd never dream of using an 8mhz, 16bit machine just because that's what my target runs. If a fast cpu masks a "problem", I'd submit that it might not be a problem. Hardware is cheap, I try to save my brain cycles for stuff that matters, like HN, .emacs.d, and codegolf!

falcolas 7y ago
EDIT: This turned into a bit of a rant about one sentence from the parent's post. Sorry about that, this is just aimed at the "hardware is cheap" mentality. The "hardware is cheap" phrase was rampant in our company until about a year ago. A year ago an executive took a closer look at our cloud bill and, well, exploded. Now there's a huge push to reclaim those extra cycles and RAM as our "cheap hardware" bill is outrunning our overall salary costs. Being at a point where this is a problem could be considered to be a good thing; we have enough traffic to cause it to be an issue. The problem is, the MVP was cost efficient (even at scale), it's the re-write that's costing us money. At some point, you have to grow up and realize that throwing hardware at poor code is not a sustainable solution. At scale, the equation flips. Hardware becomes expensive, and any given developer's time is cheap.
- maxmcd 7y ago
  Hardware is cheap, cloud services are expensive :)
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    The cloud is cheap, it's when you need so many clouds you can't see sunlight anymore it becomes expensive.