6 ms·

> is there a better stack Apparently, it's C, or ...assembly? According to the comment above yours. Because developer time is apparently cheaper than CPU cycl

> is there a better stack Apparently, it's C, or ...assembly? According to the comment above yours. Because developer time is apparently cheaper than CPU cycles. Weird.

kenhwang 7y ago
Every time I read one her posts, I think, wow she must either work for literally dirt cheap or her code is expected to run on several thousand machines. Most projects just don't reach the scale or steadystate where developer time is cheaper than machine time. It's fun trying to squeeze the last drop of blood from stone, but it rarely makes economical sense.
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  To be fair, I believe she spent the guts of a decade at Google and Facebook as a Production Engineer, so this isn't really that surprising.
kuschku 7y ago
As we've seen in the cloud costs thread, going from python on AWS to Rust on dedicated hardware can push your bills from 30'000$/month down to 300$/month, which more than pays for the dev salaries (especially if you're not paying the excessive and unnecessary salaries of the bay area)
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  How many hours would you expect that rewrite to take when done by Python developers learning Rust as they do it? And what's the opportunity cost of the new features they can't create because they're rewriting existing apps? If you're arguing that Python has more runtime overhead than Rust, I don't disagree. But there's a reason people invented higher level languages than C. Rust is a far nicer systems language than C, but is it faster to develop in than Python or Kotlin? It really depends.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    It is not clear that Rust can be as fast to develop in as Python or Kotlin, for the typical run of coders--people using Rust now are mostly well above average--but it is abundantly clear that, supported by good libraries, modern C++ can. Faster would be a tall order, but is not necessary. Put in the same effort, and get 10x-1000x faster code or lower resource needs. Why not?
  - kuschku 7y ago
    The reason I’m mentioning Rust is because you can still build your fun part of your application in python, and easily use the FFI to build any performance-critical part in Rust, C or C++. That said, with Rust or C++ you can – depending on the situation – be clearly as effective, or even more effective than with Python, and you gain an enormous performance benefit (which in turn saves you money, which in turn means you can hire even more developers)
  - rb12345 7y ago
    I think the argument of the article is to pick the right language in the beginning so you save both developer time and runtime and don't have to rewrite in a better language later. For example, Python is a lot slower than threaded C, but quicker in terms of developer time and is memory-safe. If you pick one of the newer JVM languages though, you can get far closer to C than Python in performance once the JVM is running and still keep most of the expressiveness.
pjmlp 7y ago
Any language with AOT/JIT tooling will do.

> is there a better stack Apparently, it's C, or ...assembly? According to the comment above yours. Because developer time is apparently cheaper than CPU cycles. Weird.

kenhwang 7y ago

Every time I read one her posts, I think, wow she must either work for literally dirt cheap or her code is expected to run on several thousand machines. Most projects just don't reach the scale or steadystate where developer time is cheaper than machine time. It's fun trying to squeeze the last drop of blood from stone, but it rarely makes economical sense.

disgruntledphd2 7y ago
To be fair, I believe she spent the guts of a decade at Google and Facebook as a Production Engineer, so this isn't really that surprising.

kuschku 7y ago

As we've seen in the cloud costs thread, going from python on AWS to Rust on dedicated hardware can push your bills from 30'000$/month down to 300$/month, which more than pays for the dev salaries (especially if you're not paying the excessive and unnecessary salaries of the bay area)

EdwardDiego 7y ago
How many hours would you expect that rewrite to take when done by Python developers learning Rust as they do it? And what's the opportunity cost of the new features they can't create because they're rewriting existing apps? If you're arguing that Python has more runtime overhead than Rust, I don't disagree. But there's a reason people invented higher level languages than C. Rust is a far nicer systems language than C, but is it faster to develop in than Python or Kotlin? It really depends.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  It is not clear that Rust can be as fast to develop in as Python or Kotlin, for the typical run of coders--people using Rust now are mostly well above average--but it is abundantly clear that, supported by good libraries, modern C++ can. Faster would be a tall order, but is not necessary. Put in the same effort, and get 10x-1000x faster code or lower resource needs. Why not?
- kuschku 7y ago
  The reason I’m mentioning Rust is because you can still build your fun part of your application in python, and easily use the FFI to build any performance-critical part in Rust, C or C++. That said, with Rust or C++ you can – depending on the situation – be clearly as effective, or even more effective than with Python, and you gain an enormous performance benefit (which in turn saves you money, which in turn means you can hire even more developers)
- rb12345 7y ago
  I think the argument of the article is to pick the right language in the beginning so you save both developer time and runtime and don't have to rewrite in a better language later. For example, Python is a lot slower than threaded C, but quicker in terms of developer time and is memory-safe. If you pick one of the newer JVM languages though, you can get far closer to C than Python in performance once the JVM is running and still keep most of the expressiveness.

pjmlp 7y ago

Any language with AOT/JIT tooling will do.