5 ms·

The fact that people think they're somehow fundamentally incomparable is the problem.

aprdm 6y ago
Software is all about trade offs. I would actually recommend you the book Software Engineer at Google since you mentioned them so many times: https://www.amazon.ca/Software-Engineering-Google-Lessons-Programming/dp/1492082791 https://www.amazon.ca/Software-Engineering-Google-Lessons-Pr... The first chapter is all about that and how software engineer isn't programming. You seem to think as programming and I believe you're missing the bigger picture.
- bananaface 6y ago
  I understand what you're getting at but I think you're seriously underestimating the implications of what I said.
pantaloony 6y ago
Seriously. This whole part of the comment tree has been fabulously enlightening. Great insight into the psychology of how we end up with chat clients that do less with 20x the resources than entire operating system + office suites of yesteryear.
- aprdm 6y ago
  I feel you tried to be snarky and I didn't really follow even what you tried to imply! Regardless would like to have your opinion if you don't mind explaining it better.
  - pantaloony 6y ago
    I’d figured it was mostly cheap companies driving the broadly terrible performance of modern software for often fairly small benefits to speed and dev cost, but it turns out there’s a much stronger contingent of software developers with not just a tolerance for business-driven trade-offs, but a strongly enabling attitude toward the whole thing, apparently not seeing what they’re doing the same way I do at all. Adding this information, observed software quality makes a lot more sense to me now.
    - aprdm 6y ago
      Software developers are hired by business to solve business problems. Optimization of speed is sometimes it, sometimes it isn't. I have worked accelerating algorithms in VHDL with a PCI-e interface, embedded linux without a MMU because a MMU uses too many logical gates, digital signal processing systems (FFT, goertzel, sigma delta filters) that had to process a lot of data under uS and etc. Now a days I work more in the devops space, full stack dev and whatnot. I have worked with a lot of technologies, different constraints, different teams, different companies (12 in total) in different industries. Trying to paint all business and developers as bad or as cheap because business requirements do not align with your view isn't really fair.
      - pantaloony 6y ago
        > Trying to paint all business and developers as bad or as cheap because business requirements do not align with your view isn't really fair. Yes, that would be unfair.
      - bananaface 6y ago
        Twitter failing to load on a stable connection and crashing the browser if you scroll too far is not the result of business tradeoffs. It's a failure to achieve their own goals.
        aprdm 6y ago
        Are you sure there's not something wrong with your environment? Twitter has lots of users (me included) and is not a problem I have seen in any platform I access twitter from.
        pantaloony 6y ago
        I also hit errors following links to twitter more often than not, reliably, on all sorts of environments. It feels like they’re doing some kind of cache-related routing based on headers. Often “refresh” doesn’t fix it, but hitting enter in the address bar does. Seen on iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux, mostly in very normal browsers (I’d expect mobile Safari in particular is at least on their top-5 most-seen browsers). I’d assumed they were trying to annoy me enough that I install their app. I’ve seen many others report the same kind of reliable, very frequent errors. Notably, I’m also not logged in, which might be another thing they’re trying to get me to do and another difference between those who hit this more often than not, and those who rarely or never see it. It’s been like this for years.

Software is all about trade offs. I would actually recommend you the book Software Engineer at Google since you mentioned them so many times: https://www.amazon.ca/Software-Engineering-Google-Lessons-Programming/dp/1492082791 https://www.amazon.ca/Software-Engineering-Google-Lessons-Pr... The first chapter is all about that and how software engineer isn't programming. You seem to think as programming and I believe you're missing the bigger picture.

bananaface 6y ago
I understand what you're getting at but I think you're seriously underestimating the implications of what I said.

pantaloony 6y ago

Seriously. This whole part of the comment tree has been fabulously enlightening. Great insight into the psychology of how we end up with chat clients that do less with 20x the resources than entire operating system + office suites of yesteryear.

aprdm 6y ago
I feel you tried to be snarky and I didn't really follow even what you tried to imply! Regardless would like to have your opinion if you don't mind explaining it better.
- pantaloony 6y ago
  I’d figured it was mostly cheap companies driving the broadly terrible performance of modern software for often fairly small benefits to speed and dev cost, but it turns out there’s a much stronger contingent of software developers with not just a tolerance for business-driven trade-offs, but a strongly enabling attitude toward the whole thing, apparently not seeing what they’re doing the same way I do at all. Adding this information, observed software quality makes a lot more sense to me now.
  - aprdm 6y ago
    Software developers are hired by business to solve business problems. Optimization of speed is sometimes it, sometimes it isn't. I have worked accelerating algorithms in VHDL with a PCI-e interface, embedded linux without a MMU because a MMU uses too many logical gates, digital signal processing systems (FFT, goertzel, sigma delta filters) that had to process a lot of data under uS and etc. Now a days I work more in the devops space, full stack dev and whatnot. I have worked with a lot of technologies, different constraints, different teams, different companies (12 in total) in different industries. Trying to paint all business and developers as bad or as cheap because business requirements do not align with your view isn't really fair.
    - pantaloony 6y ago
      > Trying to paint all business and developers as bad or as cheap because business requirements do not align with your view isn't really fair. Yes, that would be unfair.
    - bananaface 6y ago
      Twitter failing to load on a stable connection and crashing the browser if you scroll too far is not the result of business tradeoffs. It's a failure to achieve their own goals.
      - aprdm 6y ago
        Are you sure there's not something wrong with your environment? Twitter has lots of users (me included) and is not a problem I have seen in any platform I access twitter from.
        pantaloony 6y ago
        I also hit errors following links to twitter more often than not, reliably, on all sorts of environments. It feels like they’re doing some kind of cache-related routing based on headers. Often “refresh” doesn’t fix it, but hitting enter in the address bar does. Seen on iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux, mostly in very normal browsers (I’d expect mobile Safari in particular is at least on their top-5 most-seen browsers). I’d assumed they were trying to annoy me enough that I install their app. I’ve seen many others report the same kind of reliable, very frequent errors. Notably, I’m also not logged in, which might be another thing they’re trying to get me to do and another difference between those who hit this more often than not, and those who rarely or never see it. It’s been like this for years.