4 ms·

Try underclocking your CPU to like 30% of its max speed and see if your programs still run comfortably. This would've made sense in a world where programs didn

Try underclocking your CPU to like 30% of its max speed and see if your programs still run comfortably. This would've made sense in a world where programs didn't become more bloated and slower over time, but it would have visible repercussions given our software today.

pjmlp 6y ago
That would be positive though, maybe then not so many people would be running Python sites on Django or Electron apps.
- andybak 6y ago
  It sounds like you want to actively discourage the use of Python and Django irrespective of performance concerns? Care to elaborate or was it just flippant snide?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    More like discourage the use of pure scripting without any regard for JIT/AOT toolchains or coding without performance considerations, in opposition to what we used to care about. The example with Python and Django was what came quickest to mind, but I can gladly expand it to include Ruby and Rails, or any other stack that falls under the same Web sites/desktop applications with scripting languages umbrella.
    - andybak 6y ago
      The usual retort is "the scripting language is rarely the bottleneck" as well as "developer time is more expensive than hardware". Between these two get-out clauses, aren't you talking about a very small minority of use-cases? Those where the scripting language is the bottleneck and the problem can't simply be solved by spending a few $ more on your VPS?
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        I thought we were all discussing about going green and using less hardware. Plenty of languages offer JIT/AOT toolchains while offering scripting language tooling as well. Besides, my remark also applies to compiled languages when care is not taken for proper algorithms and data structures.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        > Plenty of languages offer JIT/AOT toolchains Like, for example, Python?
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Nah, if you mean the black swan ignored by the Python community, thus forcing everyone that cares to go to Julia instead.
        ncmncm 6y ago
        Can you be specific about this, for those of us not especially aware of the Python ecosystem?
        pjmlp 6y ago
        PyPy is a Python implementation with JIT support, which has been going at it during the last 15 years or so, and nowadays is mostly compatible with the reference implementation. https://www.pypy.org/compat.html https://www.pypy.org/compat.html However for most Python users, it is more common just to stick with CPython and rewrite stuff in C than having a go at using PyPy.
deleted 6y ago
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monadic2 6y ago
It’s really just the browser that becomes difficult to use. For everything else you can find a decent lightweight option. I've been doing most of my computing on a raspberry pi 2 recently and it's just as productive as my main laptop outside of the browser, which is just an absolute hog for memory even when rendering basic pages. CPU I could definitely take a hit (say, remove speculative execution, which seems like it would "fix" spectre) as I don't need to do my taxes or write or listen to music at maximum speed. My video game console doesn't need security at all and can continue to speculatively execute freely. IMHO the days of general purpose compute at high performance are firmly over, different computation shapes have different cpu(/gpu) characteristics to optimize for.

pjmlp 6y ago

That would be positive though, maybe then not so many people would be running Python sites on Django or Electron apps.

andybak 6y ago
It sounds like you want to actively discourage the use of Python and Django irrespective of performance concerns? Care to elaborate or was it just flippant snide?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  More like discourage the use of pure scripting without any regard for JIT/AOT toolchains or coding without performance considerations, in opposition to what we used to care about. The example with Python and Django was what came quickest to mind, but I can gladly expand it to include Ruby and Rails, or any other stack that falls under the same Web sites/desktop applications with scripting languages umbrella.
  - andybak 6y ago
    The usual retort is "the scripting language is rarely the bottleneck" as well as "developer time is more expensive than hardware". Between these two get-out clauses, aren't you talking about a very small minority of use-cases? Those where the scripting language is the bottleneck and the problem can't simply be solved by spending a few $ more on your VPS?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      I thought we were all discussing about going green and using less hardware. Plenty of languages offer JIT/AOT toolchains while offering scripting language tooling as well. Besides, my remark also applies to compiled languages when care is not taken for proper algorithms and data structures.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        > Plenty of languages offer JIT/AOT toolchains Like, for example, Python?
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Nah, if you mean the black swan ignored by the Python community, thus forcing everyone that cares to go to Julia instead.
        ncmncm 6y ago
        Can you be specific about this, for those of us not especially aware of the Python ecosystem?
        pjmlp 6y ago
        PyPy is a Python implementation with JIT support, which has been going at it during the last 15 years or so, and nowadays is mostly compatible with the reference implementation. https://www.pypy.org/compat.html https://www.pypy.org/compat.html However for most Python users, it is more common just to stick with CPython and rewrite stuff in C than having a go at using PyPy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monadic2 6y ago

It’s really just the browser that becomes difficult to use. For everything else you can find a decent lightweight option. I've been doing most of my computing on a raspberry pi 2 recently and it's just as productive as my main laptop outside of the browser, which is just an absolute hog for memory even when rendering basic pages. CPU I could definitely take a hit (say, remove speculative execution, which seems like it would "fix" spectre) as I don't need to do my taxes or write or listen to music at maximum speed. My video game console doesn't need security at all and can continue to speculatively execute freely. IMHO the days of general purpose compute at high performance are firmly over, different computation shapes have different cpu(/gpu) characteristics to optimize for.