7 ms·
You know the thing I worry about next: how are apps going to inevitably bloat in inefficiency and claw back the improvements in CPU?
by supernova87a 6y ago
You know the thing I worry about next: how are apps going to inevitably bloat in inefficiency and claw back the improvements in CPU?
- singhkays 6y agoI don't understand. Don't those two things seem antithetical? Like why would you make your app inefficient at the same time you optimize it for the CPU?
- sidpatil 6y agoI think they're saying that devs won't spend as much time optimizing, since they know that the CPU is faster.
- singhkays 6y agoThat makes sense and is to be expected. A faster hardware does take away some of the incentive. As the old adage goes - "Necessity is the mother of invention"
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoA lot of people think that less than maximal performance is sacrilege though, which is why people are already complaining.
- tsjq 6y agoYes. Exactly this
- supernova87a 6y agoSimple historical observation -- any time a performance jump happens, the underlying uses of it expand to fill up the improvement in processing.
- Jtsummers 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Applied to computers, if you double the CPU speed, the program can be half as efficient with no apparent loss to the user. Similar with memory. If you can assume your typical gamer has a 2TB (or now much larger) storage capacity, you can ship a 250GB game. But then it gets complicated when everyone does the same thing. If every program is half as efficient as it could be (in CPU usage or memory), then there has been no gain with the new system.
- grishka 6y agoWhenever a new, faster CPU comes out, developers act quick to compensate for that with bloated frameworks to make sure you consistently get the same laggy experience.
- jonny_eh 6y agoAre you suggesting that companies shouldn't make, and consumers buy, faster hardware?
- saagarjha 6y agoI'd suggest that someone who breaks into Slack HQ and secretly installs a underclocking kernel extension on all their developers' Macs wouldn't be a bad person.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoThe consumers buy part, yes, if the only reason they need it is because software has become stupidly inefficient. All of this e-waste is not good for the planet, and manufacturing is a significant contributor to global warming. If consumers are replacing their computers to do things they couldn't do ten years ago, then great, that's a good use of resources! If consumers are replacing their computers because today's IM clients are 10x slower than the perfectly good clients we had ten years ago, that's a problem!
- BillinghamJ 6y agoThinking of speed in terms of processing capacity consumption, 10x would be unbelievably generous. It's realistically a LOT closer to 1000x
- CyberDildonics 6y agoNothing they said indicated that in any way.
- egypturnash 6y agoIn Electron 14, we have found an astounding new paradigm for writing apps that results in astounding developer time savings! Now instead of running your Javascript app inside a copy of Chrome, we have a custom hybrid of Javascript and Lisp, which is internally transpiled onto a Brainfuck interpreter running in Conway's Life! Electron 15: The Life machine has been re-implemented as a series of GPU instructions, which will use up approximately 93% of most users' graphics performance in return for a 20% speedup!
- JorgeGT 6y agoElectron 16: completely rewritten in Minecraft Redstone.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoOf course, since Minecraft runs on all platforms, this makes Electron even more platform independent. Sooner or later this is going to turn into that movie Inception. Seriously why can't we just fix the bottom layers!!! Why does every problem have to be solved by adding ever more layers!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sesuximo 6y agos/inefficient/doing more/g
- grishka 6y agoDoing more of what? As a user, I'd rather wait a month for a proper native app than get an electron pile of crap in a week.
- plorntus 6y agoWhile theres no way for me to have a source for this but I would hazard a guess and say most apps that use Electron simply would not exist without it. Maybe someone would fill the void if they had the idea, money and knowhow to build a native app on whatever platform you use but probably unlikely. Basically, no way you'd just be waiting an extra month for your native version.
- grishka 6y agoSo let it be. If there's a niche waiting to be filled, there are bound to be multiple attempts at that. The world would've been a better place without electron.
- 1123581321 6y agoThe key issue is that you, if you are a typical customer, wouldn't pay for your share of that extra development.
- crazygringo 6y agoWell, the great thing is that as long as computers are bifurcated between a majority of slow Intel PC's and a minority of fast Apple Macs... apps will need to remain usable on Intels, so they'll hopefully stay super-fast on Macs! ;)
- cmelbye 6y agoWas thinking the same exact thing while reading this. We’ll have a good chunk of lead time on that.
- tsjq 6y agoAnd then Apple will make us buy newer and better and faster models. Now, we can't even upgrade RAM
- rimliu 6y agoI bought a lot of Apple stuff but I don't remember Apple ever making me to do that.