7 ms·

> That is a false dichotomy, running modern software on a P90 might not be very reasonable but that doesn't make people who do not care about the resource usage

> That is a false dichotomy, running modern software on a P90 might not be very reasonable but that doesn't make people who do not care about the resource usage of their applications sensible - if they are or not depends on other matters. Developer work is expensive and there's always a backlog of fixes and features. Spending non trivial time on lowering memory consumption from 40 to 28 MB in case of normal end user desktop applicaton is not reasonable in the sense that very few users will care or even notice. This time could be spend developing features with actual user impact.

badsectoracula 6y ago
Right, this is the usually the most common reason brought up. And depending on the situation, it is correct - it is the "depends on other matters" part i wrote.
mbirth 6y ago
> Spending non trivial time on lowering memory consumption from 40 to 28 MB in case of normal end user desktop applicaton is not reasonable in the sense that very few users will care or even notice. This hides a big problem of today’s software. Instead of having time to actually think about their software and optimise it, it’s all about throughput and making the economists happy. That’s why projects use various ready-to-use frameworks and get bloated very quickly. And time to look at the whole monstrosity and think about how you can slim it down “is not reasonable” as nobody pays for that. Users are supposed to get a better computer instead.
- ausbah 6y ago
  economists happy? I'd argue it's just normal business incentives
  - qubex 6y ago
    The constant ratchet on users to provide ever-increasing amounts of computing resources is a textbook case of an ‘externality’ for the developers so we get the whole usual Tragedy Of The Commons situation yada yada yada. Applying this to the original question one gets that if performance ceases to increase users can no longer be expected to endlessly ramp up their specs so suddenly optimisation and slimming-down will be in vogue.
krageon 6y ago
I guarantee you 99% of what is on a dev's backlog is senseless busywork that doesn't do anything important. The lack of focus on performance and efficiency has nothing to do with available resources, it is a consequence of management (political) decisions. Those decisions end up being the wrong decisions basically every time, but those are the times we live in.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > The lack of focus on performance and efficiency has nothing to do with available resources, it is a consequence of management (political) decisions. Developers focused on building their resume or playing with the latest fadtech are at least as much to blame!
  - bitwize 6y ago
    The bottom line is, if you don't play with the latest fadtech you end up sidelined into a niche, career-wise. God help you if your niche ever goes away; even if it doesn't, embedded C++ developers make about half of what Node.js webshit developers make, despite the job requiring more in the way of specialized skills.
jcelerier 6y ago
> in case of normal end user desktop applicaton is not reasonable in the sense that very few users will care or even notice. such a very-first-world country way of thinking. Hell, I live in france, in a fairly affluent city (Bordeaux), and my two neighbors run their stuff on 15 year old computers as buying newer computers is not really an expense they can make that easily. But they will never be able to complain to anyone & make their voice heard (except to me, their computer geek neighbor) that things are slow - they don't even know that things could be faster.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  Don't get me wrong. I wish I could dedicate half my time just to tweak the performance of my apps. I love them fast too and optimization is quite fun. But there's a cost - my apps will suffer in other ways and won't be able to offer other features.

badsectoracula 6y ago

Right, this is the usually the most common reason brought up. And depending on the situation, it is correct - it is the "depends on other matters" part i wrote.

mbirth 6y ago

> Spending non trivial time on lowering memory consumption from 40 to 28 MB in case of normal end user desktop applicaton is not reasonable in the sense that very few users will care or even notice. This hides a big problem of today’s software. Instead of having time to actually think about their software and optimise it, it’s all about throughput and making the economists happy. That’s why projects use various ready-to-use frameworks and get bloated very quickly. And time to look at the whole monstrosity and think about how you can slim it down “is not reasonable” as nobody pays for that. Users are supposed to get a better computer instead.

ausbah 6y ago
economists happy? I'd argue it's just normal business incentives
- qubex 6y ago
  The constant ratchet on users to provide ever-increasing amounts of computing resources is a textbook case of an ‘externality’ for the developers so we get the whole usual Tragedy Of The Commons situation yada yada yada. Applying this to the original question one gets that if performance ceases to increase users can no longer be expected to endlessly ramp up their specs so suddenly optimisation and slimming-down will be in vogue.

krageon 6y ago

I guarantee you 99% of what is on a dev's backlog is senseless busywork that doesn't do anything important. The lack of focus on performance and efficiency has nothing to do with available resources, it is a consequence of management (political) decisions. Those decisions end up being the wrong decisions basically every time, but those are the times we live in.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> The lack of focus on performance and efficiency has nothing to do with available resources, it is a consequence of management (political) decisions. Developers focused on building their resume or playing with the latest fadtech are at least as much to blame!
- bitwize 6y ago
  The bottom line is, if you don't play with the latest fadtech you end up sidelined into a niche, career-wise. God help you if your niche ever goes away; even if it doesn't, embedded C++ developers make about half of what Node.js webshit developers make, despite the job requiring more in the way of specialized skills.

jcelerier 6y ago

> in case of normal end user desktop applicaton is not reasonable in the sense that very few users will care or even notice. such a very-first-world country way of thinking. Hell, I live in france, in a fairly affluent city (Bordeaux), and my two neighbors run their stuff on 15 year old computers as buying newer computers is not really an expense they can make that easily. But they will never be able to complain to anyone & make their voice heard (except to me, their computer geek neighbor) that things are slow - they don't even know that things could be faster.

The_Colonel 6y ago
Don't get me wrong. I wish I could dedicate half my time just to tweak the performance of my apps. I love them fast too and optimization is quite fun. But there's a cost - my apps will suffer in other ways and won't be able to offer other features.