3 ms·

> Wait, of course they write slow programs on purpose, because "premature optimization is the root of all evil," right? A developer might use Electron because i

> Wait, of course they write slow programs on purpose, because "premature optimization is the root of all evil," right? A developer might use Electron because it's "fast enough" and halves your development time, and "fast enough" is always a perceptual metric, and not a technical one. That's not writing a slow program on purpose; that's accepting a tradeoff of speed for deliverability. Writing a slow program on purpose means intentionally adding code to make it slower with no other consequence. "Fast enough" can be measured in ms latency for UX purposes. Ex: Websites test and benchmark themselves on load time because they know sales/pageviews decrease after too long.

zamfi 6y ago
> accepting a tradeoff of speed for deliverability So...making a purposeful decision that results in your program being slower...is not “writing slow programs on purpose”? They’re definitely not slow by accident. No one but artists (this is not a dig at artists, in fact I love them and teach them to program at an art school) would take “writing slow programs on purpose” to mean “adding useless code to slow things down”. It’s all about making decisions that prioritize the perceived latency at the expense of anything else.
- cwyers 6y ago
  There is a difference between deciding "we don't need to be fast" and deciding "we need to be slow."
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  Code that makes your software able to run on a completely different platform with minimal further development cost isn't "useless". Quite the contrary. And you're not adding it "to slow things down". You're adding it to make it possible to run at all on the other platform.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    I guess I wasn’t clear — this is my point! You’re adding it because it has huge benefits, and one cost is it slows things down. You are still making an explicitly decision to use something that makes your app slower, no?

zamfi 6y ago

> accepting a tradeoff of speed for deliverability So...making a purposeful decision that results in your program being slower...is not “writing slow programs on purpose”? They’re definitely not slow by accident. No one but artists (this is not a dig at artists, in fact I love them and teach them to program at an art school) would take “writing slow programs on purpose” to mean “adding useless code to slow things down”. It’s all about making decisions that prioritize the perceived latency at the expense of anything else.

cwyers 6y ago
There is a difference between deciding "we don't need to be fast" and deciding "we need to be slow."
Turing_Machine 6y ago
Code that makes your software able to run on a completely different platform with minimal further development cost isn't "useless". Quite the contrary. And you're not adding it "to slow things down". You're adding it to make it possible to run at all on the other platform.
- zamfi 6y ago
  I guess I wasn’t clear — this is my point! You’re adding it because it has huge benefits, and one cost is it slows things down. You are still making an explicitly decision to use something that makes your app slower, no?