6 ms·

Can't wait to watch some product reviews. That and full Linux support - until then my Pinebook Pro does almost everything I need. Not the fastest but more devs

Can't wait to watch some product reviews. That and full Linux support - until then my Pinebook Pro does almost everything I need. Not the fastest but more devs should use lower spec hardware.

cyberpunk 5y ago
Why should they?
- jacob019 5y ago
  So that they can pay more attention to performance.
- Koffiepoeder 5y ago
  If you design for slow hardware it will sure as hell work well on fast hardware. If things become unbearably slow on your slow hardware however, you're closer to actual user experience and will notice this earlier. Long story short, using slow or bad hardware helps detecting performance and usability issues earlier.
- CobsterLock 5y ago
  I have a coworker that always preaches testing on bad hardware. Sometimes it catches multi threaded issues, like if you arent locking correctly and use a resource before its generated. Other than that it helps ensure that you are squeezing more performance out of the software rather than relying on fast hardware. I think this sentiment comes after dealing with a ton of chromium apps that can be resource hogs. Presumably they are developed on machines with tons of resources then forced onto my dev machine and still use tons of resource that I need to write my own stuff. Personally I dont care too much, if the software has performance critical requirements, it should be thoroughly tested in some pipeline not my machine.
  - michaelpb 5y ago
    Re. your last point, I generally agree with the idea that performance testing should be automated, not on an ad-hoc local machine basis. But I also do think developers live in bit of a "CPU bubble", and we need to break out of it. Most people don't have pricey hardware, and no matter what your reasoning (environmental / e-waste, user experience, simple love of the craft, etc), it is important to write performant software. In using old hardware I've discovered many, many apps are so incredibly frustrating to use for average users --- borderline unusable --- and I suspect their developers aren't even aware. So, I don't know what the issue is, if it's tech management trends (eg "sales-driven" development), or it's a lack of automated performance testing, or beefy dev boxes, or what. But IMO it's downright embarrassing to the entire industry how bad software has gotten on average.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Fully agree. I have a couple of old C2D/C2Q machines still kicking around and after upgrading their storage to SSDs, running the latest Win10 builds they're still totally viable day-to-day machines… well, until you fire up a notoriously heavy web/electron app, and then they're suddenly on their knees. If the devs working on these apps had to use such machines even a single day per week I'm sure we'd see marked improvements.
      - michaelpb 5y ago
        Exactly. I know this may give grumpy-old-man vibes, but I find it ridiculous that with a Pentium III with ~0.1GB of RAM we could do similar day-to-day tasks with IRC or AIM or whatever (group chatting, sharing media, etc), but running Slack on a computer that's 10-100x as powerful can get such terrible performance I'm sometimes forced to type in a text editor and copy over.

Can't wait to watch some product reviews. That and full Linux support - until then my Pinebook Pro does almost everything I need. Not the fastest but more devs should use lower spec hardware.

cyberpunk 5y ago

Why should they?

jacob019 5y ago
So that they can pay more attention to performance.
Koffiepoeder 5y ago
If you design for slow hardware it will sure as hell work well on fast hardware. If things become unbearably slow on your slow hardware however, you're closer to actual user experience and will notice this earlier. Long story short, using slow or bad hardware helps detecting performance and usability issues earlier.
CobsterLock 5y ago
I have a coworker that always preaches testing on bad hardware. Sometimes it catches multi threaded issues, like if you arent locking correctly and use a resource before its generated. Other than that it helps ensure that you are squeezing more performance out of the software rather than relying on fast hardware. I think this sentiment comes after dealing with a ton of chromium apps that can be resource hogs. Presumably they are developed on machines with tons of resources then forced onto my dev machine and still use tons of resource that I need to write my own stuff. Personally I dont care too much, if the software has performance critical requirements, it should be thoroughly tested in some pipeline not my machine.
- michaelpb 5y ago
  Re. your last point, I generally agree with the idea that performance testing should be automated, not on an ad-hoc local machine basis. But I also do think developers live in bit of a "CPU bubble", and we need to break out of it. Most people don't have pricey hardware, and no matter what your reasoning (environmental / e-waste, user experience, simple love of the craft, etc), it is important to write performant software. In using old hardware I've discovered many, many apps are so incredibly frustrating to use for average users --- borderline unusable --- and I suspect their developers aren't even aware. So, I don't know what the issue is, if it's tech management trends (eg "sales-driven" development), or it's a lack of automated performance testing, or beefy dev boxes, or what. But IMO it's downright embarrassing to the entire industry how bad software has gotten on average.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Fully agree. I have a couple of old C2D/C2Q machines still kicking around and after upgrading their storage to SSDs, running the latest Win10 builds they're still totally viable day-to-day machines… well, until you fire up a notoriously heavy web/electron app, and then they're suddenly on their knees. If the devs working on these apps had to use such machines even a single day per week I'm sure we'd see marked improvements.
    - michaelpb 5y ago
      Exactly. I know this may give grumpy-old-man vibes, but I find it ridiculous that with a Pentium III with ~0.1GB of RAM we could do similar day-to-day tasks with IRC or AIM or whatever (group chatting, sharing media, etc), but running Slack on a computer that's 10-100x as powerful can get such terrible performance I'm sometimes forced to type in a text editor and copy over.