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> Performance is meaningless once it's good enough. There is no level of performance that is "good enough". One person's "good enough" is another person's "pai

> Performance is meaningless once it's good enough. There is no level of performance that is "good enough". One person's "good enough" is another person's "pain to use" and it's someone else's "I can't buy that computer that I would like because it will not run this software well". Faster software means more options for the consumer, less energy usage and it will be easier to make computers because they don't have to be crazy fast. I have a computer that is not one of the fastest in the world. I love this computer. It's tiny, beautiful and silent (no fans). When using this computer I can clearly see how slow a lot of software is. It's not the computer that is slow because it's definitely possible to write software that runs really fast on this computer. One thing that programmers can do to make the situation better is to underclock your CPU when testing your software. On Linux this is very easy; just write the value "800000" to the files that match "/sys/bus/cpu/devices/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq". Now your CPU will run no faster than 800Mhz. This will help you to notice when your program gets slow much earlier. And if you then think the performance is "good enough", it's very likely that your users will think so too because most people have a CPU that runs faster than 800MHz.

Zababa 5y ago
That's only considering part of the equation. We use software because it does things faster or more correctly than us. A slow and bloated spreadsheet software will still be usually way faster than manual calulation, and more correct. That way, you can understand why some people would prefer more features to faster software. The new feature allows people to do some things way faster than before. Because when a software can't do something, people still do it. The classic is exporting data in spreadsheets and doing stuff with it. That happens all the time in big organizations. And it's usually slower and less correct than having a way directly in the software to do that. So there is, in fact, a performance level that's good enough: faster than doing it manually, or as fast/slower but more correct. That's the point at which software becomes useful.
- robalni 5y ago
  > So there is, in fact, a performance level that's good enough: faster than doing it manually, or as fast/slower but more correct. I would not call a 30 minutes website load time good enough, even if it takes 31 minutes to travel to visit the company's office physically. That's because I know that it could be much faster. Traveling for 31 minutes is acceptable because maybe it could not be done much faster.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    That's a fair point of view, but I think it's wrong. Travelling might feel way better, because you're doing something, and not waiting, but still, it's slower.

Zababa 5y ago

That's only considering part of the equation. We use software because it does things faster or more correctly than us. A slow and bloated spreadsheet software will still be usually way faster than manual calulation, and more correct. That way, you can understand why some people would prefer more features to faster software. The new feature allows people to do some things way faster than before. Because when a software can't do something, people still do it. The classic is exporting data in spreadsheets and doing stuff with it. That happens all the time in big organizations. And it's usually slower and less correct than having a way directly in the software to do that. So there is, in fact, a performance level that's good enough: faster than doing it manually, or as fast/slower but more correct. That's the point at which software becomes useful.

robalni 5y ago
> So there is, in fact, a performance level that's good enough: faster than doing it manually, or as fast/slower but more correct. I would not call a 30 minutes website load time good enough, even if it takes 31 minutes to travel to visit the company's office physically. That's because I know that it could be much faster. Traveling for 31 minutes is acceptable because maybe it could not be done much faster.
- Zababa 5y ago
  That's a fair point of view, but I think it's wrong. Travelling might feel way better, because you're doing something, and not waiting, but still, it's slower.