3 ms·

This attitude is exactly why Wirth's law is a thing - software is getting slower, faster than hardware is getting faster. That is not in all metrics, of course,

This attitude is exactly why Wirth's law is a thing - software is getting slower, faster than hardware is getting faster. That is not in all metrics, of course, but in some - like typically in response latency to user inputs. This slowness costs users so many hairs pulled out. Programmers who think that "this is acceptable" lack the awareness that they haven't even tested the software under only slightly unusual conditions which is when everything is already crawling to a halt. When that "bundle" is 1000MB while technically there is no reason it should be more than ~1MB, many operations that you might want to do as a developer / trying-outer of the bundle take 1000x longer (no shit). Not unlikely, in some cases that even applies to runtime performance. Why in the world would you accept that when it takes only a little discipline to get it down to a "reasonable" overhead of say, 10x???

sneak 5y ago
Alacrity would like a word. In my experience, software is generally getting faster these days, after a period of UI latencies getting worse for a while. Not all software is getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster. It has always been possible to write slow software.
- jstimpfle 5y ago
  It's funny, while I've never tried Alacritty (and I'm not likely given the posts I'm reading about it around here), I'm still stuck with xterm, which in some ways has a terrible UX. But it's the fastest I've used, has the most correct VT-100 emulation (or at least programs do work), and it has by far the crispest fonts - if you're using bitmap fonts, which most modern terminals don't support anymore. But to your actual point, of course you can write software that runs not slower, or even runs much faster, than the software of 30 years ago that ran on machines of the time. The exception proves the rule (while I feel it's always been so obvious that there was never a proof needed).
- jstimpfle 5y ago
  Also, Casey Muratori would like to have a word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U
- jstimpfle 5y ago
  Or consider that the startup time of OSes still hasn't changed much. It was much faster for a while when SSDs came around, and Windows generally has become faster with their not-quite-shut-down technique. But normal bootups, around 30-60 secs on normal machines, 25 years ago and still now. And the important point is: it _is_ annoying, an actual bootup in 5 seconds is easily possible from a technical perspective, and would much improve the user experience. Take systemd, I remember it brought a lot of startup time improvements for a while, or at least promised them. I don't follow Linux very much these days, but when I do a standard installation of a popular distro - sloooow startup. Last I looked I had an issue with tons of virtual serial devices created serially, took probably 10 seconds alone. Parkinson's law at work.

sneak 5y ago

Alacrity would like a word. In my experience, software is generally getting faster these days, after a period of UI latencies getting worse for a while. Not all software is getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster. It has always been possible to write slow software.

jstimpfle 5y ago
It's funny, while I've never tried Alacritty (and I'm not likely given the posts I'm reading about it around here), I'm still stuck with xterm, which in some ways has a terrible UX. But it's the fastest I've used, has the most correct VT-100 emulation (or at least programs do work), and it has by far the crispest fonts - if you're using bitmap fonts, which most modern terminals don't support anymore. But to your actual point, of course you can write software that runs not slower, or even runs much faster, than the software of 30 years ago that ran on machines of the time. The exception proves the rule (while I feel it's always been so obvious that there was never a proof needed).
jstimpfle 5y ago
Also, Casey Muratori would like to have a word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U
jstimpfle 5y ago
Or consider that the startup time of OSes still hasn't changed much. It was much faster for a while when SSDs came around, and Windows generally has become faster with their not-quite-shut-down technique. But normal bootups, around 30-60 secs on normal machines, 25 years ago and still now. And the important point is: it _is_ annoying, an actual bootup in 5 seconds is easily possible from a technical perspective, and would much improve the user experience. Take systemd, I remember it brought a lot of startup time improvements for a while, or at least promised them. I don't follow Linux very much these days, but when I do a standard installation of a popular distro - sloooow startup. Last I looked I had an issue with tons of virtual serial devices created serially, took probably 10 seconds alone. Parkinson's law at work.