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Some people consider implementation simplicity as a virtue. It's nice to be able to understand large parts of your stack at a source code level. I'd like to s

Some people consider implementation simplicity as a virtue. It's nice to be able to understand large parts of your stack at a source code level. I'd like to see more minimal viable X.

spullara 4y ago
Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense at all. So, don't listen to them. If any photo saves 50kb from compression you can easily see that thinking this is a mistake.
- csande17 4y ago
  JavaScript developers tell me that disk space and network bandwidth are cheap these days. While they're mostly saying that to try and justify extremely bad architectural decisions (what's a couple thousand NPM dependencies between friends?), maybe we can apply that logic here. Maybe it's worth making every image file twice as big, if we can use a much simpler decoder implementation that's not a constant source of bugs and security vulnerabilities.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    By using a bespoke decompressor? No thanks. Take a standard format and make sure all array bounds are checked. Data-oriented compression formats tend not to be very complicated and can be implemented with few instances of simple data structures.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  I’m not saying I agree with them but I do sympathise with the argument. Is old timers spent the first part of our career understand most, if not all, of the technology stack. It’s actually really empowering having that level insight. So I can see why people might still crave for those days of simplicity back. It’s not not a decision I’d personally follow but I do see the attraction in their decision.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    PNG and JPEG are still well within the realm of what an average dev can understand, at least with some nice videos on youtube that give visual examples and make the math less opaque.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It's worth understanding DEFLATE, and then you can have the same amount of insight into PNG.
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      I’m no expert in this field but from what I’ve learned about PNG and deflate, there is a little more to PNG than just deflate.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        Yes but you can learn those parts just about trivially.
mananaysiempre 4y ago
A minimal viable Deflate decompressor (that you’d need for PNG) is not exactly complex[1], although slower than mainline zlib. [1] https://github.com/madler/zlib/tree/master/contrib/puff https://github.com/madler/zlib/tree/master/contrib/puff

Some people consider implementation simplicity as a virtue. It's nice to be able to understand large parts of your stack at a source code level. I'd like to see more minimal viable X.

spullara 4y ago

Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense at all. So, don't listen to them. If any photo saves 50kb from compression you can easily see that thinking this is a mistake.

csande17 4y ago
JavaScript developers tell me that disk space and network bandwidth are cheap these days. While they're mostly saying that to try and justify extremely bad architectural decisions (what's a couple thousand NPM dependencies between friends?), maybe we can apply that logic here. Maybe it's worth making every image file twice as big, if we can use a much simpler decoder implementation that's not a constant source of bugs and security vulnerabilities.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  By using a bespoke decompressor? No thanks. Take a standard format and make sure all array bounds are checked. Data-oriented compression formats tend not to be very complicated and can be implemented with few instances of simple data structures.
hnlmorg 4y ago
I’m not saying I agree with them but I do sympathise with the argument. Is old timers spent the first part of our career understand most, if not all, of the technology stack. It’s actually really empowering having that level insight. So I can see why people might still crave for those days of simplicity back. It’s not not a decision I’d personally follow but I do see the attraction in their decision.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  PNG and JPEG are still well within the realm of what an average dev can understand, at least with some nice videos on youtube that give visual examples and make the math less opaque.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It's worth understanding DEFLATE, and then you can have the same amount of insight into PNG.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    I’m no expert in this field but from what I’ve learned about PNG and deflate, there is a little more to PNG than just deflate.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Yes but you can learn those parts just about trivially.

mananaysiempre 4y ago

A minimal viable Deflate decompressor (that you’d need for PNG) is not exactly complex[1], although slower than mainline zlib. [1] https://github.com/madler/zlib/tree/master/contrib/puff https://github.com/madler/zlib/tree/master/contrib/puff