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“Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster” is Wirth’s Law, coined 25 years ago. When I started programming, the biggest problem
by bboreham 4y ago
“Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster” is Wirth’s Law, coined 25 years ago.
When I started programming, the biggest problem was the 8K of RAM I had available. This year one of my programs crashed after exhausting 500GB.
The programs do more: they crunch more data, paint more pixels, and animate the display in more whimsical ways. But there’s little to force coders to be more efficient, so they spend their time on other things.
- hulitu 4y ago> The programs do more: they crunch more data, paint more pixels, and animate the display in more whimsical ways. More data, i agree. Painting pixels seems to be harder than 30 years ago. And animation hasn't evolved from 20 years. But, the same programs needs now 20 libraries instead of 10, needs 3 build systems to build and 10 daemons to run to be able to start.
- bboreham 4y agoThat’s in line with my point: if, say, a program could only use 64 libraries, then people would find ways to remove the ones they don’t need. But there’s no pressure to reduce, so transitive dependencies balloon.