3 ms·

I'm going to pre-emptively link Casey Muratori's Refterm Lecture Part 1[0], because invariably when this topic comes up people are all "but optimization takes t

I'm going to pre-emptively link Casey Muratori's Refterm Lecture Part 1[0], because invariably when this topic comes up people are all "but optimization takes time and we gotta push the new features right now or the market will eat us." Computers are so ludicrously fast these days that in the majority of cases you do not need optimization at all. You do need de-pessimization though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgoetgxecw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgoetgxecw8

phtrivier 4y ago
Timing being nice, Casey just started a series on performance / optimization [1]. The pitch is that it should be useful even for people not using "down to the metal" languages - although at this point in the series they have been essentially: * yelling at the sky that software is slow (amen to that) * making fun at python for not being C (which is, I mean, true) * explaining why memory caching is important (which is both true and not obvious to most people) * diving into the details of SIMD intrisincs of x86 using some form of vectorized quantum hardware-specific instructions, which I'm sure is going to help me avoid a few calls to render in my React app _any time now_. (Just kidding, I'm pretty sure I'm going to learn stuff from the series, which is the point.) [1] https://www.computerenhance.com/p/welcome-to-the-performance-aware https://www.computerenhance.com/p/welcome-to-the-performance...
jiggawatts 4y ago
The hilarious thing about the whole RefTerm thing is the armies of people defending Microsoft by saying that Casey is some sort of Dark Wizard and that his skills are magic and unique, which is why nobody else can reproduce his approach. Before I saw that video, if you had asked me to write a terminal I would have made one with essentially the same design as Casey. I didn’t even think that there is another way! Like… just draw the grid of chars. What else is there to do?! Why add extra steps? Microsoft added extra steps.

phtrivier 4y ago

Timing being nice, Casey just started a series on performance / optimization [1]. The pitch is that it should be useful even for people not using "down to the metal" languages - although at this point in the series they have been essentially: * yelling at the sky that software is slow (amen to that) * making fun at python for not being C (which is, I mean, true) * explaining why memory caching is important (which is both true and not obvious to most people) * diving into the details of SIMD intrisincs of x86 using some form of vectorized quantum hardware-specific instructions, which I'm sure is going to help me avoid a few calls to render in my React app _any time now_. (Just kidding, I'm pretty sure I'm going to learn stuff from the series, which is the point.) [1] https://www.computerenhance.com/p/welcome-to-the-performance-aware https://www.computerenhance.com/p/welcome-to-the-performance...

jiggawatts 4y ago

The hilarious thing about the whole RefTerm thing is the armies of people defending Microsoft by saying that Casey is some sort of Dark Wizard and that his skills are magic and unique, which is why nobody else can reproduce his approach. Before I saw that video, if you had asked me to write a terminal I would have made one with essentially the same design as Casey. I didn’t even think that there is another way! Like… just draw the grid of chars. What else is there to do?! Why add extra steps? Microsoft added extra steps.