3 ms·

The subfields of programming I know the most about are game development, networking, and web development, and in all of those, it's not the case that only 1% of

The subfields of programming I know the most about are game development, networking, and web development, and in all of those, it's not the case that only 1% of the code is in the "edge case" where performance matters at all. For example, in the case of web development, if you build a medium-sized website with React (i.e. pretty normal behavior nowadays), then if you make default decisions that don't consider performance at all, your website will end up noticeably slow, because you will: 1. Write code that re-renders components all the time during loading and UI interactions, 2. Which depend on tons of third-party dependencies that perform poorly, 3. So you end up spending a ton of time in re-renders while the site loads and while someone is using it. Dealing with this isn't literally the same performance work that Casey put in his article, because it's at a slightly higher level of abstraction, but it requires the same mindset. It requires writing most of your code (and taking on dependencies) with performance in mind, not just 1% of it. You can't avoid it without your notion of "clean code" including some amount of mechanical sympathy, rather than just being about abstract extensibility and generalization concerns.

whstl 4y ago
It's also very easy to mess up the performance due to architecture when using modern frameworks. For example: as much as SPAs are reviled, if you have a complex enough web application with heavy components, having it being an SPA might be better in terms of perceived speed than having it do a full reload on every navigation. This is a mistake that I see far too many government and utility sites making.
Aeolun 4y ago
Except that in React writing clean code will actually make your application faster.
engineeringwoke 4y ago
Re-renders are incredibly cheap in the big picture. They are not a source of performance bottlenecks in 99% of real world applications
- xtian 4y ago
  So why do 99% of real world applications run like garbage? What’s the culprit?
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > So why do 99% of real world applications run like garbage? If you're really interested in the impact of performance issues on everyday life, you need to provide concrete examples instead of putting up unverifiable strawmen. The truth of the matter is that 99% of real world applications run just fine, and it doesn't pay off to invest in shaving milliseconds here or there. Would it be desirable to have a magic wand to improve some edge cases? Yeah, why not? Is it worth to pay people to spend time with a stopwatch at hand to shave off these milliseconds? Not really. It's all about tradeoffs, and there is no real world payoff in wasting developers' time to shave off that millisecond here or there.
    - wruza 4y ago
      The promise of frameworks like React is that you write code in their way and they take care of performance, because functional, declarative and all that. You just use primitives and don’t control how it all works under the hood. Coping may be a good strategy here, but isn’t a good argument.
    - nottorp 4y ago
      You basically waste millions of seconds of users' lifetime instead :) Not to mention that web apps redrawing everything whenever they feel like it can almost give motion sickness, lead to clicks on the wrong things etc. Yeah, but users' time is worthless.
    - mtrower 4y ago
      You know, I started on some concrete examples for you, but I had to stop and back up. Really? You can't think of any examples yourself? The modern web is absolute hell to use if you aren't on modern hardware. Try it sometime; use a 10 year old phone, or an old computer that wasn't built top-of-the-line. There's so much hardware out there that can run native applications just fine, that can play back HD video, that can run complex 3D real time video games, but crawl like molasses when loading your average webpage. Facebook and YouTube are terrible offenders, but so are your average blogs. Many banking websites are terrible (yet they don't have to be; my local credit union has a zippy website that looks attractive to boot, has modern design elements, etc.). Maybe the hardware you're running is eye-wateringly fast, or maybe it's just barely fast enough and you don't need the cycles for anything else. But we're not talking milliseconds. We're talking order(s) of magnitude. I can't bring myself to believe you don't see at least some of it, if you just open your eyes and look around.

whstl 4y ago

It's also very easy to mess up the performance due to architecture when using modern frameworks. For example: as much as SPAs are reviled, if you have a complex enough web application with heavy components, having it being an SPA might be better in terms of perceived speed than having it do a full reload on every navigation. This is a mistake that I see far too many government and utility sites making.

Aeolun 4y ago

Except that in React writing clean code will actually make your application faster.

engineeringwoke 4y ago

Re-renders are incredibly cheap in the big picture. They are not a source of performance bottlenecks in 99% of real world applications

xtian 4y ago
So why do 99% of real world applications run like garbage? What’s the culprit?
- simplotek 4y ago
  > So why do 99% of real world applications run like garbage? If you're really interested in the impact of performance issues on everyday life, you need to provide concrete examples instead of putting up unverifiable strawmen. The truth of the matter is that 99% of real world applications run just fine, and it doesn't pay off to invest in shaving milliseconds here or there. Would it be desirable to have a magic wand to improve some edge cases? Yeah, why not? Is it worth to pay people to spend time with a stopwatch at hand to shave off these milliseconds? Not really. It's all about tradeoffs, and there is no real world payoff in wasting developers' time to shave off that millisecond here or there.
  - wruza 4y ago
    The promise of frameworks like React is that you write code in their way and they take care of performance, because functional, declarative and all that. You just use primitives and don’t control how it all works under the hood. Coping may be a good strategy here, but isn’t a good argument.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    You basically waste millions of seconds of users' lifetime instead :) Not to mention that web apps redrawing everything whenever they feel like it can almost give motion sickness, lead to clicks on the wrong things etc. Yeah, but users' time is worthless.
  - mtrower 4y ago
    You know, I started on some concrete examples for you, but I had to stop and back up. Really? You can't think of any examples yourself? The modern web is absolute hell to use if you aren't on modern hardware. Try it sometime; use a 10 year old phone, or an old computer that wasn't built top-of-the-line. There's so much hardware out there that can run native applications just fine, that can play back HD video, that can run complex 3D real time video games, but crawl like molasses when loading your average webpage. Facebook and YouTube are terrible offenders, but so are your average blogs. Many banking websites are terrible (yet they don't have to be; my local credit union has a zippy website that looks attractive to boot, has modern design elements, etc.). Maybe the hardware you're running is eye-wateringly fast, or maybe it's just barely fast enough and you don't need the cycles for anything else. But we're not talking milliseconds. We're talking order(s) of magnitude. I can't bring myself to believe you don't see at least some of it, if you just open your eyes and look around.