4 ms·

As far as I can tell hardware gains are enabling an entire generation of programmers to ignore the idea of taking optimization/performance into consideration en

As far as I can tell hardware gains are enabling an entire generation of programmers to ignore the idea of taking optimization/performance into consideration entirely, outside of niche areas. The sluggishness, absurd loading times, and RAM usage for even the simplest applications on blisteringly fast hardware is astonishing.

Rapzid 3y ago
Seems fine to me.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  When you start to pay attention to code you write, it accelerates in tremendous amounts, even without doing fancy optimizations. Also, clean and sensible code is easily optimized by compilers a great deal already. A numerical Gaussian integration code I have written in 2017 or so can run at 1.7 million iterations per second, per core, on a stock, 3rd generation i7 3770K. It's implemented in C++, and only written carefully. No fancy optimizations are done. If programmers paid half the attention their code deserves, I bet most of the software we use would be 2x faster, on average.
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    Great, wow, that's interesting. I mean as a user everything seems fine to me. Things are getting better, not worse.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Because OS can hide the resource waste pretty cleverly. macOS compresses RAM on the fly, Linux moves very stale pages to swap early to keep memory utilization in check. On that department, I was able to store two 3000x3000 double precision dense matrices and some big double precision vectors, plus the 3D model representing the object I'm working on in ~250MB IIRC. The code is a scientific materials simulator, BTW. Eclipse (the IDE) uses ~1GB (after warming up) with my fat C++ config, and that thing is written in Java, and is a full blown IDE with an always on indexer + static analyzer. VSCode uses 1GB for nothing. Atom used 1GB for nothing. Evernote uses ~900MB on start on macOS. That thing takes notes! We have the resources and wizardry to keep bad programming in check, but we can do much better if we wanted to.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    In this case, it would probably be best to use a tuned library, right? The tricky bit is finding the spot between “find a library” and “be lazy about it,” if you want to find tasks worth doing well.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Yes, the integration was not handled by a library though. I coded it myself (because it was a novel method). Used Eigen for matrix related stuff because it was fast and fun to use. Not to mention how feature packed it is.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        Do’h, I somehow misread integration as elimination, hahaha.
  - NovaDudely 3y ago
    I came across this recently which is a fun way of demonstrating how performance can change via using optimised code. It is about running a rebuild if Minecraft on late 90s early 2000s Macs and showing the huge performance differences. Yes Minecraft is not a great example but it is visually striking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGVUxl0T0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGVUxl0T0Y
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Looks very interesting. Gonna give it a look, thanks!
  - Andrex 3y ago
    > If programmers paid half the attention their code deserves, I bet most of the software we use would be 2x faster, on average I'm so sick hearing about "lazy devs." Because I was one! I left a programming career because JS is fun for me and I didn't want it to stop just being a fun hobby. (The money and prestige tricked me into thinking it was my life's calling.) But I worked with many people who were way smarter and harder working. And we still had to ship shitty code sometimes. Money paid the bills, perfect code was a luxury. There has to be an economic incentive for this to change. There's hundreds of millions of programmers but only a few dozen relevant tech CEOs.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Did I say the developers don't pay attention to their code because they are lazy? I don't think so. I'm aware that the situation we're in is because of the money-first approach in many software houses, and everyone needs to ship bad code sometimes because of the reasons they don't have control over. However, there are also examples of very fast and nice software which are also closed source and sold for good money (OmniGraffle, BBEdit, Pixelmator, iA Writer, MindNode, etc.), and they work really fast and efficient for what they do, because while they're for profit, apparently their management understands that good code brings good money. Let's not jump to conclusions from ambiguous sentences. I may have clarified it a bit, I guess, but it's very late here.
bee_rider 3y ago
This has been going on for two or three generations at least.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Probably since early 32bit processors...
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I’m sure in the 80’s there were folks saying “kids these days with their random access memory, in my day you had to wait for the drum to come around” or whatever, haha.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
antifa 3y ago
I don't like that no laptop I've owned (except the M1) has really truly felt faster over the last 10 years. Here's to hoping that crystal/nim/golang/rust type languages start to get more popular with the kinds of people who would normally use electron.

Rapzid 3y ago

Seems fine to me.

bayindirh 3y ago
When you start to pay attention to code you write, it accelerates in tremendous amounts, even without doing fancy optimizations. Also, clean and sensible code is easily optimized by compilers a great deal already. A numerical Gaussian integration code I have written in 2017 or so can run at 1.7 million iterations per second, per core, on a stock, 3rd generation i7 3770K. It's implemented in C++, and only written carefully. No fancy optimizations are done. If programmers paid half the attention their code deserves, I bet most of the software we use would be 2x faster, on average.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  Great, wow, that's interesting. I mean as a user everything seems fine to me. Things are getting better, not worse.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Because OS can hide the resource waste pretty cleverly. macOS compresses RAM on the fly, Linux moves very stale pages to swap early to keep memory utilization in check. On that department, I was able to store two 3000x3000 double precision dense matrices and some big double precision vectors, plus the 3D model representing the object I'm working on in ~250MB IIRC. The code is a scientific materials simulator, BTW. Eclipse (the IDE) uses ~1GB (after warming up) with my fat C++ config, and that thing is written in Java, and is a full blown IDE with an always on indexer + static analyzer. VSCode uses 1GB for nothing. Atom used 1GB for nothing. Evernote uses ~900MB on start on macOS. That thing takes notes! We have the resources and wizardry to keep bad programming in check, but we can do much better if we wanted to.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  In this case, it would probably be best to use a tuned library, right? The tricky bit is finding the spot between “find a library” and “be lazy about it,” if you want to find tasks worth doing well.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Yes, the integration was not handled by a library though. I coded it myself (because it was a novel method). Used Eigen for matrix related stuff because it was fast and fun to use. Not to mention how feature packed it is.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Do’h, I somehow misread integration as elimination, hahaha.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  I came across this recently which is a fun way of demonstrating how performance can change via using optimised code. It is about running a rebuild if Minecraft on late 90s early 2000s Macs and showing the huge performance differences. Yes Minecraft is not a great example but it is visually striking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGVUxl0T0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGVUxl0T0Y
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Looks very interesting. Gonna give it a look, thanks!
- Andrex 3y ago
  > If programmers paid half the attention their code deserves, I bet most of the software we use would be 2x faster, on average I'm so sick hearing about "lazy devs." Because I was one! I left a programming career because JS is fun for me and I didn't want it to stop just being a fun hobby. (The money and prestige tricked me into thinking it was my life's calling.) But I worked with many people who were way smarter and harder working. And we still had to ship shitty code sometimes. Money paid the bills, perfect code was a luxury. There has to be an economic incentive for this to change. There's hundreds of millions of programmers but only a few dozen relevant tech CEOs.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Did I say the developers don't pay attention to their code because they are lazy? I don't think so. I'm aware that the situation we're in is because of the money-first approach in many software houses, and everyone needs to ship bad code sometimes because of the reasons they don't have control over. However, there are also examples of very fast and nice software which are also closed source and sold for good money (OmniGraffle, BBEdit, Pixelmator, iA Writer, MindNode, etc.), and they work really fast and efficient for what they do, because while they're for profit, apparently their management understands that good code brings good money. Let's not jump to conclusions from ambiguous sentences. I may have clarified it a bit, I guess, but it's very late here.

bee_rider 3y ago

This has been going on for two or three generations at least.

KptMarchewa 3y ago
Probably since early 32bit processors...
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I’m sure in the 80’s there were folks saying “kids these days with their random access memory, in my day you had to wait for the drum to come around” or whatever, haha.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

antifa 3y ago

I don't like that no laptop I've owned (except the M1) has really truly felt faster over the last 10 years. Here's to hoping that crystal/nim/golang/rust type languages start to get more popular with the kinds of people who would normally use electron.