3 ms·

>If you can add a feature and it adds just 50ms to a 300ms pageload - it's unlikely anyone is going to block its release on performance grounds. And once the fe

by NL807 3y ago

>If you can add a feature and it adds just 50ms to a 300ms pageload - it's unlikely anyone is going to block its release on performance grounds. And once the feature is released, there's no removing it. Unfortunately this is happening, because compute power is cheap these days. It allows programmers to be lazy, take short cuts and not think about good software architecture. There is no economic incentive to optimise, because human perception won't perceive a difference and thus nobody complains. It's wild to think that we have basically supercomputers in our home and yet developers managed it to bring it down to a crawl with things like electron apps.

rusk 3y ago
> compute power is cheap these days. It allows programmers to be ecobomical, take short cuts and select appropriate software architecture for the business problem Just an alternative take that I don’t entirely agree with but I often find rephrasing a problem in alternative tone it can help to understand it in non adversarial terms. In this case I see strong parallels with the auto industry and food distribution
ZaoLahma 3y ago
> It allows programmers to be lazy, take short cuts and not think about good software architecture. I think it has little to do with laziness, and more to do with the taboo of reinventing wheels. If there's a very generic and very broad solution to your very specific and very narrow problem, you're encouraged to use (or invent!) the very generic and very broad solution. This leads to everything being abstracted to the point where most of your application does absolutely nothing. Just look at the call stack of a modern java web application. The depth of the layers of abstractions that you need to navigate to reach anything that performs any real work is vertigo inducing and nauseating. It far from ideal and I agree that economics is behind it, but I strongly oppose the wording that it "allows" programmers to be lazy.
- NL807 3y ago
  I do believe laziness is a big part of it. Because laziness IS about economics - in this case, personal economics. Why expend effort when you can get away with less and get rewarded the same?

by NL807 3y ago

rusk 3y ago

> compute power is cheap these days. It allows programmers to be ecobomical, take short cuts and select appropriate software architecture for the business problem Just an alternative take that I don’t entirely agree with but I often find rephrasing a problem in alternative tone it can help to understand it in non adversarial terms. In this case I see strong parallels with the auto industry and food distribution

ZaoLahma 3y ago

> It allows programmers to be lazy, take short cuts and not think about good software architecture. I think it has little to do with laziness, and more to do with the taboo of reinventing wheels. If there's a very generic and very broad solution to your very specific and very narrow problem, you're encouraged to use (or invent!) the very generic and very broad solution. This leads to everything being abstracted to the point where most of your application does absolutely nothing. Just look at the call stack of a modern java web application. The depth of the layers of abstractions that you need to navigate to reach anything that performs any real work is vertigo inducing and nauseating. It far from ideal and I agree that economics is behind it, but I strongly oppose the wording that it "allows" programmers to be lazy.

NL807 3y ago
I do believe laziness is a big part of it. Because laziness IS about economics - in this case, personal economics. Why expend effort when you can get away with less and get rewarded the same?