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Making software efficiently is more valuable than making more efficient software. Making software inefficiently takes a lot of time and people's time is expensi

Making software efficiently is more valuable than making more efficient software. Making software inefficiently takes a lot of time and people's time is expensive. A good example of an expensive use of time is optimizing something that doesn't really need optimizing. I know a lot of people go OCD on this stuff and I've been there and done that myself. But it mostly does not matter a lot in terms of value of the software. Anyone that can't be bothered to update their ten year old laptop because it's slow is also not going to spend a lot on faster software. There's just not a lot of money in optimizing stuff. And if you have a modern laptop, it doesn't really benefit a lot from the type of optimizations you'd do to make things run smooth on a ten year old laptop. Especially when optimizations are simply about turning stuff off that aren't really in the way on the faster laptop. Like having some cheap 3D effects, pretty colors and animations, etc. Anyway, I'm old enough to know that this is not a new debate. We never lost our way on this front. It was always like this even when computers were several orders of magnitude slower.

p0w3n3d 3y ago
the decision to shift towards web apps and electron apps is mostly because of the cheapness of the development, and binding to service-oriented architecture thus monthly payment... in other words: money
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  That kind of is the point. That's just the latest iteration of this. You could have made the same argument about writing a business application in visual basic vs. writing something in C/C++. The latter required more time and skills. Both of which cost money. Which is why visual basic was so popular. It's also why cobol caught on in the sixties even though there were more optimal things around even then. And hardware was still really expensive.
  - p0w3n3d 3y ago
    However I could see a paradigm shift towards standalone apps if there was a proper language or C++ mod increasing its usability and easiness, AND there was no pressure to do so much on cloud-based. Also interoperability I guess is a problem (html really IS a consistent UI for every platform)

p0w3n3d 3y ago

the decision to shift towards web apps and electron apps is mostly because of the cheapness of the development, and binding to service-oriented architecture thus monthly payment... in other words: money

jillesvangurp 3y ago
That kind of is the point. That's just the latest iteration of this. You could have made the same argument about writing a business application in visual basic vs. writing something in C/C++. The latter required more time and skills. Both of which cost money. Which is why visual basic was so popular. It's also why cobol caught on in the sixties even though there were more optimal things around even then. And hardware was still really expensive.
- p0w3n3d 3y ago
  However I could see a paradigm shift towards standalone apps if there was a proper language or C++ mod increasing its usability and easiness, AND there was no pressure to do so much on cloud-based. Also interoperability I guess is a problem (html really IS a consistent UI for every platform)