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I've been working with other programmers for over 30 years, and the impact of this scarcity mindset has very real implications in behavior today. In much the s

I've been working with other programmers for over 30 years, and the impact of this scarcity mindset has very real implications in behavior today. In much the same way that someone who grew up with food insecurity views food now, even if the food is now plentiful. For example, memory and disk space were expensive. So every database field, every variable, was scrutinized for size. Do you need 30 chars for a name? Would 25 do? In C especially all strings are malloced at run time, predefined strings with max length are supported but not common. Arguments (today) about the size of the primary key field and so on. Endless angst about "bloat". I understand that there are cases where size matters. But we've gone from a world where it mattered to everything to a world where it matters in a few edge cases. Given that all these optimizations come with their own problems it can be hard to break old habits.

OkGoDoIt 2y ago
I wish some of those old timers who care about bloat could work their magic on the web development ecosystem
- photonthug 2y ago
  I think they just have the good sense to run away, because even if they fixed things, they would be hated and mocked relentlessly for it. See for example every contemporary blog rediscovering “wow, makefiles just work, and this tech is 50 years old” and the number of contrarian reactions to it in discussion threads. For every dev that values ubiquitous, simple, predictable, and stable solutions.. there’s 3 who want to use something that’s much more complex, and has a shelf life of just a few years before it’s replaced with the new hotness.
- toast0 2y ago
  There's only so much one can do. Convincing other people that these things matter is hard. Even when you have good evidence (which isn't always easy to come by), people often won't put in the work to keep things small.
pjc50 2y ago
It is, until it isn't. This stuff very much matters for games. There's also a general argument about resource usage, but I think the AI and crypto people have largely won the argument that it's OK to use as much electricity as you want as long as you're making money somehow.
- praveen9920 2y ago
  Gaming and Porn are the main reason for lot of advancements in tech actually. They are always on cutting edge and always need more resources
  - ben_w 2y ago
    On the basis of GANs or diffusion models turning default skeletons into whatever style you want including photorealism, and that those skeletons can be animated by other AI, and that plots in most* games and porn are worse than the extremely basic stuff the original ChatGPT could provide, I think that's nearly at an end. When they run in 240 fps on your phone, that's the end. I've seen 5 fps on unknown hardware, so give it a decade at most. * Exceptions exist, but there aren't enough hours in a year to support even just 23 games like Bauldur's Gate 3 even if you're unemployed, and there's more coming out each year than that.
praveen9920 2y ago
I think because of levels of abstraction of software/pltforms, top layers are bound to have « bloat ». Unless someone( something) changes radically across the stack, I think bloat will just increase for each layer

OkGoDoIt 2y ago

I wish some of those old timers who care about bloat could work their magic on the web development ecosystem

photonthug 2y ago
I think they just have the good sense to run away, because even if they fixed things, they would be hated and mocked relentlessly for it. See for example every contemporary blog rediscovering “wow, makefiles just work, and this tech is 50 years old” and the number of contrarian reactions to it in discussion threads. For every dev that values ubiquitous, simple, predictable, and stable solutions.. there’s 3 who want to use something that’s much more complex, and has a shelf life of just a few years before it’s replaced with the new hotness.
toast0 2y ago
There's only so much one can do. Convincing other people that these things matter is hard. Even when you have good evidence (which isn't always easy to come by), people often won't put in the work to keep things small.

pjc50 2y ago

It is, until it isn't. This stuff very much matters for games. There's also a general argument about resource usage, but I think the AI and crypto people have largely won the argument that it's OK to use as much electricity as you want as long as you're making money somehow.

praveen9920 2y ago
Gaming and Porn are the main reason for lot of advancements in tech actually. They are always on cutting edge and always need more resources
- ben_w 2y ago
  On the basis of GANs or diffusion models turning default skeletons into whatever style you want including photorealism, and that those skeletons can be animated by other AI, and that plots in most* games and porn are worse than the extremely basic stuff the original ChatGPT could provide, I think that's nearly at an end. When they run in 240 fps on your phone, that's the end. I've seen 5 fps on unknown hardware, so give it a decade at most. * Exceptions exist, but there aren't enough hours in a year to support even just 23 games like Bauldur's Gate 3 even if you're unemployed, and there's more coming out each year than that.

praveen9920 2y ago

I think because of levels of abstraction of software/pltforms, top layers are bound to have « bloat ». Unless someone( something) changes radically across the stack, I think bloat will just increase for each layer