3 ms·

It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. So many of the comments here echo the nonsense of my software career: developers twisting themselves in knots to justify

It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. So many of the comments here echo the nonsense of my software career: developers twisting themselves in knots to justify writing slow software.

zwnow 2y ago
For 99% of apps slow software is compensated by fast hardware. In almost all cases, the speed of your software does not matter anymore. Unless speed is critical, you can absolutely justify writing slow software if its more maintainable that way.
- bluGill 2y ago
  And thus when I clicked on the link to a NPR story just now it was 10 seconds before the page was reasable on my computer. Now my computer (pinebook pro) was never known as fast, but still it runs circles around the first computer I ran a browser. (I'm not sure which computer that was, but likely the CPU was running at 25mhz, could have been a 80486 or a Sparc CPU though - now get off my lawn you kids)
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  Those are things developers say to keep themselves employable.
  - zwnow 2y ago
    We are long past knitting RAM. You should go with the times. Development speed is key nowadays. People literally dont care about speed. If they did, Amazon & Facebook were long gone.
    - austin-cheney 2y ago
      > Development speed is key nowadays. What does that mean? I find I develop faster when I am not waiting on a bunch of unnecessary nonsense that is only present to supplement untrained developers. For example I can refactor an absolutely massive application in around 2 hours if I have end to end tests that execute in seconds and everything is defined as well organized interfaces. You cannot develop fast if everything you touch is slow. > People literally dont care I am really not interested in develops inventing wild guesses.
      - zwnow 2y ago
        You live in a dream world if you think this is how apps are built in the industry... None of the apps I have worked on had tests or even up to date dependencies.
        austin-cheney 2y ago
        There are people who build things and those who bitch about it. It does not matter if something is dreamy, because there is a cost to every action. Those costs always add up.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Your users feel otherwise. If you actually care at all about the quality of the software you produce, stop rationalizing slow software.
  - zwnow 2y ago
    No. Only tech savy users care. And these are the minority of relevant users. Why do people still buy shit on Amazon despite Amazon being horribly slow?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hnthrow90348765 2y ago
I've not seen a compelling reason start the performance fight in ordinary companies doing CRUD apps. Even if I was good at performance, I wouldn't give that away for free, and I'd prefer to go to companies where it's a requirement (HFT or games), which only furthers the issue about slowness being ubiquitous. For example, I dropped a 5s paginated query doing a weird cross join to ~30ms and all I got for that is a pat on the back. It wasn't skill, but just recognizing we didn't need the cross join part. We'd need to start firing people who write slow queries, forcing them to become good, or pay more for developers who know how to measure and deliver performance, which I also don't think is happening.

It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. So many of the comments here echo the nonsense of my software career: developers twisting themselves in knots to justify writing slow software.

zwnow 2y ago

For 99% of apps slow software is compensated by fast hardware. In almost all cases, the speed of your software does not matter anymore. Unless speed is critical, you can absolutely justify writing slow software if its more maintainable that way.

bluGill 2y ago
And thus when I clicked on the link to a NPR story just now it was 10 seconds before the page was reasable on my computer. Now my computer (pinebook pro) was never known as fast, but still it runs circles around the first computer I ran a browser. (I'm not sure which computer that was, but likely the CPU was running at 25mhz, could have been a 80486 or a Sparc CPU though - now get off my lawn you kids)
austin-cheney 2y ago
Those are things developers say to keep themselves employable.
- zwnow 2y ago
  We are long past knitting RAM. You should go with the times. Development speed is key nowadays. People literally dont care about speed. If they did, Amazon & Facebook were long gone.
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    > Development speed is key nowadays. What does that mean? I find I develop faster when I am not waiting on a bunch of unnecessary nonsense that is only present to supplement untrained developers. For example I can refactor an absolutely massive application in around 2 hours if I have end to end tests that execute in seconds and everything is defined as well organized interfaces. You cannot develop fast if everything you touch is slow. > People literally dont care I am really not interested in develops inventing wild guesses.
    - zwnow 2y ago
      You live in a dream world if you think this is how apps are built in the industry... None of the apps I have worked on had tests or even up to date dependencies.
      - austin-cheney 2y ago
        There are people who build things and those who bitch about it. It does not matter if something is dreamy, because there is a cost to every action. Those costs always add up.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Your users feel otherwise. If you actually care at all about the quality of the software you produce, stop rationalizing slow software.
- zwnow 2y ago
  No. Only tech savy users care. And these are the minority of relevant users. Why do people still buy shit on Amazon despite Amazon being horribly slow?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hnthrow90348765 2y ago

I've not seen a compelling reason start the performance fight in ordinary companies doing CRUD apps. Even if I was good at performance, I wouldn't give that away for free, and I'd prefer to go to companies where it's a requirement (HFT or games), which only furthers the issue about slowness being ubiquitous. For example, I dropped a 5s paginated query doing a weird cross join to ~30ms and all I got for that is a pat on the back. It wasn't skill, but just recognizing we didn't need the cross join part. We'd need to start firing people who write slow queries, forcing them to become good, or pay more for developers who know how to measure and deliver performance, which I also don't think is happening.