3 ms·

Innovation is not really measured in terms of how well something "scales down".

balamatom 1y ago
Yes. Innovation used to measured in gigaquacks. A decade ago. With the process improvements of 2025, if it doesn't take you an innovation pool of at least 16 petaquacks to display a webpage, are you even trying? Anyone else up downscaling their innovation?
- sixtyj 1y ago
  I love boring stack. No nodejs and its dependence hell, no compilation, no frameworks that need reading encyclopedia to make a simple form :) PHP or blazing fast PHP-fpm, MySQL/MariaDB or Postgres, json for config, jQuery… it is good enough for most cases. For Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, Waze, and other heavily used sites with millions users… it is a different game.
  - balamatom 1y ago
    Node.js is boring stack for me. But instead I am asked to work with tools from the wet nightmares of React developers. Stuff that runs in Node - yet is designed as if Node, the DOM, or the OS, didn't exist. Now that's never boring. They can't even consider that everything might work better without their favorite tool, than with it. It's surreal. And awful.
    - sixtyj 1y ago
      Some people seek innovation. :) Everytime I see some new editor, I know that people are really innovative because THIS will be THE ONE. /s
KronisLV 1y ago
See: multi MB downloads to display a few forms in a browser. Software that can’t work well with literal GBs of memory (some of it being a full browser runtime for some desktop forms). Games that run bad thanks to UE5 coming preloaded with footguns that ensure almost every developer will ship games that run poorly. Operating systems that run worse than a decade ago for even the parts that are functionally the same (e.g. a file explorer or start menu). I sure love the smell of Wirth’s law in the morning - smells like my PC melting.
- Banou 1y ago
  React in itself isn't that heavy, and things like preact exists if you want an even lighter library, it's mostly other dependencies that are heavy, so the blame is mostly on the side of the devs, not react, for having heavy and clunky software.
  - tcfhgj 1y ago
    https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.ht... Select all angular, leptos, vue, solid and react variants -> react literally is consistently the slowest
    - Banou 1y ago
      Good thing that 99% websites don't need to modify 1k dom elements every seconds then, if you do using a DOM library isn't the right choice. My comment was about size library, in response to the parent comment about MBs of js. I'd gladly take a 10ms slower update on 1k rows(that practically never happens, ever heard of virtual lists?) for a maintainable codebase any day.
actinium226 1y ago
As a counter example, consider the jerry can from WWII. It was easy to handle a single unit to refill a vehicle, and it was also easy to stack millions of them for shipping. Another example is the internet itself. You can have a local LAN of a few computers or a global network of billions. So I'd say that to some degree innovation is measured by how well something can scale both up and down, but of course that's not always the case.
- auggierose 1y ago
  Both of your examples show that scaling down is pointless if it doesn't scale up.

Yes. Innovation used to measured in gigaquacks. A decade ago. With the process improvements of 2025, if it doesn't take you an innovation pool of at least 16 petaquacks to display a webpage, are you even trying? Anyone else up downscaling their innovation?

sixtyj 1y ago
I love boring stack. No nodejs and its dependence hell, no compilation, no frameworks that need reading encyclopedia to make a simple form :) PHP or blazing fast PHP-fpm, MySQL/MariaDB or Postgres, json for config, jQuery… it is good enough for most cases. For Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, Waze, and other heavily used sites with millions users… it is a different game.
- balamatom 1y ago
  Node.js is boring stack for me. But instead I am asked to work with tools from the wet nightmares of React developers. Stuff that runs in Node - yet is designed as if Node, the DOM, or the OS, didn't exist. Now that's never boring. They can't even consider that everything might work better without their favorite tool, than with it. It's surreal. And awful.
  - sixtyj 1y ago
    Some people seek innovation. :) Everytime I see some new editor, I know that people are really innovative because THIS will be THE ONE. /s

KronisLV 1y ago

See: multi MB downloads to display a few forms in a browser. Software that can’t work well with literal GBs of memory (some of it being a full browser runtime for some desktop forms). Games that run bad thanks to UE5 coming preloaded with footguns that ensure almost every developer will ship games that run poorly. Operating systems that run worse than a decade ago for even the parts that are functionally the same (e.g. a file explorer or start menu). I sure love the smell of Wirth’s law in the morning - smells like my PC melting.

Banou 1y ago
React in itself isn't that heavy, and things like preact exists if you want an even lighter library, it's mostly other dependencies that are heavy, so the blame is mostly on the side of the devs, not react, for having heavy and clunky software.
- tcfhgj 1y ago
  https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.ht... Select all angular, leptos, vue, solid and react variants -> react literally is consistently the slowest
  - Banou 1y ago
    Good thing that 99% websites don't need to modify 1k dom elements every seconds then, if you do using a DOM library isn't the right choice. My comment was about size library, in response to the parent comment about MBs of js. I'd gladly take a 10ms slower update on 1k rows(that practically never happens, ever heard of virtual lists?) for a maintainable codebase any day.

actinium226 1y ago

As a counter example, consider the jerry can from WWII. It was easy to handle a single unit to refill a vehicle, and it was also easy to stack millions of them for shipping. Another example is the internet itself. You can have a local LAN of a few computers or a global network of billions. So I'd say that to some degree innovation is measured by how well something can scale both up and down, but of course that's not always the case.

auggierose 1y ago
Both of your examples show that scaling down is pointless if it doesn't scale up.