4 ms·
Seems to me that in the short term everybody screams “DO NOT OPTIMIZE THAT CODE”, in the medium term everybody shrugs “buy a new computer”, and in the long term
by kqp 1mo ago
Seems to me that in the short term everybody screams “DO NOT OPTIMIZE THAT CODE”, in the medium term everybody shrugs “buy a new computer”, and in the long term everybody gradually migrates to the solutions that optimized that code.
I think the mainstream narrative around performance optimization is simply wrong. Inefficiency isn’t a constant, it’s a percentage. You look at software that’s 10x as fast and say yours will run that well in 20 years, and it does, but by then the other guy is 100x as fast, the gap is actually wider, everybody’s doing things that take advantage of all that speed, and you’re either 20 years in the past, still dog slow, balancing the two, or given up. Your software stays bad, and it happens again if you wait again, forever.
The idea that optimization matters less over time is short-term thinking.
It’s not the end-all, of course. Other things matter, context matters, it’s possible to over-invest, it doesn’t matter if your execs can just force people to use it, many of us are genuinely only planning two years out, etc.
- argee 1mo ago> The idea that optimization matters less over time is short-term thinking. The more you think about things and the deeper you investigate, the closer you get to realizing that most aphorisms, advice, and even "facts" are a combination of best-effort philosophy and selection biases from the lowest common denominator. Add in the Barnum effect and you end up with an ocean of inconsequential platitudes being parroted by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It's very difficult, requires active effort, and goes against human nature to act rationally. Most people don't even want to do it.
- ChrisRR 1mo agoIn the longer term we regress and start running an entire web browser to run a text editor in javascript
- coffeeindex 1mo agoCasey Muratori has an interesting talk about how that narrative (“premature optimization is the root of all evil”) came to the mainstream narrative https://youtu.be/hpj6r6CjJf8 https://youtu.be/hpj6r6CjJf8