4 ms·

Incredibly happy to see this series of CF articles. I was always so proud of devs back in the days where RAM and processing were scarce and who had to get creat

Incredibly happy to see this series of CF articles. I was always so proud of devs back in the days where RAM and processing were scarce and who had to get creative to fit even the most basic stuff in the budget. It seemed to me that after RAM and processing became abundant, most gave up on optimization and focused on shipping instead which meant now that even with several cores, a basic notepad or music player failed to work. In a way, RAM becoming more expensive has ushered in a new era of forced optimizations, which I'm really happy for

jfengel 8d ago
I don't remember those days with a ton of fondness. Yes, the challenge was fun, but I really wanted to ship it and get my product in the hands of customers. Now I can spend more time thinking about what they want and less time about what the computer wants.
- JungleGymSam 8d ago
  [dead]
- switchbak 8d ago
  Yes, I remember those too. The costs of manual memory management were real and were not low. But costs on the cloud are real too, especially now. I’ve been living in JVM land for a very long time, but now it’s especially clear how important lean services are. Especially now that the bar for writing lean code is so much lower: let the borrow checker figure it out, etc. I just spent a couple days wringing out more performance/memory efficiency for our services. Nice gains to be sure, but it’s still so immensely wasteful compared to something well written running native. If it was my money, I’d be going native for sure.
  - locknitpicker 7d ago
    > But costs on the cloud are real too, especially now. I’ve been living in JVM land for a very long time, but now it’s especially clear how important lean services are. Especially now that the bar for writing lean code is so much lower: let the borrow checker figure it out, etc. I don't think even Cloudflare bothers with this waste of time. If they did, they would certainly not have built their global infrastructure on JavaScript running on V8. They'd have done what Google and old-time Facebook did and built their whole infrastructure on low-level system languages, and hiring the world's leading minds on the subject to milk the last drop of performance from their hardware. Even Google stopped to look at the problem and came up with Go. Not V8.
    - OoooooooO 7d ago
      Google came up with Go because: > The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt. From Rob Pike
- appreciatorBus 8d ago
  Different people are different. Some of us find production and optimization more interesting than marketing and distribution.
- rstat1 8d ago
  And its this obsession with shipping things as fast as possible quality be dammed that got us basic weather apps that eat a gigabyte+ of RAM.
  - CookieCrisp 8d ago
    And yet the world still turned
    - solarengineer 8d ago
      The world turned millenia ago and will turn millenia later. The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. Forced obsolescence is another, when running hardware needs to be replaced because software is built for only newer CPUs.
      - anonzzzies 7d ago
        > because software is built for only newer CPUs. You are right, but it reads (to me, could be just me) you mean newer specs which used to be true when I shipped software in the 70-90s; you mean faster machines / more memory right? Like installing a new version of software or OS and suddenly all memory is used, system is swapping and you did not ask for that but some obscure feature you didn't need needed to be shipped fast.
      - locknitpicker 7d ago
        > The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. You need to stop and think about the problem. Nowadays RAM is expensive because many people now want to max out their computers with RAM to run LLMs and AI coding assistants. Today's software is still the same software that ran perfectly well half a dozen years ago. Cloudflare happens to operate a large global computer infrastructure, and it's scale is such that 1% gains are lauded as fantastic cost savers. But that's the bean counter's perspective, pointing out that they saved a bean.
- suriyaG 8d ago
  incredible way to put it!!
- anigbrowl 8d ago
  (Cat reading newspaper) I should build a database out of pointers
- sdevonoes 7d ago
  I wish I could care more about what the computer wants (because it’s fun). I couldn’t care less what the product demands.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 7d ago
  "Now I can spend more time thinking about what they want and less time about what the computer wants." What if they want memory efficiency
  - transitorykris 7d ago
    They wanted that in the 90s, didn't work out well as a software product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftRAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftRAM
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 7d ago
    To rephrase the question, what if they wanted software that used less memory, i.e., software that used memory more efficiently The OP, GGP and GP are about reducing memory usage by software Pretending the parent question is about a different subject is unconvincing. The context does not support it
  - throw10920 6d ago
    The vast majority of people do not care about memory efficiency on the levels we're talking about. I've never met a non-technical person who has cared. And out of the technical people that I know (which represent less than 5% of the population), no more than half of them have complained about the memory usage of an electron app. So this hypothetical is wrong.
    - HappMacDonald 6d ago
      Or, they care but they lack the vocabulary to express what they care about. You can get a new laptop to run software A or competing software B. You can pay $1000 for the laptop with 4GB of RAM, and software A either can't run on that or will act like pulling teeth, so that software requires you to upgrade to 16GB of RAM which will put you back another $2000. Or you can run software B which will hum along perfectly smoothly on the original $1000 laptop. (All of that of course simplifying right past "everyone runs every app 24/7 with five trillion browser tabs open") Are you honestly suggesting that the end user doesn't care about having to throw exponentially more money at stuffing RAM into their PC just to make the game all their friends are playing online function?
- robotresearcher 7d ago
  Customers often want to pay less, and shareholders often want lower capital costs. A tasteful optimization is a win-win. The opportunity cost should be traded off against new features of course, but tasteful optimization is a good thing for customers.
necovek 7d ago
While it's nice to see this focus, while they highlight absolute figures, we are still talking about 1% improvement. For most other software systems, nothing worth putting effort in for.
- shuwix 7d ago
  [dead]
huijzer 7d ago
> In a way, RAM becoming more expensive has ushered in a new era of forced optimizations, which I'm really happy for Isn't this mainly Cloudflare's scale though? That's literally also what's in the introduction written as the reason why they are doing the optimization
colechristensen 7d ago
During the Moore's Law years you didn't have to optimize much, if you did a significant release yearly computer hardware grew faster than your optimization problems.

jfengel 8d ago

I don't remember those days with a ton of fondness. Yes, the challenge was fun, but I really wanted to ship it and get my product in the hands of customers. Now I can spend more time thinking about what they want and less time about what the computer wants.

JungleGymSam 8d ago
[dead]
switchbak 8d ago
Yes, I remember those too. The costs of manual memory management were real and were not low. But costs on the cloud are real too, especially now. I’ve been living in JVM land for a very long time, but now it’s especially clear how important lean services are. Especially now that the bar for writing lean code is so much lower: let the borrow checker figure it out, etc. I just spent a couple days wringing out more performance/memory efficiency for our services. Nice gains to be sure, but it’s still so immensely wasteful compared to something well written running native. If it was my money, I’d be going native for sure.
- locknitpicker 7d ago
  > But costs on the cloud are real too, especially now. I’ve been living in JVM land for a very long time, but now it’s especially clear how important lean services are. Especially now that the bar for writing lean code is so much lower: let the borrow checker figure it out, etc. I don't think even Cloudflare bothers with this waste of time. If they did, they would certainly not have built their global infrastructure on JavaScript running on V8. They'd have done what Google and old-time Facebook did and built their whole infrastructure on low-level system languages, and hiring the world's leading minds on the subject to milk the last drop of performance from their hardware. Even Google stopped to look at the problem and came up with Go. Not V8.
  - OoooooooO 7d ago
    Google came up with Go because: > The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt. From Rob Pike
appreciatorBus 8d ago
Different people are different. Some of us find production and optimization more interesting than marketing and distribution.
rstat1 8d ago
And its this obsession with shipping things as fast as possible quality be dammed that got us basic weather apps that eat a gigabyte+ of RAM.
- CookieCrisp 8d ago
  And yet the world still turned
  - solarengineer 8d ago
    The world turned millenia ago and will turn millenia later. The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. Forced obsolescence is another, when running hardware needs to be replaced because software is built for only newer CPUs.
    - anonzzzies 7d ago
      > because software is built for only newer CPUs. You are right, but it reads (to me, could be just me) you mean newer specs which used to be true when I shipped software in the 70-90s; you mean faster machines / more memory right? Like installing a new version of software or OS and suddenly all memory is used, system is swapping and you did not ask for that but some obscure feature you didn't need needed to be shipped fast.
    - locknitpicker 7d ago
      > The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. You need to stop and think about the problem. Nowadays RAM is expensive because many people now want to max out their computers with RAM to run LLMs and AI coding assistants. Today's software is still the same software that ran perfectly well half a dozen years ago. Cloudflare happens to operate a large global computer infrastructure, and it's scale is such that 1% gains are lauded as fantastic cost savers. But that's the bean counter's perspective, pointing out that they saved a bean.
suriyaG 8d ago
incredible way to put it!!
anigbrowl 8d ago
(Cat reading newspaper) I should build a database out of pointers
sdevonoes 7d ago
I wish I could care more about what the computer wants (because it’s fun). I couldn’t care less what the product demands.
1vuio0pswjnm7 7d ago
"Now I can spend more time thinking about what they want and less time about what the computer wants." What if they want memory efficiency
- transitorykris 7d ago
  They wanted that in the 90s, didn't work out well as a software product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftRAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftRAM
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 7d ago
  To rephrase the question, what if they wanted software that used less memory, i.e., software that used memory more efficiently The OP, GGP and GP are about reducing memory usage by software Pretending the parent question is about a different subject is unconvincing. The context does not support it
- throw10920 6d ago
  The vast majority of people do not care about memory efficiency on the levels we're talking about. I've never met a non-technical person who has cared. And out of the technical people that I know (which represent less than 5% of the population), no more than half of them have complained about the memory usage of an electron app. So this hypothetical is wrong.
  - HappMacDonald 6d ago
    Or, they care but they lack the vocabulary to express what they care about. You can get a new laptop to run software A or competing software B. You can pay $1000 for the laptop with 4GB of RAM, and software A either can't run on that or will act like pulling teeth, so that software requires you to upgrade to 16GB of RAM which will put you back another $2000. Or you can run software B which will hum along perfectly smoothly on the original $1000 laptop. (All of that of course simplifying right past "everyone runs every app 24/7 with five trillion browser tabs open") Are you honestly suggesting that the end user doesn't care about having to throw exponentially more money at stuffing RAM into their PC just to make the game all their friends are playing online function?
robotresearcher 7d ago
Customers often want to pay less, and shareholders often want lower capital costs. A tasteful optimization is a win-win. The opportunity cost should be traded off against new features of course, but tasteful optimization is a good thing for customers.

necovek 7d ago

While it's nice to see this focus, while they highlight absolute figures, we are still talking about 1% improvement. For most other software systems, nothing worth putting effort in for.

shuwix 7d ago
[dead]

huijzer 7d ago

> In a way, RAM becoming more expensive has ushered in a new era of forced optimizations, which I'm really happy for Isn't this mainly Cloudflare's scale though? That's literally also what's in the introduction written as the reason why they are doing the optimization

colechristensen 7d ago

During the Moore's Law years you didn't have to optimize much, if you did a significant release yearly computer hardware grew faster than your optimization problems.