[IP] re Software disenchantment

[Dave Farber]

Date: September 29, 2018 at 2:46:51 AM GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] Software disenchantment
Thanks for this, Dave. It articulates -- thoroughly and well -- what I've wrestled with for years.
I'm so far removed from CS classes (~100 years ago) that I have no idea what's covered today. But back in my early days of horse-drawn computers, we all learned assembler -- and how to step through compiled C code at the assembler level, where inefficiencies became immediately apparent. Some was caused by poor compilers, but most were attributable to us as programmers.
I think that visibility is long-gone below layers upon layers of abstraction.
Best,
--Ridge

Right on. djf

Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Software disenchantment
Date: September 28, 2018 at 6:09:30 PM GMT+9
[Note: This item comes from friend Judi Clark. DLH]
Software disenchantment
By Nikita Prokopov
Sep 17 2018
<http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/>
I’ve been programming for 15 years now. Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general.
Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.
@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-)
You’ve probably heard this mantra: “programmer time is more expensive than computer time”. What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.
Everything is unbearably slow
Look around: our portable computers are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that brought man to the moon. Yet every other webpage struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps scroll on the latest top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos but not scroll web pages? How is it ok?
It also animates empty white boxes instead of showing their content because it’s the only way anything can be animated on a webpage with decent performance. No, decent doesn’t mean 60fps, it’s rather “as fast as this web page could possibly go”. I’m dying to see web community answer when 120Hz displays become mainstream. Shit barely hits 60Hz already.
Windows 10 takes 30 minutes to update. What could it possibly be doing for that long? That much time is enough to fully format my SSD drive, download a fresh build and install it like 5 times in a row.
Modern text editors have higher latency than 42-year-old Emacs. Text editors! What can be simpler? On each keystroke, all you have to do is update tiny rectangular region and modern text editors can’t do that in 16ms. It’s a lot of time. A LOT. A 3D game can fill the whole screen with hundreds of thousands (!!!) of polygons in the same 16ms and also process input, recalculate the world and dynamically load/unload resources. How come?
As a general trend, we’re not getting faster software with more features. We’re getting faster hardware that runs slower software with the same features. Everything works way below the possible speed. Ever wonder why your phone needs 30 to 60 seconds to boot? Why can’t it boot, say, in one second? There are no physical limitations to that. I would love to see that. I would love to see limits reached and explored, utilizing every last bit of performance we can get for something meaningful in a meaningful way.
Everything is HUUUUGE
And then there’s bloat. Web apps could open up to 10× faster if you just simply block all ads. Google begs everyone to stop shooting themselves in their feet with AMP initiative—a technology solution to a problem that doesn’t need any technology, just a little bit of common sense. If you remove bloat, the web becomes crazy fast. How smart do you have to be to understand that?
Android system with no apps takes almost 6 Gb. Just think for a second how obscenely HUGE that number is. What’s in there, HD movies? I guess it’s basically code: kernel, drivers. Some string and resources too, sure, but those can’t be big. So, how many drivers do you need for a phone?
[snip]
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp

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[Dave Farber]

Date: September 29, 2018 at 2:53:53 AM GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] Software disenchantment
I mostly agree. But I think he takes it too far.
Question for the assembled masses though: Do you honestly believe nothing was added in the last few years to the same programs / OSes? Sure things got bloat, but they did acquire new features as well, even if you do not realize it. He says “old $APP is basically the same as new $APP, but way bigger”. Sure things got bloat, but they did acquire new features as well, even if you do not realize it. Take the keyboard as an example. Does no one use predictive texting? Autocorrect? (OK, maybe not. :) How about swipe keyboards? Dynamically changing the size of keys?
[Yes, I suck on a phone. I am old, I type with 10 fingers on a “real” keyboard. So sue me.]
Back on topic: You really think you can code something that will figure out how I type in 60KB? Good frickin’ luck.
And how about YOU tell a new computer user when they plug in $RANDOM_DEVICE that they have to download the drivers instead of it “just working”. I’m sure that will send your revenue through the roof.
@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-)
Complete waste of resources - computer and human. It took more cycles to optimize the program than the program would waste running un-optimized for decades. And human time *IS* more expensive than computer time.
Etc., etc.
Could software be better? Of course! Some applications could be many orders of magnitude more efficient and robust. But just like we shouldn’t bloat software, we shouldn’t bloat the criticisms.
--
TTFN,
patrick

Right on. djf

Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Software disenchantment
Date: September 28, 2018 at 6:09:30 PM GMT+9
[Note: This item comes from friend Judi Clark. DLH]
Software disenchantment
By Nikita Prokopov
Sep 17 2018
<http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/>
I’ve been programming for 15 years now. Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general.
Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.
@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-)
You’ve probably heard this mantra: “programmer time is more expensive than computer time”. What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.
Everything is unbearably slow
Look around: our portable computers are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that brought man to the moon. Yet every other webpage struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps scroll on the latest top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos but not scroll web pages? How is it ok?
It also animates empty white boxes instead of showing their content because it’s the only way anything can be animated on a webpage with decent performance. No, decent doesn’t mean 60fps, it’s rather “as fast as this web page could possibly go”. I’m dying to see web community answer when 120Hz displays become mainstream. Shit barely hits 60Hz already.
Windows 10 takes 30 minutes to update. What could it possibly be doing for that long? That much time is enough to fully format my SSD drive, download a fresh build and install it like 5 times in a row.
Modern text editors have higher latency than 42-year-old Emacs. Text editors! What can be simpler? On each keystroke, all you have to do is update tiny rectangular region and modern text editors can’t do that in 16ms. It’s a lot of time. A LOT. A 3D game can fill the whole screen with hundreds of thousands (!!!) of polygons in the same 16ms and also process input, recalculate the world and dynamically load/unload resources. How come?
As a general trend, we’re not getting faster software with more features. We’re getting faster hardware that runs slower software with the same features. Everything works way below the possible speed. Ever wonder why your phone needs 30 to 60 seconds to boot? Why can’t it boot, say, in one second? There are no physical limitations to that. I would love to see that. I would love to see limits reached and explored, utilizing every last bit of performance we can get for something meaningful in a meaningful way.
Everything is HUUUUGE
And then there’s bloat. Web apps could open up to 10× faster if you just simply block all ads. Google begs everyone to stop shooting themselves in their feet with AMP initiative—a technology solution to a problem that doesn’t need any technology, just a little bit of common sense. If you remove bloat, the web becomes crazy fast. How smart do you have to be to understand that?
Android system with no apps takes almost 6 Gb. Just think for a second how obscenely HUGE that number is. What’s in there, HD movies? I guess it’s basically code: kernel, drivers. Some string and resources too, sure, but those can’t be big. So, how many drivers do you need for a phone?
[snip]
Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp

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[Dave Farber]

Date: September 29, 2018 at 3:18:04 AM GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] re Software disenchantment
Predictive text, autocorrect, and size changes were commonly-supported features 20 years ago. That's sort of the main complaint: our willingness to ignore history (like how many 'new' features existed in substantially more performant form decades ago) lets us get away with forcing awkwardly slow software on users -- the users don't know any better, and with our selective memories, neither do we!

Date: September 29, 2018 at 2:53:53 AM GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] Software disenchantment
I mostly agree. But I think he takes it too far.
Question for the assembled masses though: Do you honestly believe nothing was added in the last few years to the same programs / OSes? Sure things got bloat, but they did acquire new features as well, even if you do not realize it. He says “old $APP is basically the same as new $APP, but way bigger”. Sure things got bloat, but they did acquire new features as well, even if you do not realize it. Take the keyboard as an example. Does no one use predictive texting? Autocorrect? (OK, maybe not. :) How about swipe keyboards? Dynamically changing the size of keys?
[Yes, I suck on a phone. I am old, I type with 10 fingers on a “real” keyboard. So sue me.]
Back on topic: You really think you can code something that will figure out how I type in 60KB? Good frickin’ luck.
And how about YOU tell a new computer user when they plug in $RANDOM_DEVICE that they have to download the drivers instead of it “just working”. I’m sure that will send your revenue through the roof.
@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-)
Complete waste of resources - computer and human. It took more cycles to optimize the program than the program would waste running un-optimized for decades. And human time *IS* more expensive than computer time.
Etc., etc.
Could software be better? Of course! Some applications could be many orders of magnitude more efficient and robust. But just like we shouldn’t bloat software, we shouldn’t bloat the criticisms.
--
TTFN,
patrick

Right on. djf

Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Software disenchantment
Date: September 28, 2018 at 6:09:30 PM GMT+9
[Note: This item comes from friend Judi Clark. DLH]
Software disenchantment
By Nikita Prokopov
Sep 17 2018
<http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/>
I’ve been programming for 15 years now. Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general.
Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.
@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-)
You’ve probably heard this mantra: “programmer time is more expensive than computer time”. What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.
Everything is unbearably slow
Look around: our portable computers are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that brought man to the moon. Yet every other webpage struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps scroll on the latest top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos but not scroll web pages? How is it ok?
It also animates empty white boxes instead of showing their content because it’s the only way anything can be animated on a webpage with decent performance. No, decent doesn’t mean 60fps, it’s rather “as fast as this web page could possibly go”. I’m dying to see web community answer when 120Hz displays become mainstream. Shit barely hits 60Hz already.
Windows 10 takes 30 minutes to update. What could it possibly be doing for that long? That much time is enough to fully format my SSD drive, download a fresh build and install it like 5 times in a row.
Modern text editors have higher latency than 42-year-old Emacs. Text editors! What can be simpler? On each keystroke, all you have to do is update tiny rectangular region and modern text editors can’t do that in 16ms. It’s a lot of time. A LOT. A 3D game can fill the whole screen with hundreds of thousands (!!!) of polygons in the same 16ms and also process input, recalculate the world and dynamically load/unload resources. How come?
As a general trend, we’re not getting faster software with more features. We’re getting faster hardware that runs slower software with the same features. Everything works way below the possible speed. Ever wonder why your phone needs 30 to 60 seconds to boot? Why can’t it boot, say, in one second? There are no physical limitations to that. I would love to see that. I would love to see limits reached and explored, utilizing every last bit of performance we can get for something meaningful in a meaningful way.
Everything is HUUUUGE
And then there’s bloat. Web apps could open up to 10× faster if you just simply block all ads. Google begs everyone to stop shooting themselves in their feet with AMP initiative—a technology solution to a problem that doesn’t need any technology, just a little bit of common sense. If you remove bloat, the web becomes crazy fast. How smart do you have to be to understand that?
Android system with no apps takes almost 6 Gb. Just think for a second how obscenely HUGE that number is. What’s in there, HD movies? I guess it’s basically code: kernel, drivers. Some string and resources too, sure, but those can’t be big. So, how many drivers do you need for a phone?
[snip]
Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp

This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online.
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[Dave Farber]

Date: September 29, 2018 at 11:07:20 AM GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] re Software disenchantment

Does no one use predictive texting? Autocorrect?

We had predictive text completion and auto-correct (spelling) in the editorial system at the Las Vegas Sun newspaper in 1986. The system (which supported a two dozen reporters / editors on VT-320 terminals with a rudimentary “window system”) ran on a pair of Sun-3/160 “workstations” with far fewer combined resources (4MB of slow RAM in each, 500-ish MB disk drives, 10Mbps Ethernet) than any “smartphone”.
Jim

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