When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
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I remember when you could still install the old NCSA Mosaic binary on some newer hardware, which I think isn't possible anymore with chip changes. Anyway, a coworker challenged me to try it and I was like sure.
I cannot begin to describe how fast it was. Eyeblink fast. Screamingly fast. Comically fast -- I literally guffawed when it loaded one page. Like the whole webpage was a JPG it just loaded from disk. And of course a bunch of stuff didn't work, but most of it was crap I didn't want anyway.
@MichaelTBacon @MartinEscardo You know what drives me nuts? Volume control.
Once upon a time, you could change volume INSTANTLY. It was just a cheap potentiometer. If something was TOO LOUD, you could turn the pot and THAT PROBLEM was solved just like that.
But on a modern laptop? Or "smart" phone? Or almost anything? Yeah, good luck turning down the volume in a humanly reasonable amount of time.
The CPU can do like millions of things per second, but not one of them is turning down the volume
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When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.
And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.
I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.
So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.
The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).
@MartinEscardo Even back then there were horrible examples. See Windows 2000, which was able to make slow any fast machine of the time. Although Microsoft had a great idea: label it as "Professional". Every "serious" user had to go with a deadly slow machine, but running a professional OS!
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@rl_dane @MartinEscardo the whole "curl [url-quoted-by-rando-foreign-remote-anon-strangers-incented-to-betray-you-and-filter-for-gullibility] | sudo bash" trend just blows my frickin mind.
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When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.
And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.
I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.
So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.
The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).
@MartinEscardo I'm writing book on HPC. but I do worry about a possible shrinking market demand by people who might ever care anymore. I am gambling there will always be a slice, and niches, where it will always matter
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@rl_dane @MartinEscardo and then... Enter The Vibe Coding. "its so awesome I can ask Claude to whip up my own personal ideal Time Tracking app for me!" Consequence: the biz now has 1000 completely distinct Time Tracking app codebases in use, each with wildly different arch and third party lib/service dependencies, and..." *nightmare*
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When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.
And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.
I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.
So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.
The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).
@MartinEscardo I do feel like the entire field of Computer Science has completely abandoned the principle of efficiency.
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@rl_dane @MartinEscardo yeah I have a love/hate relationship with Docker and their image ecosystem because of it. images and containers are wise ideas and net wins in some cases when "just so" and they they are horribly unwise in others. too many folks dont seem to see the nuance of those distinction boundaries. they can bite
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@MichaelTBacon @MartinEscardo You know what drives me nuts? Volume control.
Once upon a time, you could change volume INSTANTLY. It was just a cheap potentiometer. If something was TOO LOUD, you could turn the pot and THAT PROBLEM was solved just like that.
But on a modern laptop? Or "smart" phone? Or almost anything? Yeah, good luck turning down the volume in a humanly reasonable amount of time.
The CPU can do like millions of things per second, but not one of them is turning down the volume
@isaackuo @MichaelTBacon @MartinEscardo As corporate tech enshittifies, I hope the smallscale hacker tech that is increasingly and delightfully able to take its functional place really embraces bringing back physical buttons and knobs, and I have some genuine optimism it will. -
@rl_dane @MartinEscardo lately I feel like I'm witnessing millions of people who, all at once, and who are demonstrably lazy or ignorant or reckless, or all three, decide it would be incredibly wise for them to start juggling chainsaws
"This... will not end well."
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When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.
And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.
I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.
So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.
The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).
Yeah I remember how long I put off updating Microsoft word, because the new version was 30 MB and that just seemed so ridiculously bloaty
It was the size a hard drive used to be, a few years previous!
Goodness knows what size it is now. I haven't used it in about 25 years
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When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.
Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.
And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.
I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.
So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.
The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).
@MartinEscardo outside of the slop thing, that's quite the rose-tinted-glasses take
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Yeah I remember how long I put off updating Microsoft word, because the new version was 30 MB and that just seemed so ridiculously bloaty
It was the size a hard drive used to be, a few years previous!
Goodness knows what size it is now. I haven't used it in about 25 years
@NilaJones @MartinEscardo Remember when you opened your 25k MSWord files and they suddenly expanded to 250k? That was the beginning of the end.
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