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Is software getting slower faster than hardware getting faster?

9 points by libcheet ↗ HN
Recently we had a discussion in a local group of programmers and there was a newbie question about which mac laptop he should buy. He wanted a mac because some tasks required a mac. My immediate advice was to buy an m1 since he was trying to optimize the budget. And my argument was that it is fast and will handle all his workloads. But I got a little push-back saying that "Android Studio" was not fast enough on some of the group's m1 macs and they switched to m3.

Opinions were divided when we discussed this in our group in about 50/50. Some people were saying that they have m1 macs and it works perfectly and others saying that it is ok but was lagging on some tasks.

My surprise is that I remember when m1 came it was like a product from future aliens. It was miles ahead of any competition and nobody had a single thought that it couldn't handle anything. I remember at the time Jonathan Blow (game developer) on his stream was answering a question about m1 and said something along the lines "Yeah it's fast but I don't care. Give it a couple of years and software slowness will catch up to it and it won't matter". At the time I was fascinated with the product and John seemed like a grumpy old-school programmer. But now it feels weird. I am not saying that m1 is slow or bad but just the idea that we are discussing if it can handle some basic programmer workloads and it is not 100% "of course" is strange.

I was wondering if it is similar in other groups or if we had just some statistical error in our group?

23 comments

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kwhitefoot
Niklaus Wirth in 1995:

«Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster»

libcheet
Everything new is well-forgotten old.
didgetmaster
Unfortunately, speed and efficiency of software is too low on many developer's totem pole. Feature bloat, time to market pressures, unrealistic schedules, and 'scale-out' architectures are much more prominent priorities than building tight, elegant code that runs fast even on old hardware.
libcheet
I guess I got used to it and not it does not give me as a developer to squeeze every last bit of performance for regular day job. My apps already run at 60 fps and spending more time on optimizing it just don't more dopamine.
danlugo92
Programmers code themselves into unmaintainable mess, without nobody having told them to use microservices or redux saga, nor nobody told them to stray away from SQL.
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JSDevOps
"Python Bootcamps" have a lot to answer for.
proc0
Since Android Studio was mentioned, I think software development is one of the use cases that requires a powerful PC/laptop, especially if you are dealing with large enterprise apps. For everyone other than developers and content creators (artists, editors, etc), it's probably true that hardware has already peaked a few years ago and those use cases will not take advantage of the more expensive cutting edge hardware.
libcheet
On one side it is true and I am actually OK with it. But my wife has iphone 12 and it was fantastic at the time and now she always complains how slow and laggy it is. I checked it myself and it is true. Of course it's been almost 4 years since the release but I don't think user software changed that much during this time.
proc0
Yeah, mobile devices are still hardware bottlenecked for a lot of apps.
RGamma
This has been discussed here several times already, but basically, the more capable hardware affords "sloppier" (or more abstracted) programming.

This is why even simple applications now require inane amounts of CPU cycles and/or RAM and/or disk storage for basic functions (looking at you, Spotify). The memory wall doesn't help either.

But we also get more correct, complex and cross-platform applications. So not all is bad, I guess.

Depending on the hardware/software you use YMMV, of course... But yeah, unfortunately can't stop upgrading my systems yet.

akasakahakada
It is incompetence. Everytime I optimize any oss library developed by some Googlers, the result is 20X performance boost still using plain Python. Compiling my optimized version by Cython can only gain 1.5X speedup.

Like, comparing my Numpy code to Numpy code written by other people, I don't know why mine can be so much faster. (https://github.com/hirasawakinko/Numpy-Done-Right)

prosaic-hacker
What will the world look like after the "Great HW speedup Plateau". Will we have top level optimizers rewriting code to get software only speed ups.
kingofthehills
we also have more affordable hardware now, so we don't have to be as efficient with software anymore. We got fat and lazy hehe you can pick up a server with some ungodly amount of ram, used, put it in your garage to run everything you need and then some for under 500.
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dyingkneepad
More important than speed is the perception of speed and how users react it. I usually don't notice things are slow until I see my wife using them. She has absolutely zero patience with tech, so if she taps/clicks something and it doesn't react in 0.3s, she's going to tap or click it again. I realized how slow my last smartphone was when she tried to used it and got extremely annoyed, then I couldn't unsee it anymore.

I am used to just waiting a few seconds even when there's no UI response at all, and don't get annoyed at slower stuff, unless it's something like an ssh session or a video-game, something where input is constantly causing output.

But to answer you: I think it really depends on which software and which hardware you're talking about. There's no general answer here.

muzani
No device will ever be fast enough to run an Android Studio app with "clean architecture".

On the other end, I believe much of the software world is going through a Twitter phase. Companies that once aimed for 99.99% uptime and millisecond responses times are now okay with firing most of the company, and having 90% uptime and multisecond response times. So lots of software will appear slower.

tripleo1
> "Android Studio" was not fast enough on some of the group's m1 macs

I'm going to sleep.

karanveer
2022: I own a macbook air m1 256gb. I made 3d games from it. I used android studio latest and greatest. I admired this beast even more.

2024: Works great no issues, dont do gdev much anymore but hell yaeh m1 is pretty solid advice u gave.

Those who said oh its slower or so are mostly those people who watch a lot of reviews and the 'coders' who say its not doable, or its slow, probably dont have a reference point of comparison most of the time, blindly following I'd say.