Comment by scoopertrooper
4 years ago
Programmers still carefully optimise things when it matters e.g, IoT.
However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage).
Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve?
> However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage).
I'll give a counterpoint to this example; MineSweeper on the Windows Store.
Last time I took a look, the installation size of this app was more than a 'functional' install of the entire Windows 98 OS, including a slightly-less-colorful version of the same game.
Or, for a more 'Business' example. Autocad 2013+; it became bloated, frustrating to work with, and expensive.
> Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve?
In a 'happy path' fusion scenario, the best refrigerator design would be one with the lowest ozone depleting and/or greenhouse gas emitting setup, so long as the energy consumption was overall sustainable on the grid a lot of them were hooked up to.
Another example: Hacker News website vs. other websites.
It has perfect functionality but doesn't waste your time by loading bloatware for 10 seconds.
I have to question "perfect functionality".
Even 25 years ago, on Slashdot I could tell it not to show comments with less than a certain number of upvotes, and thus filter out a lot of the dross from busy conversations.
I can't do that on HN. I can do something like it on Reddit, although I know of no "expand all" functionality, but on HN it's all or nothing.
That is imperfect to say the least.
So:
It is not just a lack of optimization, I don't even know what to call it at this point. Intentional wastefulness probably.
I am a software engineer but I can't even imagine how a flashlight app can be several megabytes. What is inside it?
> However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage).
Bandwidth and storage are not always plentiful. I might have a lot of other things to store and not enough room for a half a gig deck of cards. And maybe my local tower is down and I've got an intermittent signal from the next one over.
> Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve?
A more efficient fridge dumps less heat into the kitchen (or wherever), which means temperature fluctuation and more comfort, even if A/C is effectively free, it makes noise and what not. The other comment about environmental impact is also worth considering, although if energy is free and plentiful, I expect most power plants to switch and for syngas to takeover where liquid fuel still makes sense, which might make worrying about emissions obsolete (although who knows, anyway fusion seems capital intensive for the forseable future, so I'm not going to plan for free and plentiful energy)
I think you almost completely missed his point.
I think software quality was actually higher then. Dealing with a new API or framework is work too, often it’s actually more work than a bespoke implementation.