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Comment by sipos | Hacker News Reader

TBH, I think we just need much more efficient software. This is something we can do, and used to do more. It is insane how inefficient many things we write today are compared to how they could be. I'd love it if efficient code was a reasonable goal again, but at the moment, it just isn't worth the time using more efficient technologies and doing optimisation because it usually isn't really necessary. I've spent time optimizing code where it was really necessary, but it so rarely is that I've only once had the opportunity to spend as much time as I'd like to on this.

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Amen to this. In '89, a Sun Sparcstation 1 ran a decent implementation of UNIX with a GUI on a 20 MHz processor with just 8 MB of RAM. Now we have dual core processors running at 700+ MHz and 0.75GB of RAM used to power smartwatches that do vastly less. I mean, sure, it's technologically impressive and all but one has to wonder what the devil are they doing in there that requires all that power?

Using the wrong compilation models?

It is not even the case of using GC and such.

Our phones are way more powerful than any Xerox PARC or Lisp Machine ever was.

For the longest time it's been a truism that developer time is a lot more expensive than CPU time, which leads to things like the proliferation of Electron.

I get why it's done, but part of me wishes that CPU growth would stall off for a bit so the software industry would have no choice but to treat optimization as a selling point again.

Do we though? Think about how many engineers the big 5 are hiring... they can't get enough! If we really needed more efficient software, they'd have to hire even more!

The focus should be on developer productivity first, then product iteration, then performance.

Yes, but once Moore’s law really stops, the need for product iteration will too, unless you can get functionality gains from increased performance. Once you start caring about performance, you’ll rapidly realize the “productivity” languages slow you down.

For example, try to compute CRC32 checksums of 100 byte arrays at bus speed in C/C++ and then in the higher level language of your choice.

Can I use rust as my higher level language of choice? :)

In all seriousness though, I wonder if once Moore's law really stops we'll see a surge of innovation in compiler and language paradigms, born out of necessity. It seems to me that the revolution in higher-level languages and paradigms came because we could (computationally) afford it, so it makes sense that once the incentives change we'll see innovation in other areas.

I would think other HN readers are more at the center of things than me and better equipped to comment, but my perception is, comparing the last ten years to the ten years before that, we have seen Moore's law stop and we have seen a surge of innovation in software, and even in chip design when you consider things like TPUs. It seems odd to present it as speculation about the future.

High level languages made it easier to write complicated programs without shooting yourselves in the foot.

Big 5 want to hire like crazy is a myth.

I bet Pascal, Ada and a few others will achieve similar results.

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