I listen to the "Retro Computing Roundtable", some time ago in one of their discussions they referenced the idea that optimizing code would improve the speed of an application some ridiculous amount, like 10x or more. The problem was that traditionally spending a bunch of time optimizing code was wasted time because you could just wait for the hardware to get faster... The article Max referenced originally is very difficult to read. I'm hoping its either AI generated or is translated from some other language... -Curt
On Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 12:08:44 PM EST, Jim Cathey via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: Silicon computing has reached a plateau. They can continue to multi-core things, but software cannot be multi-cored easily, or very thoroughly. The current performance limit IS software efficiency. Current high-end desktop hardware would be able to serve thousands of users simultaneously, IF the software (and, more importantly, expectations) were written as efficiently as it was in the 1970's. It is not. Most emphatically not. Nobody being trained today even has a clue as to how the machine actually works inside. They think Python is 'low level'. _Interpreted_ Python, for cryin' out loud... Or, once upon a time a Finance department would be using custom-written database software. Now, however, they all spend their days e-mailing Excel spreadsheets to each other, and flanging up macros to try to do some custom reporting. Bleh. Once upon a time, if one needed to, say, add up a large column of numbers stored in a text file one would write a simple program (C, BASIC, etc.) to do this. Fast to write, and fast to execute. NOW, nobody would do anything else but throw Excel at it. Maybe find out that the size of the file was more than Excel could handle, and then try chopping it up into multiple excel files, and ganging those results together... There is vast performance potential to be had by mining the software shitheap. Whether it will get done or not... -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com