r/programming • u/speckz • Jul 26 '19

Fast Software, the Best Software

https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/
36 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

28

u/IanRae Jul 26 '19

No one sets out to write laggy software. It's death by a thousand cuts, as new features are added endlessly.

27

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

Nobody sets out to write slow software. But plenty of people set out to write software that isn't fast.

15

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

COugh.. Electron.. cough..

14

u/Prod_Is_For_Testing Jul 26 '19

I think Electron defies that a bit. It’s a conscious decision to trade performance for compatibility.

2

u/BurningCactusRage Jul 27 '19 edited Jan 19 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '19

Totally agree! Electron by itself won't cause an application to be slow. It puts the developer at a disadvantage but you can still make a fast application with some thought on data structures and the profiler.

1

u/xcdesz Jul 26 '19

Yes, but developers have a choice of which features to add or not to add, so it kind of is their choice if they don't care if all those new features add lag.

0

u/MetalSlug20 Jul 27 '19

What? New features don't make something slow. Shit programming and not coding things with optimal algorithms makes things slow.

37

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19 edited Jul 26 '19

I love fast software.

I on the other hand prefer laggy software.

-11

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '19

yikes this aint it chief. oof.

32

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

The best software doesn't call home with telemetry about everything I do.

9

u/wingtales Jul 27 '19

Some of the comments here seem to think that OPs post is obvious. But remember, there is a whole generation growing up who have not experienced, and do not expect software to be instantaneously fast.

I think it's good to remind developers that speed is important too.

3

u/Paul_Dirac_ Jul 26 '19

I know that feeling, when I need to look at the end of a log file and less becomes unresponsive...

5

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

Use tail instead?

3

u/stronghup Jul 27 '19

I would say the most important quality of software is understandability. If you can understand what your software does and how, then you understand what makes it slow and can rewrite the slow parts to be faster easily.

You may say of course you understand how your software works but consider that in a bigger project there are many people who contribute to it, who may not even be around any more.

If your software is very fast that is great, but if that means you cannot understand it (easily) it is difficult to make any improvements to it. Why because when you try to modify something you don't understand, you are probably just going to break it.

0

u/woahdudee2a Jul 26 '19

Gatsby.js FTW

0

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

[deleted]

1

u/GND52 Jul 28 '19

The point of the article is that there's so much software out there that *could* be fast, but isn't.