The specs for laptops dont appear to have changed in the past six or more years. Still 4\8 Gb Ram & 100-200gb storage. Is storage stagnating because people stream everything now? Are laptops not representative? Is it bitcoin?

  • Slowpoke [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Those spectacular gains in processor performance were all eaten by software developers. Instead of having an uber-fast computer, you have a computer that is rather slower than Windows 98, and developers' job is easier. Used to be, you had to know something to program. Be sharp, have talent. But now anyone can take a six week bootcamp and get a job coding. Because they can lean on that giant processor to do all the work. It slows the computer to a crawl, but what kind of developer actually uses her own software?

    • LoudMuffin [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I'm a comp sci major and maybe this speaks to how much I don't fucking know, is it just people not understanding memory allocation and relying too much on ridiculously bloated libraries?

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There's a number of factors:

        • Ridiculously bloated libraries. Devs don't want to push back against it because being an expert in one is job security, and managers don't want to push back because having a dedicated person for each library gives an excuse to have more headcount.
        • Adding something on top of something else is a natural way to accomplish things, and has a performance penalty, and takes legitimate effort to undo. This effort isn't profitable so it's never prioritized.
        • Constant reprioritization and reshuffling of priorities means constantly losing the people who know how the system works. The new people add in a new layer to demonstrate they understand the system.
        • Nobody uses a fucking profiler. Because it takes time and the only benefit is performance, which is hard to demonstrate profit from. Also a lot of devs have weird hangups where they think their pet topic is better for performance than using a profiler.
        • Adware.
        • All the major OS vendors have abandoned development in favor of trying to chase mobile/app store/adware money rather than making their development experience make sense, so there's no coherent way to develop a cross-platform app you're stuck with shit like Electron.
      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Honestly, I think that's a lot of it. Look at the kind of shit we call cross platform now. Electron apps are running javascript in a chrome process as an appliance for god's sake, it's madness. I don't think devs that know better really like any of that, but it's a way to shove out an app that does stuff I think.

        • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          1 Password recently announced they’re replacing their native macOS app with an Electron app, it’s very sad to see. JavaScript is an abomination, a hack, a joke of a language. Yet it is essentially cementing its place as the universal technology.

          I spent a year writing Elixir and Phoenix/LiveView professionally - it was the only time in my career I actually enjoyed front end development, as I finally wasn’t writing fucking JS. Sadly that experience probably won’t repeat itself!

        • mittens [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Exactly, you can run most shit with a core2duo nowadays, even the shitty electron crap no problem. Hell, even a raspi can run electron apps no problem. Issue mainly is that it has a large space complexity, it hogs memory, every instance by default eats up somewhere between 100MB to 200MB which is a lot for low-specced laptops, but that's mainly an OEM problem.