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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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835 points turrini | 11 comments | 13 May 25 10:31 UTC | HN request time: 1.801s | source | bottom
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titzer ◴[13 May 25 12:05 UTC] No.43971962[source]▶
I like to point out that since ~1980, computing power has increased about 1000X.

If dynamic array bounds checking cost 5% (narrator: it is far less than that), and we turned it on everywhere, we could have computers that are just a mere 950X faster.

If you went back in time to 1980 and offered the following choice:

I'll give you a computer that runs 950X faster and doesn't have a huge class of memory safety vulnerabilities, and you can debug your programs orders of magnitude more easily, or you can have a computer that runs 1000X faster and software will be just as buggy, or worse, and debugging will be even more of a nightmare.

People would have their minds blown at 950X. You wouldn't even have to offer 1000X. But guess what we chose...

Personally I think the 1000Xers kinda ruined things for the rest of us.

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1. ngangaga ◴[13 May 25 12:07 UTC] No.43971976[source]▶
I don't think it's that deep. We are just stuck with browsers now, for better and worse. Everything else trails.
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2. slowmovintarget ◴[13 May 25 12:26 UTC] No.43972138[source]▶
We're stuck with browsers now until the primary touch with the internet is assistants / agent UIs / chat consoles.

That could end up being Electron (VS Code), though that would be a bit sad.

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3. scotty79 ◴[13 May 25 12:31 UTC] No.43972185[source]▶
I don't think we are gonna go there. Talking is cumbersome. There's a reason, besides social anxiety that people prefer to use self-checkout and electronically order fastfood. There are easier ways to do a lot of things than with words.

I'd bet on maybe ad hoc ai designed ui-s you click but have a voice search when you are confused about something.

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4. ◴[13 May 25 12:36 UTC] No.43972233{3}[source]▶
5. ngangaga ◴[13 May 25 12:41 UTC] No.43972270[source]▶
I think it'd be pretty funny if to book travel in 2035 you need to use a travel agent that's objectively dumber than a human. We'd be stuck in the eighties again, but this time without each other to rely on.

Of course, that would be suicide for the industry. But I'm not sure investors see that.

6. bluGill ◴[13 May 25 13:14 UTC] No.43972590{3}[source]▶
If you know what you want then not talking to a human is faster. However if you are not sure a human can figure out. I'm not sure I'd trust a voice assistant - the value in the human is an informed opinion which is hard to program, but it is easy to program a recommendation for whatever makes the most profit. Of course humans often don't have an informed opinion either, but at least sometimes they do, and they will also sometimes admit it when they don't.
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7. scotty79 ◴[13 May 25 14:08 UTC] No.43973164{4}[source]▶
> the value in the human is an informed opinion which is hard to program

I don't think I ever used a human for that. They are usually very uninformed about everything that's not their standard operational procedure or some current promotional materials.

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8. bluGill ◴[13 May 25 14:14 UTC] No.43973219{5}[source]▶
20 years ago when I was at McDonalds there would be several customers per shift (so many 1 in 500?) who didn't know what they wanted and asked for a recommendation. Since I worked there I ate there often enough to know if the special was something I liked or not.
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9. scotty79 ◴[13 May 25 14:34 UTC] No.43973439{6}[source]▶
Bless your souls. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I just personally had only bad experiences so I actively avoid human interactive input in my commercial activity.
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10. slowmovintarget ◴[13 May 25 17:38 UTC] No.43975552{3}[source]▶
Search is being replaced by LLM chat. Agent workflows are going to get us to a place where people can rally software to their own purposes. At that point, they don't have to interact with the web front end, they can interact with their own personal front-end that is able to navigate your backend.

Today a website is easier. But just like there's a very large percentage of people doing a great many things from their phone instead of tying themselves to a full-blown personal computer, there will be an increasing number of people who send their agents off to get things done. In that scenario, the user interface is further up the stack than a browser, if there's a browser as typically understood in the stack at all.

11. MonkeyClub ◴[14 May 25 13:43 UTC] No.43984456{7}[source]▶
> I actively avoid human interactive input in my commercial activity

Not to mention that the "human input" can be pre-scripted to urge you to purchase more, so it's not genuinely a human interaction, it's only a human delivering some bullshit "value add" marketing verbiage.