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

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838 points turrini | 1 comments | 13 May 25 10:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.321s | source
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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. noobermin ◴[13 May 25 13:17 UTC] No.43972619[source]▶
The first reply is essentially right. This isn't what happened at all, just because C is still prevalent. All the inefficiency is everything down the stack, not in C.