I hate that computers get faster, because it means I'll be forced to buy another laptop. It goes like this:
- Some developer buys a new laptop
- Developer writes software (a browser)
- When the software works "fast enough" on their new laptop, they ship it
- The software was designed to work on the dev's new laptop, not my old laptop
- Soon the software is too bloated to work on my old laptop
- So I have to buy a new laptop to run the software
Before I'd buy a laptop because it had cool new features. But now the only reason I buy a new one is the new software crashes from too little RAM, or runs too slowly. My old laptops work just fine. All the old apps they come with work just fine. Even new native apps work just fine. But they can't run a recent browser. And you can't do anything without a recent browser.
If our computers never got faster, we would still be able to do everything the same that we can do today. But we wouldn't have to put down a grand every couple years to replace a perfectly good machine.
I think what you want is for software developers not to write bloated code, instead of computers not getting faster. The bloated code is a result of undisciplined programming and not paying attention to users' devices.
If our computers never got faster, we would never get faster computers (obviously...) to run efficient code even faster. 3D rendering and physics simulation come to mind.
I have noticed what you mention over longer timescales (e.g. a decade). But it's mostly "flashy" software - games, trendy things... Which also includes many websites sadly - the minimum RAM usage for a mainstream website tab these days seems to be around 200MB.
Anecdata: My 12 year old desktop still runs Ubuntu+latest Firefox fine (granted, it probably wouldn't be happy with Windows, and laptops are generally weaker). Counter-anecdata: A friend's Mac Pro from many years ago can't run latest Safari and many other apps, so is quite useless.
> I think what you want is for software developers not to write bloated code, instead of computers not getting faster. The bloated code is a result of undisciplined programming and not paying attention to users' devices.
I am so fed up of hearing this. I would love to optimise my code, but management will always prioritise features over optimisations because that is what drives sales. This happens at almost every company I've worked at.
Also more often than not, I have a huge problem even getting stuff working and having to wrangle co-workers who I have to suffer with that cannot do basic jobs, do not write test and in some cases I've found don't even run the code before submitting PRs. That code then get merged because "it looks good" when there is obvious problems that I can spot in some cases from literally the other side of the room.
> If our computers never got faster, we would never get faster computers (obviously...) to run efficient code even faster. 3D rendering and physics simulation come to mind.
The solution to that is a few decades old: plug-in a 3D rendering card. (Of course there's the whole system bus issue, but that's largely solved by a bigger bus, rather than a faster CPU and more system memory. 3d programs requiring more cpu/memory is largely software bloat)
A few decades ago there was a lot of research into system-level parallel processing. The idea was to just add more machines to scale up processing power (if needed). But because machines got faster, there was less need for it, so the research was mostly abandoned. We would all be using distributed OSes today if it weren't for faster machines.
I don't know if that's accurate to software developers, but it makes me cringe a bit as a game developer. I upgraded from a 1060 to 4060 and suddenly did waaaay less optimization; it just wasn't top of mind anymore. Of course, that bill still comes due eventually..
I agree. My M1 Air is the best laptop I’ve ever owned (and that goes back 30 years). While I’m finally getting tempted to upgrade by M5, the reality is my M1 is still quite usable. I’m thinking I might use it until it either fails or Apple finally cuts support for it.
If our computers never got faster, we would still be able to do everything the same that we can do today. But we wouldn't have to put down a grand every couple years to replace a perfectly good machine.