[Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray rdmur...@bitdance.comwrote: PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, and that probably colors my worldview. :) I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately. Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll buy a new device. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On 9 October 2013 03:35, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray rdmur...@bitdance.comwrote: PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, and that probably colors my worldview. :) I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately. Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll buy a new device. I look at it a different way. Developers should be given powerful machines to speed up the development cycle (especially important when prototyping and in the code/run unit test cycle), but everything should be tested on the smallest machine available. It's also a good idea for each developer to have a resource-constrained machine for developer testing/profiling/etc. Virtual machines work quite well for this - you can modify the resource constraints (CPU, memory, etc) to simulate different scenarios. I find that this tends to better promote the methodology of make it right, then make it fast (small, etc), which I subscribe to. Optimising too early leads to all your code being complicated, rather than just the bits that need it. Tim Delaney ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
Let's agree to disagree then. I see your methodology used all around me with often problematic results. Maybe devs should have two machines -- one monster that is *only* usable to develop fast, one small that where they run their own apps (email, web browser etc.). On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Tim Delaney timothy.c.dela...@gmail.comwrote: On 9 October 2013 03:35, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray rdmur...@bitdance.comwrote: PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, and that probably colors my worldview. :) I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately. Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll buy a new device. I look at it a different way. Developers should be given powerful machines to speed up the development cycle (especially important when prototyping and in the code/run unit test cycle), but everything should be tested on the smallest machine available. It's also a good idea for each developer to have a resource-constrained machine for developer testing/profiling/etc. Virtual machines work quite well for this - you can modify the resource constraints (CPU, memory, etc) to simulate different scenarios. I find that this tends to better promote the methodology of make it right, then make it fast (small, etc), which I subscribe to. Optimising too early leads to all your code being complicated, rather than just the bits that need it. Tim Delaney -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On 9 October 2013 07:38, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: Let's agree to disagree then. I see your methodology used all around me with often problematic results. Maybe devs should have two machines -- one monster that is *only* usable to develop fast, one small that where they run their own apps (email, web browser etc.). I've done that before too - it works quite well (especially if you set them up to use a single keyboard/mouse). I suspect the main determination of whether a fast machine as the primary development machine works better depends heavily on the developer and what their background is. I've also worked in resource-constrained environments, so I'm always considering the impact of my choices, even when I go for the less complicated option initially. I've also been fortunate to mainly work in places where software development was considered a craft, with pride in what we produced. However, I think I should probably reconsider my viewpoint in light of my current employment ... I despair at some of the code I see ... Tim Delaney ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
Sounds like you are suggesting we get a raspberry pi. All sorts of dumb waste shows up when you run code on those. El oct 8, 2013 4:46 p.m., Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org escribió: Let's agree to disagree then. I see your methodology used all around me with often problematic results. Maybe devs should have two machines -- one monster that is *only* usable to develop fast, one small that where they run their own apps (email, web browser etc.). On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Tim Delaney timothy.c.dela...@gmail.comwrote: On 9 October 2013 03:35, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray rdmur...@bitdance.comwrote: PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, and that probably colors my worldview. :) I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately. Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll buy a new device. I look at it a different way. Developers should be given powerful machines to speed up the development cycle (especially important when prototyping and in the code/run unit test cycle), but everything should be tested on the smallest machine available. It's also a good idea for each developer to have a resource-constrained machine for developer testing/profiling/etc. Virtual machines work quite well for this - you can modify the resource constraints (CPU, memory, etc) to simulate different scenarios. I find that this tends to better promote the methodology of make it right, then make it fast (small, etc), which I subscribe to. Optimising too early leads to all your code being complicated, rather than just the bits that need it. Tim Delaney -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/dholth%40gmail.com ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
It's not actually so much the extreme waste that I'm looking to expose, but rather the day-to-day annoyances of stuff you use regularly that slows you down by just a second (or ten), or things that gets slower at each release. On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Daniel Holth dho...@gmail.com wrote: Sounds like you are suggesting we get a raspberry pi. All sorts of dumb waste shows up when you run code on those. El oct 8, 2013 4:46 p.m., Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org escribió: Let's agree to disagree then. I see your methodology used all around me with often problematic results. Maybe devs should have two machines -- one monster that is *only* usable to develop fast, one small that where they run their own apps (email, web browser etc.). On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Tim Delaney timothy.c.dela...@gmail.comwrote: On 9 October 2013 03:35, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray rdmur...@bitdance.comwrote: PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, and that probably colors my worldview. :) I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately. Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll buy a new device. I look at it a different way. Developers should be given powerful machines to speed up the development cycle (especially important when prototyping and in the code/run unit test cycle), but everything should be tested on the smallest machine available. It's also a good idea for each developer to have a resource-constrained machine for developer testing/profiling/etc. Virtual machines work quite well for this - you can modify the resource constraints (CPU, memory, etc) to simulate different scenarios. I find that this tends to better promote the methodology of make it right, then make it fast (small, etc), which I subscribe to. Optimising too early leads to all your code being complicated, rather than just the bits that need it. Tim Delaney -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/dholth%40gmail.com -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On 9 October 2013 09:10, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org wrote: It's not actually so much the extreme waste that I'm looking to expose, but rather the day-to-day annoyances of stuff you use regularly that slows you down by just a second (or ten), or things that gets slower at each release. Veering off-topic (but still related) ... There's a reason I turn off all animations when I set up a machine for someone ... I've found turning off the animations is the quickest way to make a machine feel faster - even better than adding an SSD. The number of times I've fixed a slow machine by this one change ... I think everyone even remotely involved in the existence of animations in the OS should be forced to have the slowest animations turned on at all times, no matter the platform (OSX, Windows, Linux ...). Which comes back to the idea of developers having slow machines so they feel the pain ... Tim Delaney ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On 08/10/2013 23:21, Tim Delaney wrote: On 9 October 2013 09:10, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org mailto:gu...@python.org wrote: It's not actually so much the extreme waste that I'm looking to expose, but rather the day-to-day annoyances of stuff you use regularly that slows you down by just a second (or ten), or things that gets slower at each release. Veering off-topic (but still related) ... There's a reason I turn off all animations when I set up a machine for someone ... I've found turning off the animations is the quickest way to make a machine feel faster - even better than adding an SSD. The number of times I've fixed a slow machine by this one change ... I think everyone even remotely involved in the existence of animations in the OS should be forced to have the slowest animations turned on at all times, no matter the platform (OSX, Windows, Linux ...). Which comes back to the idea of developers having slow machines so they feel the pain ... I remember one time when I was using a Mac. Although it was faster than another machine I was using, the GUI felt sluggish because instead of windows just appearing and disappearing they expanded and contracted, which, of course, took time; not much time, true, but enough to become annoying. ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 12:22 AM, MRAB pyt...@mrabarnett.plus.com wrote: On 08/10/2013 23:21, Tim Delaney wrote: On 9 October 2013 09:10, Guido van Rossum gu...@python.org mailto:gu...@python.org wrote: It's not actually so much the extreme waste that I'm looking to expose, but rather the day-to-day annoyances of stuff you use regularly that slows you down by just a second (or ten), or things that gets slower at each release. Veering off-topic (but still related) ... There's a reason I turn off all animations when I set up a machine for someone ... I've found turning off the animations is the quickest way to make a machine feel faster - even better than adding an SSD. The number of times I've fixed a slow machine by this one change ... I think everyone even remotely involved in the existence of animations in the OS should be forced to have the slowest animations turned on at all times, no matter the platform (OSX, Windows, Linux ...). Which comes back to the idea of developers having slow machines so they feel the pain ... I remember one time when I was using a Mac. Although it was faster than another machine I was using, the GUI felt sluggish because instead of windows just appearing and disappearing they expanded and contracted, which, of course, took time; not much time, true, but enough to become annoying. Try holding shift and minimizing/restoring Finder in OS X ;). Nam ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
