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Do they know one second is slow? (registerspill.thorstenball.com)
submitted 1 year ago by invicticide@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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Computers can create and destroy entire worlds in one second. One second is multiple billions โ€“ billions! โ€“ of executed instructions. One second is an eternity for a computer.

Yet I sometimes wonder whether one second is the smallest unit of time most programmers think in. Do they know that you can run entire test suites in 1s and not just a single test? Do they know that one second is slow?

Seeing how slow modern software can be, on modern hardware, just makes me sad sometimes. I really feel this person's pain, including the slow creeping insanity of "how is nobody else noticing/bothered by this". ๐Ÿ˜“

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[-] zlatko@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

I think it is a bit more than that.

You point out two things:

  • the "fuck it" algorithm
  • the hidden DNS request.

So, now, obviously if you wrote the "fuck it", then well, you fix it. If you found the DNS library problem - find a better lib or something.

But if you take the stance "fuck it, there's always something", you don't even have a chance of finding out. If you had a test suite running 10 seconds, and suddenly it's up by 10 more, you would notice. If you had tests running for 10 minutes, you would not.

If you had a webapp or something that always opened "fast", then suddenly it gets doubly slower, you'll notice it. But if you already started slow, you won't notice (or care, or both), when it gets even worse.

I think that's the point of the article. If we all dug in and fixed a little bit, eventually we'd have fast apps or tests or whatever. If you accept that things suck, you'll make it tripply worse. It is a conscious effort to be fast.

this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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