korrents

software performance

Speed as a mark of quality: bloat, boot times, and software that got slower on hardware that got faster.

FilterEveryone, all time78 from 32 people
Group All Technologists 13Founders & executives 4Artists & entertainers 1Designers 1Writers & journalists 4
Who Everyone CMCasey Muratori 20 NENelson Elhage 6 CMCraig Mod 5 BGBrendan Gregg 4 DHDavid Heinemeier Hansson 4 GRGuillermo Rauch 4 DLDaniel Lemire 3 AOAddy Osmani 2 DSDerek Sivers 2 MBMatt Birchler 2 NPNikita Prokopov 2 RPRob Pike 2 SHScott Hanselman 2 TBThorsten Ball 2 APAaron Patterson 1 ARAlice Ryhl 1 BCBoris Cherny 1 DLDan Luu 1 DSDaniel Stenberg 1 FVFederico Viticci 1 JBJamie Brandon 1 JEJulia Evans 1 JJJustin Jackson 1 KVKenton Varda 1 RVRahul Vohra 1 RARasmus Andersson 1 SSSalvatore Sanfilippo 1 SJSteve Jobs 1 TSTim Sweeney 1 TPTom Preston-Werner 1 VBVitalik Buterin 1 XIXe Iaso 1
When All time Past 1 yearPast 3 yearsPast 5 years
  1. VB

    Vitalik Buterin quoted

    Co-founder of Ethereum

    Our readingThe decentralization of cryptographic networks is shifting from purely a safety burden to, in a few limited cases, a performance strength.

    cryptography

    Their wordsPerhaps the most important shift is that the decentralized nature of the network is shifting from being purely a burden incurred in the name of safety and robustness to at least sometimes, in a few limited cases, being a strength even from a performance perspective.

    ↗The cryptographic world computervitalik.eth.limo

  2. 6 days earlier
  3. FV

    Federico Viticci quoted

    Founder and editor-in-chief of MacStories

    Our readingThe M5 Ultra Mac Studio is a massive leap in performance for local models powered by MLX.

    Their wordsIf you fall on the other end of the spectrum, though, and if you think this kind of stuff is neat…let me tell you: the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is a massive leap in performance for local models powered by MLX, and I have a few examples to prove it.

    ↗M5 Ultra Mac Studio Review: The Dream Mac for Local AI Agentsmacstories.net

  5. GR

    Guillermo Rauch quoted

    CEO of Vercel; creator of Next.js and Socket.IO

    Our readingThe software of the future will be of a quality and performance never experienced before.

    Their wordsThe software of the future will be of a quality and performance we've never experienced before.

    ↗@rauchg on Xx.com

  6. 2 days earlier
  7. TB

    Thorsten Ball quoted

    Co-founder of Amp and co-host of the Raising an Agent podcast

    Our readingPerformance-critical human contributions will remain an edge case, and in 99% of software a faster algorithm or better data structure does not matter.

    Their wordsPerformance critical contributions by humans will stay what they are: an edge case. In 99% of software it does not matter that you could’ve written a faster algorithm or picked a better data structure.

    ↗What I believe about the future of software developmentthorstenball.com 5th of 15 in this piece

  8. 1 day earlier
  9. MB

    Matt Birchler quoted

    Designer, product manager

    Our readingiPhones start a sustained processing task at peak performance and then throttle down to a lower level after a couple of minutes.

    Their wordsiPhones always start out really high, and then after a couple minutes will throttle down and settle somewhere.

    ↗The iPhone 18 Pro is a transcription monsterbirchtree.me 1st of 2 in this piece

  11. DL

    Daniel Lemire quoted

    Computer science professor who works on fast data processing

    Our readingThe SSE4.2 string-comparison instructions on x86 are slow compared to alternatives.

    Their wordsNEON has nothing like it; on x64, the closest thing is the SSE4.2 string-comparison instructions (pcmpistrm), which are slow.

    ↗Faster JSON parsing with SVE2 on ARM processorslemire.me

  13. MB

    Matt Birchler quoted

    Our readingMacBook Pros sustain peak processing performance indefinitely during heavy workloads without throttling down like iPhones do.

    Their wordsthe MacBook Pro just starts going and will literally just keep in the same performance window from now until the end of time.

    ↗The iPhone 18 Pro is a transcription monsterbirchtree.me 2nd of 2 in this piece

  14. 2 days earlier
  15. DL

    Daniel Lemire quoted

    Our readingC++23's std::flat_map is a better choice than std::map for many practical use cases.

    Their wordsIn many practical cases, the new std::flat_map is a better alternative to the std::map.

    ↗How fast is C++23’s std::flat_map?lemire.me

  16. 1 day earlier
  17. XI

    Xe Iaso quoted

    Technical educator, conference speaker and developer…

    Our readingA network round trip is roughly a million times slower than a filesystem-cache read.

    Their wordsFilesystem reads in that case are 10 nanoseconds at most (the filesystem cache helps so much here) but doing any network roundtrip is 10 milliseconds at minimum. It's at least a million times slower because of how reality works.

    ↗You can run git on object storage if you re-make packfilestigrisdata.com

  19. DL

    Daniel Lemire quoted

    Our readingSubnormal floating-point numbers remain a real performance cost on Intel processors, but not on AMD or ARM processors.

    Their wordsThus it appears that on the latest AMD and ARM processors subnormals might not be a concern. But they remain very much a performance issue under Intel processors.

    ↗Subnormal floating-point numbers are expensive… on Intel processorslemire.me

  21. GR

    Guillermo Rauch quoted

    Our readingWebAssembly is expected to play a huge role in the future of the web as more code goes native.

    Their wordsAs more code goes native, I expect WebAssembly to play a huge role in the future of the web.

    ↗@rauchg on Xx.com

  22. 12 days earlier
  23. GR

    Guillermo Rauch quoted

    Our readingImproving Next.js chunking can yield massive efficiency improvements at internet scale.

    Their wordsImproving Next.js chunking can yield massive efficiency improvements at internet scale.

    ↗@rauchg on Xx.com

  24. 7 days earlier
  25. SH

    Scott Hanselman quoted

    Programmer, teacher and speaker

    Our readingWhen a system's performance problem seems mysterious, you eventually have to stop testing the suspected component and isolate other layers instead.

    Their wordsThe useful lesson isn't "disable LSO." It was that when storage is mysteriously slow, eventually you have to stop testing storage.

    ↗Debugging my new network, when 10 Gigabit Ethernet Runs at 300 Megabitsfeeds.hanselman.com

  26. 1 day earlier
  27. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Game and engine programmer

    Our readingPerformance cannot win a market on its own: against an incumbent held up by network effects, being far more responsive is a nice plus and nothing more.

    Their wordsmaybe performance could be part of a package where you try to take on one of those players. like, hey, look at how much more responsive our thing is than theirs. Might be a nice plus, but that's not going to be sufficient.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 1st of 26 in this recording

  29. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingA decade of arguing that software is too slow has started to work: new products are now attacking established categories on a performance pitch alone, and getting traction.

    Their wordsI also see people attacking major product categories now with performance-based pitches. Things like File Pilot or the Blick video editor, like things like this that have been coming out lately where it's like, oh, really performant software to try to take on uh incumbents in a space and they've been getting traction.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 2nd of 26 in this recording

  31. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingA 300-millisecond response budget is not an achievement but an admission: 300 milliseconds is an eternity in computing, and a product pitching it shows how far the bar has fallen.

    Their words300 milliseconds is like an eternity in computing, right? And so if you're talking about like our pitch is that we're not more than 300 milliseconds, that just shows you how the bar was so far past where it probably should have been for something.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 3rd of 26 in this recording

  33. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingThe software industry is massively underperforming its hardware, by factors of ten to a hundred, and people refuse to believe the numbers when you say them.

    Their wordsIt's just like we are massively underperforming and people don't believe it when you say 10x 100x but it's actually true and we've seen a lot of proof of it as you point out.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 4th of 26 in this recording

  35. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingOptimization means measuring the gap between your code and what the hardware could theoretically do, not making changes and checking whether the statistics improved.

    Their wordsWhat is the underlying hardware capable of doing at its theoretical peak? And then you measure the delta between that theoretical maximum and what you have achieved.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 5th of 26 in this recording

  37. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingThe speed of a system is set by its longest serial dependency chain, which is a property of the architecture and cannot be parallelised away afterwards.

    Their wordsthe performance of your software is generally determined by the longest serial dependency chain because it's something that cannot be parallelized.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 8th of 26 in this recording

  39. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our reading"Optimize it later" would be safe advice only if every engineer already knew how to avoid the architectural mistakes that no later optimization can remove.

    Their wordsIf every uh software engineer knew to watch out for false serial dependency chains, things where they were creating series of dependent operations that could not be optimized away or other sorts of architectural problems like that that cannot be easily fixed, then the world would look more like just wait and optimize the hotspot, right?

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 9th of 26 in this recording

  41. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingEveryone on a team who makes architectural decisions must understand performance, because a codebase that can be optimized later only ends up that way on purpose.

    Their wordseverybody on your team who is making architectural decisions, those people must know performance and they must make decisions that will allow the other people downstream of them to use an architecture which can be optimized later. If you don't do that, you're just rolling the dice.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 10th of 26 in this recording

  43. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingThe steady stream of "we had to rewrite the whole thing because it was too slow" engineering blog posts is the proof that deferring performance to hotspot optimization does not work.

    Their wordsThey've got blog posts of we had to rewrite this whole thing because the performance was bad. If it was always hotspots that made your performance bad, you'd never have to rewrite the whole thing. So, we know that that doesn't work anymore.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 11th of 26 in this recording

  45. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingHand-optimizing hot spots barely matters any more, because the libraries are already fast and CPUs are extremely good at running bad code quickly; what is left is architecture.

    Their wordsOne of the reasons that you don't see hotspot optimization as a thing that really matters that much anymore and one of the reasons I advise that architecture and and not making bad decisions is much more important is because a lot of libraries already have been optimized for you that you might use.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 12th of 26 in this recording

  47. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingHow data is laid out and how it is accessed are architectural decisions with nothing to do with hot spots, and the difference between two layouts can be enormous.

    Their wordswhen you're working with a lot of data, the the difference can be massive if you structure it in one way versus structuring another way, right? Again, architectural decisions that have nothing to do with hotspots, they're how all the data is laid out and what the access pattern is, right?

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 14th of 26 in this recording

  49. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingUnderstanding how a modern CPU executes code is a few months of work, not a four-year degree, and it should be ordinary equipment for a software engineer.

    Their wordsYou go to school for four years to learn this. There's no reason you can't learn this in a few months. It's not that hard.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 15th of 26 in this recording

  51. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingWhat clean-code polymorphism really costs you is not the virtual call but the optimizations the compiler can no longer perform once it cannot see what runs.

    compilers

    Their wordsBut it's the cost of the compiler not being able to do any optimizations. That's the actual cost. And that cost can be severe.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 20th of 26 in this recording

  53. CM

    Casey Muratori quoted

    Our readingThere is no trade-off between well-architected code and fast code: in practice, the code that is architected properly is also the code that runs quickly.

    Their wordsI have never really understood the sort of mentality of there's a difference between code that is like well architected by some principles and code that runs quickly because in my experience usually the code that is architected properly is also the code that runs quickly.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 22nd of 26 in this recording

  54. 1 day earlier
  55. DH

    David Heinemeier Hansson quoted

    Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals

    Our readingA new computer taking 42 minutes to become usable is unreasonable when the machine is a trillion times faster than what went to the moon; an operating system should install in one minute.

    Their wordsWe do not have to accept that these computers that are literally a trillion times faster than what sent us to the freaking moon have to take 42 minutes before they're ready after you unbox it. No, unreasonable. These computers are so damn fast, they should feel damn fast.

    ↗Is Linux the perfect operating system? - Omarchy interview with DHHyoutube.com 5th of 6 in this recording

  57. GR

    Guillermo Rauch quoted

    Our readingSoftware tends to get slower, more bloated, buggier and bigger as it evolves, unless it is designed from the outset to prevent that.

    Their wordsAs software evolves, it tends to get slower, more bloated, buggier, and bigger.

    ↗@rauchg on Xx.com

  58. 2 days earlier
  59. SH

    Scott Hanselman quoted

    Our readingPerformance-related command-line flags represent qualitative changes to restartability, buffering, or concurrency, not levels on a continuous performance dial.

    Their words/Z, /J, and /MT are not levels on a performance slider. They change restartability, buffering, and concurrency.

    ↗Migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 with Robocopy, SMB Multichannel, and Surprising Performance Trapsfeeds.hanselman.com 1st of 2 in this piece