[sorry if you see this twice; I sent it to the "old" list in error] To put the efficiency argument another way.. It seems we (the larger "we", societally) have called into question the basic value of efficiency. Is efficiency inherently valuable? I say it is. Many people, however, say it isn't, or at least imply that it isn't, because they say things like "RAM is basically free, so it doesn't matter". (Evan, I know you were speaking as devil's advocate there) The problem is, these people are gratuitously and cavalierly stating that efficiency is no longer important in order to excuse themselves from having to know what they're doing, to absolve themselves of responsibility for creating crap results (crappy software, etc), or to give themselves an "out" by justifying their laziness. I assert that efficiency is inherently good, and laziness is inherently bad. These assertions are, I firmly believe, beyond question. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I assert that efficiency is inherently good, and laziness is inherently bad. These assertions are, I firmly believe, beyond question.
You have to consider what's scarce though -- efficiency is good, but if you have a surplus of computing power and a lack of programmer time, it's probably better to be more efficient on your programmer time than on computing power. I don't see it a matter of laziness if being somewhat less efficient on computer resources allows you to get it done faster. Thanks, Jonathan
On 06/08/2016 08:30 AM, Systems Glitch via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I assert that efficiency is inherently good, and laziness is inherently bad. These assertions are, I firmly believe, beyond question.
You have to consider what's scarce though -- efficiency is good, but if you have a surplus of computing power and a lack of programmer time, it's probably better to be more efficient on your programmer time than on computing power. I don't see it a matter of laziness if being somewhat less efficient on computer resources allows you to get it done faster.
The problem is that this line of thinking is a slippery slope. If you do it this time, because you "need" to, management will insist that you to do it next time. I hope you don't have to learn that the hard way, like I did. But in general, yes, your point is well taken...there are different kinds of efficiency. But if you have a surplus of computing power and are short of programmer time, that's a different problem. Not that "more programmers" means "more code" (it nearly never does, see _The Mythical Man-Month_), but if there aren't enough hands to get the job done, that doesn't mean "do it sloppy", it means staff the organization properly before the job. Anything less is poor management, plain and simple...laziness comes into play there too, but there are usually more nefarious causes, i.e. greed. The "just throw hardware at it, FOR NOW, and we'll fix it later" mentality is a very slippery slope, as you'll find management will never allow you to "fix it later". Then it happens again, and again...then you'll find an organization with one lazy but overworked programmer, far more computer power than is reasonable for a given application, and a VERY high power bill. Unfortunately, this has become the norm. But it doesn't make it right. I predict that energy consumption will cause efficient programming to become important to mainstream organizations again. When that happens, I will be available for tutoring services. If that doesn't happen in my lifetime, I'll still get twice as much work done with half the hardware in the meantime. And I'll sleep better at night knowing I've DONE IT RIGHT, rather than wussing out and being lazy. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 06/08/2016 01:44 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
[sorry if you see this twice; I sent it to the "old" list in error]
To put the efficiency argument another way..
It seems we (the larger "we", societally) have called into question the basic value of efficiency. Is efficiency inherently valuable? I say it is.
Many people, however, say it isn't, or at least imply that it isn't, because they say things like "RAM is basically free, so it doesn't matter". (Evan, I know you were speaking as devil's advocate there)
The problem is, these people are gratuitously and cavalierly stating that efficiency is no longer important in order to excuse themselves from having to know what they're doing, to absolve themselves of responsibility for creating crap results (crappy software, etc), or to give themselves an "out" by justifying their laziness.
I assert that efficiency is inherently good, and laziness is inherently bad. These assertions are, I firmly believe, beyond question.
I view efficiency as: Fast (amount of time to do), Good (quality, meets requirements), and Cheap (overall cost). Pick any 2 As others have mentioned, I can write scripting language tools that I can string together (under Unix with pipes) to create new tools. Efficient cost and use of my time, highly flexible but okay quality (high cpu, RAM and storage usage). Later I find that the amount of data I'm running through those scripts is huge and suddenly that quality issue (mainly cpu and RAM) begins to eat into my time, so I have to refactor for a new efficiency. Back to the rule of thumb and laziness. A rule of thumb allows an engineer to work quickly but when it becomes laziness (the engineer no longer thinks) that's when it becomes dangerous. The storage is basically free is one of the rules, as is that the internet is always there. Both hugely dangerous assumptions (as I found out as I tried to run my search scripts in parallel only to find the machine inaccessible until the processes were done, O(n^2)). -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Neil Cherry wrote:
Fast (amount of time to do), Good (quality, meets requirements), and Cheap (overall cost). Pick any 2
I've re-imagined that "old saw" as a triangle with those three attributes at the corners. You can put your project anywhere in the triangle. Move it towards the "cheap" corner and you move away from "fast" and "good". Bill S.
participants (4)
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Bill Sudbrink -
Dave McGuire -
Neil Cherry -
Systems Glitch