6 ms·

Unpopular opinion: Most web developers don't have a grasp of computer science or assembly, and act like computing resources are free. OTOH, obsessing about perf

Unpopular opinion: Most web developers don't have a grasp of computer science or assembly, and act like computing resources are free. OTOH, obsessing about performance to the exclusion of usability is equally insane. Nuance, knowledge, and metrics are what's needed.

yurishimo 5y ago
Idk how CS or Assembly plays into this. I’m a webdev. Self taught. Your points about metrics and nuance are accurate but I fail to see how those are related to CS as a whole. If stuff is legitimately slow, we should make it faster. Doesn’t need to be more complicated than that imo.
- lawn 5y ago
  I don't think assembly has any relevance, and the thing with CS that's relevant is almost entirely with complexity theory. This sounds fancy, but it basically boils down to recognizing O(n^2) vs O(n) vs O(n log n), which in practice can be reduced to "use the right datastructure" and "use the right query".
  - jablan 5y ago
    Frankly, I think far more performance problems nowadays lie in things like insane SVG/CSS animations for every possible loading spinner than in developers not knowing their O notations.
    - throwuxiytayq 5y ago
      To be fair though, SVG/CSS animations are super fast and efficient compared to anything javascript-related.
- mikodin 5y ago
  The typical CS "curriculum" has a pretty large focus on performance. Most of the assignments given in my university had constraints around time, memory and cpu consumption. Therefore performance was heavily focused on. This has carried over quite well into my work life. Things like "big O", understanding the mechanics of different kinds of data structures, and their tradeoffs enter all my code. They don't really take up a large part of my active thinking, but I will routinely make decisions that are more performant and try to weigh in readability, "grok"-ability, and if they are common or not. I find that university forced me to learn the unattractive bits of computing, that if I was self taught I likely would've glossed over and not spent several months on. Yes, if stuff is legitimately slow, make it faster. But things typically _become slow_, it's a creep. As time progresses, it slows down, now it's slow and you may not have a product manager who thinks _now_ is the time to dedicated resources towards speeding it up.
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> Unpopular opinion This is HackerNews. Hating bloated websites is a time-honoured tradition here. > Most web developers don't have a grasp of computer science or assembly, and act like computing resources are free It's worth separating these two. Plenty of web developers have computer science degrees, but if they're paid to quickly churn out bloated websites, that's what they'll do. > Nuance, knowledge, and metrics are what's needed. If the aim is to improve the performance of software/websites, what's needed is a userbase that's less forgiving of bloat.

yurishimo 5y ago

Idk how CS or Assembly plays into this. I’m a webdev. Self taught. Your points about metrics and nuance are accurate but I fail to see how those are related to CS as a whole. If stuff is legitimately slow, we should make it faster. Doesn’t need to be more complicated than that imo.

lawn 5y ago
I don't think assembly has any relevance, and the thing with CS that's relevant is almost entirely with complexity theory. This sounds fancy, but it basically boils down to recognizing O(n^2) vs O(n) vs O(n log n), which in practice can be reduced to "use the right datastructure" and "use the right query".
- jablan 5y ago
  Frankly, I think far more performance problems nowadays lie in things like insane SVG/CSS animations for every possible loading spinner than in developers not knowing their O notations.
  - throwuxiytayq 5y ago
    To be fair though, SVG/CSS animations are super fast and efficient compared to anything javascript-related.
mikodin 5y ago
The typical CS "curriculum" has a pretty large focus on performance. Most of the assignments given in my university had constraints around time, memory and cpu consumption. Therefore performance was heavily focused on. This has carried over quite well into my work life. Things like "big O", understanding the mechanics of different kinds of data structures, and their tradeoffs enter all my code. They don't really take up a large part of my active thinking, but I will routinely make decisions that are more performant and try to weigh in readability, "grok"-ability, and if they are common or not. I find that university forced me to learn the unattractive bits of computing, that if I was self taught I likely would've glossed over and not spent several months on. Yes, if stuff is legitimately slow, make it faster. But things typically _become slow_, it's a creep. As time progresses, it slows down, now it's slow and you may not have a product manager who thinks _now_ is the time to dedicated resources towards speeding it up.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

> Unpopular opinion This is HackerNews. Hating bloated websites is a time-honoured tradition here. > Most web developers don't have a grasp of computer science or assembly, and act like computing resources are free It's worth separating these two. Plenty of web developers have computer science degrees, but if they're paid to quickly churn out bloated websites, that's what they'll do. > Nuance, knowledge, and metrics are what's needed. If the aim is to improve the performance of software/websites, what's needed is a userbase that's less forgiving of bloat.