[Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Wed Oct 9 00:10:05 CEST 2013


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 <dholth at 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" <guido at 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.delaney at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> On 9 October 2013 03:35, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 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)
>>
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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