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Without an understanding of memory management, OS level task and thread scheduling, and even in some cases disk management, it is impossible to consistently write high performance code. This is especially true in garbage collected languages such as any dotNet language, Java, and even javascript. This lack of understanding memory allocations and management leads to poor design decisions making code that simply cannot scale without adding hardware.
Even business programmers, which I am, need to understand memory management to guide in the selection the correct data structures to ensure their applications are responsive and low impact on the user PCs. A perfect example was at my last job where we used OpenVMS running on a dual processor Alpha Server. We had an incredibly long and somewhat complex overnight processing script that needed to be complete by 6 AM every morning. As our data grew it was taking until close to 7 AM on some mornings. Using my general knowledge of task scheduling, disk performance, and CPU utilization I was able to rewrite the longest component of this process to partition that part of the problem into independent units and then submit those units for processing. Then I monitored disk I/O and CPU load to find the optimum number of simultaneous job partitions that could be run and set the VMS queue to allow that many jobs to run at one time. These changes cut three to four hours of our nightly processing time. Without my knowledge of system resource usage this simply wasn't possible and my boss, who actually wrote the application software, didn't think we could shorten the overnight processing time and was thinking about adding hardware.
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"As long as you have a team of experts to do the hard stuff, it's complexity isn't a problem for everyone else" is hardly a ringing endorsement.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Thinking a bit more, it's not a hard/long term block for the language's growth. If the language maintainers/framework authors can successfully encapsulate enough of the hard stuff behind libraries that normal devs don't need to worry about it it could still go reasonably mainstream.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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What’s new going forward is the addition of a 4,000-qubit quantum computer by the end of 2025. 3-5 years in the future is the new 5-10?
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As long as it converges, there is hope.
I would be more skeptical if it was diverging.
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PowerShell inventor Jeffrey Snover has aired some grievances about how his indispensable tool once got him demoted. No good deed goes unpunished
Or maybe he was demoted because PowerShell feels so awkward? (OK, it just had a bit of a learning curve for me)
Also, today I learned that This-Style-Of-Coding is called "Kebab-Case"
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Microsoft's C# programming language posted the largest 12-month gain in popularity, says the TIOBE Index for May 2022. And now I can stop looking at the lists, as they finally have the answer I've been looking for
Seriously, I really do need to stop looking at these random list generator articles.
But they keep pulling me back in.
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Why TioBS is garbage today:
9: SQL 1.87%
10: PHP 1.52%
11: Delphi 1.42%
12: Swift 1.23%
13: R 1.22%
One of these things doesn't belong with the other four.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Apple has announced that it’s discontinuing the iPod Touch, the last remaining model in its lineup of portable music players. "Something touched me deep inside the day the music died"
I could just play the music on my phone, but I'd need a phone then.
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Microsoft has now released physical copies of Windows 11, a little more than six months after the release of the OS. Remember: you have to keep it in the box so it stays mint condition
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Kent Sharkey wrote: you have to keep it in the box so it stays mint condition
Only way to keep your computer secure, isn't it...
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On the heels of a recent discussion sparked on the Web by Apple's policy aimed to remove outdated apps from the App Store, analytics company Pixalate released a report providing insight into how many iOS and Android apps are outdated and for how long they have not received any update. It's not abandoned, it's just pining for the fjords
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With the recent launch of Windows 11 Microsoft also made having a hardware TPM module mandatory. I guess it's cheaper than a new PC?
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The cybersecurity company says this is the first time they have seen this type of malware hiding method. Fortunately, no one ever looks in there
So maybe the malware won't either?
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Errors are an inevitable part of building software. But while you can’t eradicate them, you can definitely mitigate them. If you don’t measure, track or resolve errors, you’re ignoring a loss in revenue. Off-by-one here, overflow there. Pretty soon, you're talking real money.
Yes, partly a sales pitch for their tools. Posted for the numbers that lead them in that direction.
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The state of project documentation is in disarray, and the impact that has on users, admins and developers grows every day. "The job is not finished until the paperwork is done"
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A lot of people think that "agile" development doesn't need documentation. Disturbingly, a lot of new devs think comments aren't necessary.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010 ----- You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010 ----- When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Agreed. A lot of the open source documentation is, frankly, so sparse as to be useless. The MS documentation seems to be the best documentation available.
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3M filed a patent for a safety harness that will generate electricity when a worker falls from a dangerous height, like from a scaffolding. Don't tell the bosses - they'll replace the office chairs with bungie cords
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Core meltdown? No problem, keep those turbines running!
(Just watched the documentary on Three Mile Island on Netflix, I guess this was on my mind.)
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How often does 3M have workers falling off scaffolding?
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I can see current uses for this.
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Ohm my word, Watt a bad pun.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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Hmm, I need to charge my phone.
"Yo Fred! Could you shove Jim off that scaffold for me?"
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Wow. That's a stretch!
/ravi
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