A 2024 Plea for Lean Software (with running code) - Bert Hubert's writings
berthub.eu
This post is dedicated to the memory of Niklaus Wirth, a computing pioneer who passed away January 1st. In 1995 he wrote an influential article called “A Plea for Lean Software”, and in what follows, I try to make the same case nearly 30 years later, updated for today’s computing horrors. The really short version: the way we build/ship software these days is mostly ridiculous, leading to 350MB packages that draw graphs, and simple products importing 1600 dependencies of unknown provenance.
  • megopie@beehaw.org
    0·
    8 months ago

    See it’s actually fine because computer power is just always going to get better and the next gen will handle it all fine.

    Oh and there is definitely no reason to try and reduces electricity usage. See cause we’re totally going to run everything on solar panels any day now and we can just scale that up forever to meet demand without any problems.

    Obviously, sarcasm. It is kind of infuriating how little a lot of companies care about keeping stuff lightweight.

    Personally I’m very interested in projects to build functional lightweight systems and architecture, particularly stuff that could run on older process node chips. Like stuff that could be made without colossally complex supply chains.

    • Goopadrew@beehaw.org
      1·
      8 months ago

      Join the cult of embedded engineers! My current project at work uses a cortex m0, so we have 32kB of code ROM and 4kB of RAM. It’s really satisfying finding little optimizations to save a couple dozen bytes here or there, and there’s never the pressure to just slap together code without worrying about size or speed since you can’t afford it with the hardware you’re using