6/19/2026 at 1:21:14 PM
by yusufaytas
6/19/2026 at 1:26:00 PM
Maybe old software was also fast because the people building it were more likely to care about computers first and careers second. Not that they were better, just that fewer people were there because tech was the obvious high-paying path.by acb12
6/19/2026 at 5:55:37 PM
I think that's more of a nostalgia trip than anything else.by halJordan
6/19/2026 at 5:24:53 PM
> Sometimes, hardware is cheaper than human coordination.A t3.small on AWS costs $182.21 a year before any discounts and has 2 CPUs and 2 GB of RAM.
So the computer to run the example at the start costs 3 hours of Engineering time.
This has... Warping effects on how hardware performance is perceived to put it mildly.
If you spend 4 hours halving that cost it takes multiple years to reclaim that investment.
Not that performance doesn't matter of course, reducing your total spend by a percentage is worthwhile, but micro optimizations become difficult when hardware is cheap and performant.
by Guvante
6/19/2026 at 2:07:47 PM
One of my favourite words in engineering is resourcefulness.For simplification, you need to make a Spaghetti Bolognese for 4 people.
Person A gets $10, Person B gets $100.
Person A is forced to be resourceful, look around and do a lot of thinking. Person B can be wasteful and still be in budget.
Reality Nowadays: Person B would contract this out to Person C, who would subcontract to Person D and suddenly there is a huge scope creep and $100 is not enough.
by tippa123
6/19/2026 at 10:06:22 PM
And also because it was possible to achieve deterministic performance as there was no (zero) virtualization.by GJR
6/19/2026 at 1:33:34 PM
Old software _is_ fastI use old software on new hardware
It's faster than new software on new hardware
by 1vuio0pswjnm7
6/19/2026 at 1:42:05 PM
Old software is fast because it's built for old hardware and usually it was developed by good-taught engineers.by mda_damico
6/19/2026 at 1:25:59 PM
I heard there was a programmer exfux from USSR to USA in the 90s (?) because they knew better how to optimise code. Is this true?by robthebrew