The upside of high prices (GPU, RAM, disk, etc.) is existing resources get better utilized.
this way all the RAM that AI data centers scoop up will be used to lessen demand for RAM that those same datacenters created
net-zero RAM!
Nodejs and Python were used in 2012, why is now any different?
I do enjoy golang, but Rust gives me nightmares. I make my living in higher level languages.
When I started learning to program JavaScript was just starting to gain popularity outside of the browser. It was the first language I could actually grasp, and I largely think it for giving me a career.
No more evictions for me!
The only real downside to JavaScript, you know being used as a tool for native apps with stuff like electron is it eats ram. Everything needs to a ship a full chrome binary.
But if we go back to native applications, we don't get things like quality Linux ports. If you would have told me 15 years ago that Microsoft would create the most popular IDE on Linux I'd assume that you had misspoke.
Yes, even though the Javascript was written using Doubles and the WASM was written using 64 bit ints. It just means that it's possible to write optimized Javascript (mainly by reducing object allocations, reuse objects instead)
Of course it is always possible to write highly optimised code. But that’s not what people actually do, because of time, skill and maintenance constraints. Here’s a case study: in 2018 Mozilla ported some code from JS to Rust + WASM and got a 6x speed up [1]. An expert in V8 responded to this with highly optimised JavaScript, saying Maybe you don't need Rust and WASM to speed up your JS [2]. Both articles are worth reading! But it is worth remembering that it’s a lot quicker and easier to write the code in #1 than #2 and it is easier to maintain as well.
[1] - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/oxidizing-source-maps-with...
[2] - https://mrale.ph/blog/2018/02/03/maybe-you-dont-need-rust-to...
Performance sucked when I used native Javacsript BigInts. When I made my own BigInt by using an array of doubles, and pretended that the doubles were 48-bit integers, performance was much better. Using the arrays meant that all allocation of temporary values completely stopped. I had to write my own multiply-and-add function that would do bigint = bigint * 48-bit number + other bigint + other 48-bit number.
Idle power usage is what matters.
The 15 seconds it takes to launch Discord and install updates isn't going to be driving the overall efficiency of your PC.
Not when Windows gets its grubby mitts on them. I will frequently hear the fans spin up on my Win10 laptop when it should be doing nothing, only to find the Windows Telemetry process or the Search Indexer using an entire fucking CPU core.
Incidentally, cars are also a lot more fuel efficient these days than they used to be.
Make the cutoff 2026. If you really need more cycles than we have today to solve a problem you're doing something wrong! Stop creating waste and forcing us to buy new trash all of the time.
I have an old laptop with 8GB of RAM and an ancient CPU that I haul around with I when something small for basic work. I can run Discord, Visual Studio Code, and Chrome just fine.
Something else was going on with that PC.
Or the kid did an excellent job of socially engineering his parents into an upgrade.