Re: Intro to Programming w/ Machine Language

From: Randall Hyde (randyhyde_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:33:07 GMT

"Randy Howard" <randyhoward@FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c8abf5543a4c98e98a0ca@news.verizon.net...
> In article <GX4Ud.6262$MY6.453@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> randyhyde@earthlink.net says...
> > Yes, but then the programmer has taken the imperative to
> > produce high-performance code that doesn't waste the end-user's
> > time, haven't they?
>
> And watching the load average on my system, they seems to be
> doing it fairly well. I wish the hard drive manufacturers
> felt the same moral imperative not to waste my time.
>
> :-(

The argument isn't about bypassing the laws of physics.
If software is as fast as it can be (or reasonably close), and it's
still slow, the time "wasted" by the end-user isn't the programmer's
responsibility. Likewise, if your disk driver manufacturer has
produced disk drives that are as fast as current technology allows
(at a given price point, of course), then you can't hold them
responsible.

Of course, if you are using IDE/ATA drives rather than
high-performance SCSI drives, then *you've* made the
choice, not the drive manufacturer :-).

>
> > I find it hard to believe that someone would argue it is *not*
> > a social responsibility to create a fast browser. The same
> > holds true for other popular software.
>
> The whole reason browsers are slow is because of the web
> admins turning their websites into saturday morning cartoons.
> Any web browser you pick is smoking fast on a well-designed
> web page. It's bandwidth, not CPU use that is slowing down
> those page loads on reasonable modern client systems.

Bandwidth is one issue. But rending speed and clever algorithms
are another source of low performance in browsers.

>
> > You have to balance the programmer's time against the
> > users' time. If you have very few users, then the programmer
> > has less of a "social obligation" to provide fast software.
>
> How does a programmer have the "social obligation" when his
> boss sets the schedule and the feature list? :-)

Because now you have *conflicting* obligations. And how one
resolves such conflict is the stuff great philosophical discussions
are made of. However, the fact that there is a conflict in no way
suggests that the social obligation not to waste user's time doesn't
exist.

As for dealing with the boss, it is certainly a work-related
obligation to let the boss know when they haven't allowed
enough time to create a proper product. If the boss' schedule
forces you to constantly write hacked, "quick and dirty" code,
then you're definitely shirking some "social" and "job" obligations
here.

If your software project isn't going to make deadlines, the
appropriate solution is *not* to start hacking and writing
"quick and dirty" (and usually inefficient) code in order to
meet the deadlines. Instead, it's your responsibility to discuss
the scheduling problem with your boss. Don't forget, the
boss isn't expecting a hachet job when you deliver the software.
Your boss is assuming you're delivering quality stuff on
the schedule. Unless you get the boss to sign-off on a quick
and dirty approach, you're not delivering what your boss
wants.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

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