[aklug] Re: A developer's take on system resource consumption

On 06/11/2011 11:05 AM, Arthur Corliss wrote:
> Guys:
>
> Caught this article on /.:
>
> http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/06/mozilla-launches-memshrink-eff.html
>
> in which Mozilla is now going to dedicate a team to targetting memory
> utilization. One of the statements in the article struck me as pertinent:
>
> There are plenty of people out there at have 1 GB or less of RAM. As
> I'm writing this post now, Firefox 4.0.1 is consuming 633 MB on my
> machine and that's not abnormal. Simply put, it's just waaay too much
> RAM for a web browser. Then again, if you've got 8 GB of DDR3 RAM,
> you likely aren't all that worried about using 633 MB for Firefox. So
> maybe it's just a question of focus. Is Mozilla still interested in
> the mainstream consumer?
>
> Obviously, I expect a great deal of debate over what a "mainstream consumer"
> really constitutes in terms of memory consumption. Even so, it highlights a
> problem some of us have been bitching about since the '80s: with all of the
> magnitude increases in system resources over the years why is it that all of
> our actual gains are only incremental?
>
> Ultimately, our incremental gains are entirely the fault of the developer.
> While some of our ambitions can only legitimately be done on a bigger/faster
> machine, the fact that we're targeting more "modern" hardware in general
> allows us to take shortcuts and less aggresively optimize that we'd
> otherwise do.
>
> Ironically, while I have both harped and groused on this subject for as long
> as I've been using computers, I've been just as guilty as anyone else.
> Having recently made my primary personal computer a 700MHz toughbook with
> 256MB of RAM that point has been driven home. My missteps as a developer has
> consequences. Having a development system with such meager resources
> amplifies any frivolous use of CPU, RAM, or I/O, and it's something I now
> more actively try to counter since I have to live with it. Even minor
> missteps can cumulatively hurt.
>
> All of which brings forth a good question: how much better a computing
> situation would we all be in if *developers* were forced to be at the tail
> end of the upgrade cycle, rather than the forefront? If we, as a matter of
> routine, had lower-spec'd hardware than the majority of the users we have to
> support?
>
> I know my developmental process has become slower, but more deliberative. I
> actively try to anticipate system resource utilization beforehand. I test
> and benchmark multiple approaches to solving the same problem to see which
> one taxes the system the least. Sometimes it pays to be poor, eh? ;-) (Side
> note: I'm not really poor... cheap, yes, but not poor. And I've definitely
> been blessed...)
>
> So, let's start a movement to cripple developers with old machines! Who's
> with me? ... Well, I suppose I should have seen that one coming... ;-)
>
> --Arthur Corliss
> Live Free or Die
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First, a brief note on the subject of pampered developers: I can't say
much, I'm afraid, but if someone would care to buy me one of those
"bigger/faster" PCs, I'd be glad to give it a try for a few months and
let you know how it affects my coding. ;) I think my second-hand Core 2
is at least three years old now.

Second, there is a flip side to the memory issue -- performance. We put
stuff in memory so that we have instant access to it. The more memory we
have, the more freedom we have to do this.

The guy in your article was whining about how Firefox was consuming half
a gig of RAM. But you notice he wasn't complaining about how /fast/
Firefox was. And what he also didn't happen to mention was how many
browser pages he happened to have open at the time -- which, if he is
like me, was probably twenty or thirty. I'm no Mozilla dev, but somehow
I'm thinking that it is not menu buttons taking up all that memory
space, but hundreds of instances of images, Flash, and so forth, which
he expected to have instant access to the moment he clicked on any one
of those tabs. Furthermore, there is lots of other data we want instant
access to as well, such as link folder contents, browser history, saved
passwords, and pages we've closed but might want to bring up with the
back button.

I'm not saying memory optimization isn't important, just pointing out
the other side of the coin: making the best use of all the memory you
have to get what you really want: performance. If we restrict ourselves
to programming like we only have 256 MB of RAM then yes, indeed, it is
pointless to have 8 GB.

-- 
frigidcode.com
theologia.indicium.us
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