> I completely agree. My point isn't that Big-Oh is low level, but rather that Big-Oh is often enough for most programming problems.
For what I work on, the hidden constant is often more important than big O. For example, a hash map has better complexity than just searching through a vector. But if the vector is small enough it will best the hash nap for actual time. Just plain searching until you find the element will even beat binary search on a sorted vector for small enough vectors. The reasons are complex, to do with cache, prefetch, branch prediction and also just how many instructions your tight inner loop has. (And the specific reasons will vary between desktop class CPUs and microcontrollers. But both exhibit this pattern.)
You could argue that at that point why bother optimising at all (there aren't a lot of elements in the collection after all). But there are two distinct cases I have come across over the years where it still matters (and for what I work with, they represent the common cases):
* You need to look up in a small collection a lot (either lots of lookups into a few small collections or a few lookups each into lots of different small collections, I have seen both cases).
* Hard realtime code where predictable latency matters. Hashmap has a bad worst case, binary trees and binary searching has badly predictable memory access patterns. And in this case the collections are usually small anyway (there are only so many actuators and sensors your equipment has, and/or the embedded microcontroller doesn't have a lot of memory anyway).
> But if the vector is small enough it will best the hash nap for actual time.
This will all depend on the size and type of object stored in a vector.
If you have a relatively small and flat struct that you are storing, then sure that will likely win. But if you are working with a collection of pointers, then the hash map will (almost) always win.
> Hard realtime code where predictable latency matters. Hashmap has a bad worst case
The hash map worst case is a linear search. It will be a lookup + the search. This also depends on the implementation. You could, for example, use a robinhood hash map which trades insertion times for lookup times.
A bad hashmap implementation will store collisions in linked lists. A better one will try and put them in a b-tree. An even better one will use a vector for collisions. And the most cache friendly version stores everything in the table and does probing on collisions.
There are specific cases where vectors are better, but those are the exception and not the rule in my experience.
So, where do you draw the line? Do you accept having an OS? Because that is a huge dependency. So I assume you run directly on BIOS or UEFI? But even those are fairly sizable on modern systems.
>So, where do you draw the line? Do you accept having an OS?
Yes I accept using an OS usually, I guess there's much more than could fit on a single catchy sentence, but there's a clear policy.
Operating System is the biggest exception, for Windows it's pretty simple to carve out everything that is manufactured by Microsoft itself. But for the main Linux OS (Debian/RHEL), I include everything that is distributed by the main package manager (apt/yum) as allowed by the OS policy exception. (On Windows, this is equivalent to adding software packaged and signed by microsoft, like Git).
Alternative package managers like flatpak or snap are against my personal policy, not only are they very bloaty, but they kind of break the OS monopoly and push towards less safe supply chains, if it's not in apt/yum, then I don't use it.
> So I assume you run directly on BIOS or UEFI?
I have gone that route, but only experimentally, it's not very hard to get C compiled binaries to run and interface with keyboard and display through BIOS, but there's a lot of extra work that needs to be done incrementally, in order to use features in the sequence that they have historically been available, like 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bits, 4GB memory. If you think of Wirth's law, this might actually be an effective long-term pacing strategy.
But I'm not that hardcore personally, not for lack of want, in a professional setting I'm pulled towards the pragmatic side and start conceding to stuff like using an OS, maybe using one or two packages. I would probably revisit booting directly to binary if any startup I work with hits a home run and needs to upgrade to at least 10k+ concurrent users. It's like one step removed from an ASIC, which is a stage almost no company enters, but I would have definitely have passed the baton at that stage, custom hardware is another discipline.
>But even those are fairly sizable on modern systems.
Well not BIOS, but UEFI and device drives certainly are. BIOS would just be some (mostly unwritten) standards on how to initialize, then it dissapears. Of course hardware itself is a dependency, and I'm definitely not going to be summoning computing from heat, sand, and electricity, but my line is definitely at the OS and above.
One final exception that wasn't mentioned is the programming language and its 'built in libraries'. I use the programming language along with its standard distribution. For Python (my main language), that means I don't use pip, but I might use 'import sockets' (it's almost the same as using cffi and glibc anyways). There's an analogue in almost all languages, node with npm, java with maven, php with composer, I just don't add those kinds of dependencies if I have control over it. I chmod ugo-rwx requirements.txt to avoid other engineers from adding leftpadisms.
That's not to say that it never happens, maybe even I imported Flask to meet a deadline, and maybe there's that perfect library from a good source that someone else suggests and it gets accepted, but it doesn't hurt to add some friction, it catches a lot of trash packages from being added to the foundation of a startup, which give almost no benefits at great expense over the lifecycle of the core.
The end result has a few advantages if I may explicitly sell myself and my strategy:
- Basal stack: Instead of having to hire yarn,yum,pnpm,react,tailwind,buzzword,jev,shadcn, developers (developers of very specific modern deep tech stacks that will only be used and popular during a very narrow timeline), if the startup grows, they have a much broader space to search talent from, which means that hiring can occur across other search parameters, MOST importantly business domain knowledge. I think it's much more productive to hire devs that are interested in dentistry if you are a dentistry startup, rather than devs that know, say, the intersection of Kubernetes, FastAPI, Kafka and some AWS Branded tech.
- Long term Foundation: Usually the simpler basal tech takes a bit longer to get started, as opposed to exclusively prioritizing delivery speed, but it allows for reasonable development speeds in later stages.
We sometimes call it tech debt, in this case the mechanics create debt by: increasing the Lines of Code count (you should count the lines of the dependencies you import), and by reducing the personnel system knowledge.
It is a tradeoff yes, but it isn't really a huge advantage to be able to get the first version up in 2 hours, as opposed to 1 month. Much less getting a first version up in 15 seconds with a prompt. I'd rather just work with someone that can spend like 5K in a 1 month prototype, and thinks about pacing for the long term winner-takes-all condition, rather than trying to save 5K and having a prototype in 2 hours, (or in 15 seconds). Nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn't seem like I would fit in there. If someone wants to setup their prototype in 2 hours, they don't need me, and if they ever call me, we are going to be building the 1-month prototype from scratch, and using the vibecoded or Framework prototype as a Proof of Concept, not an architectural base.
- Proprietary advantage/Moat: Haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, but code is the main asset of a company, if you import a lot of code to achieve your goal, sure you accomplish that, but you have not accomplished a very distinctive or defensible advantage. Strategically it's more profitable to pursue the kinds of challenges you need to write code for, than the ones you need to import and glue together components for.
- Strategic conditioning: Similar to the above, but you want to think and write code at the same time, if you use someone else's framework you think according to their terms, whether that is to confer them a strategic advantage, or whether the goal of thinking is to reduce development costs. The kind of thinking that occurs in software development should ideally be as free as possible from the influences of actors that are not goal-aligned with the company's mission.
Opinionated software is great, but ideally other software should be incorporated with a commercial relationship in the middle, carved out by some other exception. And even then, their goals should be acknowledged strategically, if you are building, say: a DRM or surveillance system on top of Debian, that's bound to have some sort of conflict. Similarly using Microsoft for a public hospital project is another conflict that is worth at least taking note of.
- Personnel knowledge: I pointed to this, but the knowledge of personnel of the system AND the business domain is relevant. The objective of making software is not JUST to achieve the end-goal, the knowledge acquired in the process of creating that software is a valuable byproduct for both operational and strategic reasons. Similar to writing an essay, it's not just that we want to have the essay in order to slap it into someone else (well maybe sloppers do), but that we actually gain insights and develop our own thoughts while we write it.
- User/Producer separation: For the cases where the product is about LLMs or DevTools. If you both consume dev tools and build devtools, or consume LLMs to code and are building LLM features, I find that people tend to get lost in an unhealthy spiral more often, it's a dangerous task to endeavor, if there's ever a time not to use LLMs to code, it's when your product actually includes LLMs as a feature for users. Which is even a more important goal, right? What's more important, putting this super technology at the hands of the user? Or consuming this super technology to accelerate development?
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Regarding costs this is not particularly expensive either, it's not like you are missing out on a particularly valuable revolution if you miss out on abusing Open Source supply chains or on abusing vibecoding thingies. An idea-stage startup that hires me to build an MVP would cost like 5K and a month, maybe if they really want to polish it, that's 6 months which is like 30K, plus the (co)founder's salary, whatever that is, as it's not hands-off work.
I'm sure to some the idea of saving 29K and spending 1K in AI subscriptions is enticing, maybe they can even attempt vibecoding before hiring talent, for sure, that's valid. It even helps refining and conveying the idea, and getting more accurate cost and feasibility estimations. But it's also a perfectly skippable step, that bootstrapped investment route has been used for decades now.
Depends on your use case. If i want to export some graph data structure from a program to visualise it for debugging purposes, graphviz is way more relevant than doing it by hand in drawio.
But if I'm making a presentation for a conference I would choose differently. And in between you get a whole spectrum of tradeoffs.
An alternative way to think about it would be a padlock and a key. Anyone can close the padlock (assuming the common spring loaded design), but only the key holder can open it.
While this works for encryption, it doesn't really work for explaining signatures or however. Maybe someone can come up with a good analogy for that case.
That's the analogy I was taught in college. The public key is really a padlock that had infinite number of copies, but there was only one key that could open all the padlocks. If someone wanted to send a secret message to the person who owned the key, the would obtain a copy of the padlock, put their message in a box and lock it with the padlock, then send the box to the key owner. The key owner was the only person who could unlock the box and read the message.
Kaffee: Corporal, would you turn to the page in this book that says where the mess hall is, please?
Barnes: Lieutenant Kaffee, that’s not in the book, sir.
Kaffee: You mean to say in all your time at Gitmo you’ve never had a meal?
Then you should adhere to yet another unwritten rule while we're at it: Don't use smileys. Especially not to change the meaning of your statements. You can just drop them and say what you mean, that makes communication easier and clearer. This is not facebook where people talk via emojis.
One signal (not fool proof, but often a good signal): what length of warranty do they offer? If some brand has a warranty significantly above the average for the product type, that can be a good sign.
And I'm not talking about offering extended warranty programs or such here. Just the basic warranty everyone gets when they buy the product.
A buddy of mine paid a premium to get some fancy umbrella with a lifetime warranty. It had a failure at some point, they replaced it with a worse quality one. Another failure, and he got another step down in quality.
There is also other tricks I fell for. I think I saw a recommendation for Travelpro on Buy it for life(Its been a while so dont remember fully). Nice luggage but expensive. I took a risk and bought it. I received it the day I was rushing to travel and there was some "registration card" that you had to fill out by a certain time that unlocked lifetime warranty else you were stuck with a shorter limited warranty. That card got accidently thrown out by a family member while I was on a trip. It apparently had some serial number or something on it. To make matters worse, the zipper got damaged after 1-2 uses and it was just outside the shorter warranty. I had to go to a local luggage place that had a relationship with them and they were able to get it replaced. (I wanted it fixed but Travelpro only offered replacement). Im hoping it does not break again. If you are going to advertise this warranty just make it the default! I went back to those reddit posts and I started to suspect there is some astroturfing going on so I don't even know if this is a reliable luggage or if it is just junk. It was so expensive and I honestly thought I bought it for life.
Yeah, if you wanted a proper BIFL suitcase you needed to spend even more and get a Briggs and Riley suitcase.
Also, Travelpro Platinum suitcases aren’t the cheapest… but how much do you think is so expensive? Sales should put them sub $200, maybe less if you bought awhile ago.
No idea if they are still as good but Samsonite used to be astonishingly good luggage and good value too. I still have two suitcases from nearly forty years ago. They are very scuffed but still intact and unbroken having survived very harsh airport luggage handling in out of the way places (literally thrown out of planes onto the tarmac). Mostly I use an IT brand [1] suitcase that is much lighter and was much cheaper but it is also holding up well after fifteen years use. The rubber has worn off two of the wheels though.
Curious, so I checked. A Briggs and Riley Essential 22" Carry-On Expandable Spinner is $729. Sorry, but that's insane.
I admittedly travel less than I used to but I bought my basic carry-on for about $110 more than 20 years ago. Close enough to "buy it for life" for me. It's not much worse for the wear, I fully expect to have it for 20 more years.
"Shrinkflation" as a word only caught on when the process got to the point it is completely impossible to miss. It has actually been going on for a while. If you take a "basket of goods" since the 1990s, inflation will be such and such a number... but if you insist that the "basket of goods" match not just function but quality your inflation number skyrockets. Now, I can personally vouch for the fact that in the 1990s there was certainly still "cheap luggage" and "more expensive luggage"... what's different is the gap that has opened between them in the price, and how cheap the cheap stuff has gotten.
The cumulative level of the "hedonic adjustments" they keep stuffing in, ostensibly to adjust for the natural improvement of things but in practice over the sum of them to allow them to keep stepping down the quality of the basket of goods under the cover of "oh, we're just trying to maintain it" is pretty substantial. They've hidden a lot of things in the electronics. Other things aren't doing the exponential advance thing the electronics did for so long.
Not denying that a lot of stuff these days is crap. Just objecting to the idea that if you want a "proper BIFL suitcase" you need to buy an expensive luxury brand, because it's absolutely not true.
If you spend $700 to $1,000 on a carry-on suitcase, will it be good? Damn well better be. Can you get one that will last a long time for around one third that price, or even less? Yes, you can.
If you don't travel a lot, sure. Especially because older luggage generally was more sturdy (or, at least, there was a higher 'floor' to quality). This suitcase is meant for people who travel a lot. If you're a consultant or on airline staff, having bulletproof reliability and a warranty that is endless is a big perk.
Also, $110 20 years ago is ~$200 in today's money (even more if it was 'more than').
Its been 4 years now(purchased 2022). I just looked at my records. My suitcase was a Travelpro Premium and it cost 300$. I've purchased 50$ suitcases back in 2015 that lasted for years (just checked the equivalent is now 100$). 300$ in 2022 seemed like a step up in price given I was anchored at that previous price in my mind.
At the very least my expectation was that by paying this much i'd finally be end of the company BS. For example with almost all Apple products they have been BS free in the sense that they are made to consistent quality standards, returns, and service cannot be any more straightforward, the product portfolio is super clear, you can easily buy from them at the same price they sell elsewhere (within reason) and not various reseller or third parties that might play tricks and even if you do Apple handles service and warranty. And so after a lifetime of buying PC/Android after experiencing this BS free life I conditioned myself to accept the added cost of Apple and reduce spending elsewhere.
The tactics I described earlier are indicative of a unserious company playing games. Stuff I expect from bottom of the barrel junk.
In regards to sales, I've looked at the price history of this product. (Here: https://i.imgur.com/BQOcRLk.png) The price you indicated last occurred in the middle of the pandemic which for obvious reasons seems like an outlier. To be fair I bought during the height of the return to travel period but even now post all this inflation the price is a solid 390$-400$ now.
I only travel 2-3 times a year and so at this price I expect this luggage to last quite a while(at least a decade no?) but if another mishap happens well then I might have to walk away burned and wondering, what was the point?
> In regards to sales, I've looked at the price history of this product. (Here: https://i.imgur.com/BQOcRLk.png) The price you indicated last occurred in the middle of the pandemic which for obvious reasons seems like an outlier. To be fair I bought during the height of the return to travel period but even now post all this inflation the price is a solid 390$-400$ now.
I wouldn’t use the Amazon/CCC history for this. Their cheapest sales tend to be on their own website, and only occur like once a year. I may be off on sub-$200 in the current environment, but it wouldnt surprise me if mid-200s is achievable at their lowest sale time.
The rest of your points, I’d agree it’s kind of a bummer they don’t really have that sort of guarantee. The Briggs and Riley stuff really is the true thing you’re looking for, but it’s awfully hard to justify a $600+ suitcase if you’re only traveling a few times a year I’d say.
> and even if you do Apple handles service and warranty
Depends on the product, if I’m not mistaking. iPhones warranties are pretty much honored globally, whereas I exchanged some defective AirPods at an Apple Store recently and was explicitly asked if I’d bought them with them.
Incredible process by the way, no questions asked when I said I’d like to swap them, they simply got a new box out and made me remove the old ones from my iCloud, out the door in five minutes. I don’t see any scenario where you wouldn’t buy your Apple products directly through them besides maybe when you’re buying refurbished.
Something to be said for places like Costco that has an absurdly generous return policy (are they the only major retailer left that does this? REI used to, but they got rid of it).
I believe Costco requires their vendors to eat the return if they want to remain a vendor. Doesn't meant that Costco is immune to bad products, but it severely punishes vendors that sell garbage and protects customers.
I'm not sure that is such a strong signal. The minimum return policy by law in EU is 14 days. IKEA has a one year open box return policy. I would not argue that modern IKEA is high quality.
I'm also sure I have seen other stores with a 1 year return policy, though I can't remember which ones off the top of my head.
(That is "return undamaged working product" return policy, not warranty policy. Exceptions apply to perishables, underwear, etc. At least here in EU they are different. Warranty is, depending on product category, typically 3 months, one year or two year minimum by law.)
Ikea is not high quality compared to most gallery-style furniture. If you're buying flat-pack furniture to assemble at home few brands will serve you better.
Oddly enough, none of my bookcases in my new house are Billy ones though. Yes, I still have loads of physical books. I found a Chinese brand of all-metal bookcases that are lighter weight than Hon or Steelcase but hold a lot more weight than Ikea bookcases of similar price. They don't suffer from the famous bowed shelf problem most MDF shelves get. They're also packed flat. They even disassemble and reassemble neatly for moving or storage. It's Oseillc, which is a brand of Outstar Office Solutions, Ltd. They also make a little institutional, industrial, shop, and retail furniture under the parent company's own brand.
For books an important features is that the shelves have doors and a back, to have to dust off the books less often. Do yours come with that? I'm not finding that brand on any Swedish retailer from a quick search either, so not sure how relevant it is.
I have some older Billy shelves that have been very solid, even when overloaded with books (I too have a lot of physical books, a lot of them older and not available as anything except physical, quite a few even predating the ISBN system).
Mine from that company so far are library-style open shelves. I have a vacuum attachment I like for cleaning shelves and books, so it doesn't require a feather duster. I keep certain books inside doors and backs.
The same company also makes cabinets and enclosed cases. They are available via a handful of retailers in the US. The big one is Amazon. I would have guessed they sell and ship worldwide since they're on Amazon. It appears I would have been wrong. I can't find the brand on the sites for Sweden, UK, or Germany. If I set my delivery to Sweden, I can't even find them on the US site by searching but can still see their store page. They don't seem to be on AliExpress either.
I would argue that Ikea sells a spectrum of quality. Much of their cheap stuff is priced according to quality. Much of their expensive stuff is too.
I have some of their more expensive solid wood furniture and it is really quite nice. I have some of their particle board college student grade stuff and it is pretty lightly built, but an incredible value when compared to other vendors at the same price point.
I got 3x Bose QuietComfort 35 2 by buying 1. They did honor their warranty, but my impression was that they plan for people not going through the effort of actually requesting a replacement item, even though the warranty says they can.
I think that's generally true. However, I recall from college more than one backpack company would give you lifetime warranties. They realized that at like $30 (at the time), they don't mind sending you another one if you bothered to remember to do it as it probably costs them like $4 to make.
I can't tell if this is serious or sarcastic. I'm going to err on the side of serious though. Maybe the majority is actually correct, and traditional architecture is just plain better. I certainly find it more welcoming than the modern concrete and glass box jungle.
I do actually like the "concrete jungle" style like the Barbican and Salk Institute (by all accounts a pleasantly human place to work despite the famously stark-looking courtyard).
I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly. Whereas even quite dilapidated neo-classical-ish buildings look innately reasonably pleasing.
>I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly.
There's a trend in some Eastern European countries to paint older brutalist concrete buildings as a cost-effective measure to reduce concrete spalling and do thermo-modernization. It's actually pretty amazing how much nicer some of these buildings look even with just a uniform white paint job (others involve more color).
Architects seem to be largely opposed, seeing it as an erasure of the material honesty that brutalism was supposed to represent, but IMHO it suggests that a lot of the core issue with these designs wasn't the shape or creativity of the buildings themselves but just the way the concrete look quickly aged.
Well, let's try crank the knob yet another notch then.
> Maybe the majority is actually correct
What a horrible thing to say. The liberal democracy, may it be known to you, is about protecting and empowering the minorities of various kind, and the aesthetical minority exists, and its tastes matter.
It all depends on what you are doing. I do embedded with strict realtime requirements. CPU pinning would not be an option. I have also done software that should use as little resources as possible (but still be quick) to coexist with other software on the same hardware.
All of these are different, valid, meanings of high performance. You need context. An interactive IDE is yet another thing that needs to be high performance in yet another way.
As a beginner use the editor built in on the website instead (called ID). JOSM is a great power user tool, but this article's recommendation to use it for your first edit is misguided.
5G seems pretty widly available here in Sweden in my experience, even in the countryside. Not that the speeds are actually better than 4G, but the indicator say 5G as I'm writing this in a tent in the middle of nowhere. :)
With 5G in particular I think it's important that people talk about which specific technologies they're referring to.
In the US at least, low-band or extended range 5G is widely available and has been for some time (and I'm talking about the "real" 5G low-band, not the BS marketing speak AT&T used for a while). Mid and high band 5G, or 5G ultra capacity, is much less available but if course it only really makes sense in dense cities.
I'm surprised that low band 5G isn't widely available in most 1st world countries, as again it's been here in the US for many years now.
On raw coverage of 5g, only a few much denser countries are better. You live in basically the best 4g and 5g covered, sparsely populated country on earth :) most countries are not just further behind.
American cities also generally seem to have good 5G coverage with 4G frequencies being repurposed for 5G and 4G overall being put on life support as it’s phased out
Yes, and even in Europe. The demand-led need was badly misunderstood or anticipated in my opinion as operators were hesitant to invest (and some big ones still are). In this sense, 7G is a pipe dream (but of course worth researching as such).
Don't just look at the indicator on your phone though. Providers are free to scheme with those. Some honestly show the icon when you are on 5G. Others use the option of showing it when you are on 4G (not even 5G NSA) but the network offers 5G on the cell.
The marketing guys got involved with this indicator and completely ruined its trustworthiness.
I've been away from Twitter phone nerds scene for quite a while, what do they use now for those details? Is it still ##service## or something else entirely?
For what I work on, the hidden constant is often more important than big O. For example, a hash map has better complexity than just searching through a vector. But if the vector is small enough it will best the hash nap for actual time. Just plain searching until you find the element will even beat binary search on a sorted vector for small enough vectors. The reasons are complex, to do with cache, prefetch, branch prediction and also just how many instructions your tight inner loop has. (And the specific reasons will vary between desktop class CPUs and microcontrollers. But both exhibit this pattern.)
You could argue that at that point why bother optimising at all (there aren't a lot of elements in the collection after all). But there are two distinct cases I have come across over the years where it still matters (and for what I work with, they represent the common cases):
* You need to look up in a small collection a lot (either lots of lookups into a few small collections or a few lookups each into lots of different small collections, I have seen both cases).
* Hard realtime code where predictable latency matters. Hashmap has a bad worst case, binary trees and binary searching has badly predictable memory access patterns. And in this case the collections are usually small anyway (there are only so many actuators and sensors your equipment has, and/or the embedded microcontroller doesn't have a lot of memory anyway).
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