Incredibly happy to see this series of CF articles. I was always so proud of devs back in the days where RAM and processing were scarce and who had to get creative to fit even the most basic stuff in the budget. It seemed to me that after RAM and processing became abundant, most gave up on optimization and focused on shipping instead which meant now that even with several cores, a basic notepad or music player failed to work. In a way, RAM becoming more expensive has ushered in a new era of forced optimizations, which I'm really happy for
I don't remember those days with a ton of fondness. Yes, the challenge was fun, but I really wanted to ship it and get my product in the hands of customers. Now I can spend more time thinking about what they want and less time about what the computer wants.
The world turned millenia ago and will turn millenia later.
The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. Forced obsolescence is another, when running hardware needs to be replaced because software is built for only newer CPUs.
> The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space.
You need to stop and think about the problem. Nowadays RAM is expensive because many people now want to max out their computers with RAM to run LLMs and AI coding assistants. Today's software is still the same software that ran perfectly well half a dozen years ago. Cloudflare happens to operate a large global computer infrastructure, and it's scale is such that 1% gains are lauded as fantastic cost savers. But that's the bean counter's perspective, pointing out that they saved a bean.
> Today's software is still the same software that ran perfectly well half a dozen years ago.
This statement is quite honestly not true at all. Just take the two largest OS from 6 years ago and compare resource usage between them and you will find you are incorrect, never mind the software running on it.
> Nowadays RAM is expensive because many people now want to max out their computers with RAM to run LLMs and AI coding assistants.
Source? I imagine the amount of people trying to run local LLMs is miniscule. RAM is expensive because a handful of companies have spent billions buying all of the compute.
zer0x4d · · focus · HN ↗
jfengel · · focus · HN ↗
rstat1 · · focus · HN ↗
CookieCrisp · · focus · HN ↗
solarengineer · · focus · HN ↗
The problem statement is of applications using up expensive RAM. Incidentally, expensive RAM is just one of the problems we face in the computing space. Forced obsolescence is another, when running hardware needs to be replaced because software is built for only newer CPUs.
locknitpicker · · focus · HN ↗
You need to stop and think about the problem. Nowadays RAM is expensive because many people now want to max out their computers with RAM to run LLMs and AI coding assistants. Today's software is still the same software that ran perfectly well half a dozen years ago. Cloudflare happens to operate a large global computer infrastructure, and it's scale is such that 1% gains are lauded as fantastic cost savers. But that's the bean counter's perspective, pointing out that they saved a bean.
jpc0 · · focus · HN ↗
This statement is quite honestly not true at all. Just take the two largest OS from 6 years ago and compare resource usage between them and you will find you are incorrect, never mind the software running on it.
Capricorn2481 · · focus · HN ↗
Source? I imagine the amount of people trying to run local LLMs is miniscule. RAM is expensive because a handful of companies have spent billions buying all of the compute.
kam · · focus · HN ↗