Thread

1. torutofu · 1790945970 · focus · HN ↗

   yeah, at some point memory footprint becomes an architectural constraint again, not just a number you throw more hardware at.

   1. testerius · 1790950175 · focus · HN ↗

      But still it is about GiB instead of KiB.

      1. bunderbunder · 1790953252 · focus · HN ↗

         My health insurance company recently rolled out a major revamp of their website, and it now uses GiB as if they were KiB.

         At my knitting group last night one of the conversation topics was how everyone's computer feels really unstable these days. One person stopped volunteering at a local charity because, after a recent website rewrite, she has too much trouble with the page locking up when she's trying to sign up for hours.

         Last weekend I got talking to another parent at my kid's gymnastics class about how her computer's really struggling since they rolled out some "modernization" rewrites of internal business applications, and it's making it hard to get her work done.

         What I'm getting at is, if we do have to get used to memory being more expensive, that might be very disruptive. Programmers will have to do a major about-face on how they've been writing software in the post-AI era.

         1. post-it · 1790954119 · focus · HN ↗

            On the other hand, memory optimization is so much easier with AI. Profiling an app, reworking a function to be twice as long but more efficient, A/B testing libraries across browsers to check which uses the least extra memory. All of these things are fairly easy but so tedious, which makes them perfect for AI.

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