Comments on: Code Performance Matters Again

By: Barry

Barry — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:42:02 +0000

Gary,

You would be surprised. iSeries still had this system when I last worked on them back in 2003.
Your iSeries was preprogrammed for an amount of “interactive” cpu time and an amount of “batch” cpu time.
A lot green screen applications are interactive and thus the machines got more expensive as you bought them with more interactive time even though the hardware was perfectly the same.

Some companies actually make software that allows running interactive applications twice (once as normal and once as a batch application with it’s own telnet 5250 frontend)

Horribly off topic, I know.

In general you need to code for common sense, good software design and then you can start trimming the fat as you need based on real usage data. This does mean you need to performance test the application in a realistic environment and not just throw it in production and see what happens…. hmmm… if only..

By: Makel

Makel — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:30:01 +0000

I dont agree at all. Lets go back to a 2 years where cloud started more or less. Amazon was one of the fist to evolve this. They charged per use, so little Joe could just test the engine he wanted and not having to pay a fortune. But soon all cloud providers realized that only little Joe wasnt enought. People that need heavy computing had dedicated servers like here on SL, so they where not attracting that target because if its costs a fortune if tyou where to use a full server on cloud, the business model was build up on small slices and pay per use, not on 1 client using a full server 30 days. So they need to attract those customers as well, where the money is, so they started to offer plans. They went to pay per MB and Per GB unit to pay a fixed for a specific amount. Now they are offering big splices that are just individual servers you pay a fixed monthly costs. Thats just brings us again back to dedicated server. People dont want to have a surprise at the end of the month on their bills. They want fixed plan and limits. Thats why cloud will eventually lead back to just leasing a dedicated server where you can use at full potentional the hardware. Dont get me wrong, cloud is a business model that will work but for testers, or people that need to deploy services only for a fixed amount of time, lets say some days. It will never work for business that need to have monthly computing needs which are powerfull. If that is the case nobody would be renting servers anymore, and most do, actually more and more people are actually and leasing servers, they are jumping from shared model like shared hosting to dedicated models like lease servers and vps. So cloud is shared, if you need dedicated cloud its not cloud anymore, its just your own servers !!!! And there is a big problem with cloud, the more cheaper cloud computing will be the more powerfull servers you will be able to buy here at SL. Intel, and Hardware companies dont want to only have 3 big clients . They want the world. If cloud is the future then nobody will be buying computers anymore and we are just going to have a console to access the cloud. I dont think so. People need and want control. Its human nature. They will probably be laptops and small handheld devices with powerfull computing needs on your hand but still you are going to log into external services. Cloud will work for specific services like electricity works today but people will still want and need to have full dedicated computing on their hands, on their PDA, Cell, and laptops, cars, etc. It will be a mix. Google is one of the biggest promotors since they think they will host the world like this. That would mean Softlayer and most business will be out. Do you think so? I dont. Hardware will always be cheaper, and people will always get better and more powerfull things each day. That means if Cloud costs 50$ a month for the equivalent of a small celeron with 512 RAM you will probably get for 50$ a full server with 2 GB of ram. Cloud will always be more costly then just connecting a single box. The reason is because if requires more layers of complex. Simple things will be cheaper always. So that means cloud will focus on the pay per use model only. Im sure most people dont even know how much computing they use or need. They would not jump into a model that can dry them down to the last penny. As for this article. Programmers will just say “Dont use small clouds for this” just like Windows Vista doesnt work with 64 RAM.

By: Gary Kinman

Gary Kinman — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:30:52 +0000

What goes around comes around…back in the late ’80′s when I was writing COBOL to bring home the bacon, the IBM 3090 mainframe to which we were all connected was billed to us based on CPU time. Naturally, my manager insisted on CPU-time friendly code!

By: Barry

Barry — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:05:14 +0000

Maybe some insight from a developer here.
I’m not expecting clouds to really change a lot as you generally should focus on writing good, easy to use and extend code (programmer time is still very expensive)

That said and as always, after you are “done” there is always a phase where you should profile your application and then focus your energy on the 5% of your code that ends up taking most of the time.
In your example the bubble-sort would stand out as an issue and would then be replaced with a better version, but I’ve also seen a lot of completely unrelated bottlenecks that we never suspected while looking at the code.
So instead of trying to preoptimize, spend more time on writing it properly and with proper abstractions so that it becomes easy to fix your code.

I’m somewhat with you on denormalized databases for heavy webbased applications where performance is more important than storage efficiency or good design and I expect “Drizzle” to make a good showing in the web world once it’s finally done.

PS: Joins don’t have to be expensive if you properly reduce the results in your query and JOIN on indexed collumns