Reflections on Software Performance An Article by Nelson Elhage blog.nelhage.com Performance is a feature Performance changes how users use software Performance needs effort throughout a project’s lifecycle Architecture strongly impacts performance Performance isn’t just about hot spots Performant foundations simplify architecture …we underrate performance when designing and building software. We have become accustomed to casually giving up factors of two or ten or more with our choices of tools and libraries, without asking if the benefits are worth it. performancesoftware
Against the survival of the prettiest An Essay by Samuel Hughes www.worksinprogress.co What has emerged here is that although survivorship bias probably does contribute to that to some extent, it is not the main explanation: premodern buildings may on average have been a bit less beautiful than those that have survived, but they still seem to have been ugly far less often than recent buildings are. The survivorship theory sought to explain the apparent rise of ugliness in terms of a bias in the sample of buildings we are observing. There is another kind of bias theory, which seeks to explain it in terms of a bias in the observer, saying for instance that every generation is disposed to find recent buildings uglier than older ones, and that this is why recent buildings seem so to us. This is a complex and interesting idea, which I am not going to assess on this occasion. Suppose, though, that our eyes are to be trusted. If this is so, strange and eerie truths rise before us: that ugly buildings were once rare, that the ‘uglification of the world’ is real and that it is happening all around us. urbanismarchitecturebeauty