Hardware Is Cheap, Programmers Are Expensive 465
Sportsqs points out a story at Coding Horror which begins:
"Given the rapid advance of Moore's Law, when does it make sense to throw hardware at a programming problem? As a general rule, I'd say almost always. Consider the average programmer salary here in the US. You probably have several of these programmer guys or gals on staff. I can't speak to how much your servers may cost, or how many of them you may need. Or, maybe you don't need any — perhaps all your code executes on your users' hardware, which is an entirely different scenario. Obviously, situations vary. But even the most rudimentary math will tell you that it'd take a massive hardware outlay to equal the yearly costs of even a modest five person programming team."
The Original Story from Coding Horror (Score:2, Informative)
Original Article here... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001198.html [codinghorror.com]
Give the person who actually wrote the article the ad revenue rather than this bottom feeding scum.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:5, Informative)
As for the article, it makes a lot of sense when you're running in a controlled environment. It's really a no brainier in consulting work. Upgrading hardware or optimizing software will both meet the customers needs only the hardware upgrade is $2,000 and the software optimization costs $20,000.
Of course, if you're releasing software into the wild and it needs run on many different machines you better make sure it performs well especially if it's a retail product. So spend the extra money and make it really good.
Depends on type of problem (Score:2, Informative)
Problem that has nonlinear impact on performance can not be solved by adding of two more servers...
Simplest example is index in database. Before adding of index it takes 2 days to execute it, after adding of an index query executes in 100 milliseconds. How can you solve that by adding of more hardware? Also you usually can not solve IO issues between app and DB servers by "just adding of two more servers"...
Not to mention that when it comes to scaling of DB you really can not just depend on "adding of another server in cluster"...
People Are Expensive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I agree. (Score:3, Informative)
But it is so much fun to explain to the bean counter who ordered twice as many disk drives of half the capacity you specified, because their painstaking research found they were a few percent cheaper per byte, that now they have to add in the cost of twice as many raid card channels or storage servers, rack expenses, et cetra when figuring out how much money they saved the company.
dont think that way (Score:2, Informative)
Programmers and efficiency are not unrelated free market resources. Good coders write more efficient code regardless of weather thet is a primary goal. While premature optimization is athe root of all evil, claiming there is no need to optimize at all is equally a fallacy.
Re:Another u.s. specific problem. cost of living (Score:3, Informative)
Well, recent currency fluctuations aside, it has certainly been the case that historically UK prices were well above those of the US, hence coining of the phrase Rip-off Britain [wikipedia.org]. Stuff like the Tesco-Levi jeans battle [bbc.co.uk], where an independent retailer was barred from importing and re-selling goods from the US, reinforced the perception that British consumers get a tough deal.
Things seem to be better now - partly due to more competition, particularly from online dealers and Ebay, where the traditional good communication links from Hong Kong to the UK mean you can often get fast shipping at Chinese domestic prices. I mean, £10 for a 2GB iPod nano clone including shipping, delivered in 3 days... amazing really.
The big issue now is that we seem to be paying much more [timesonline.co.uk] than our European neighbours for energy costs. Apart from petrol at the pump, this has nothing to do with taxes - the UK has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe, and domestic energy VAT of only 5%, so there is really no reason why energy companies can't deliver lower prices. I blame lack of competition in the market - if we paid for energy the same way we paid for (unlocked) mobile phone service, the costs would come crashing down.
Re:Recalculate for the crisis (Score:2, Informative)
No I said engineers are BILLED at $90. What we're actually paid is somewhere around $30-60.
And there are attractive women at Walmart, although you'd be better off working in a mall store like Penneys or Bon Ton, since there's a better clientele. I used to flirt with all the cute teens and 20-somethings when I was selling shoes at JCP.
Re:Another u.s. specific problem. cost of living (Score:4, Informative)
Are you high? Granted, I haven't been to Europe (France, Germany, Netherlands) since 2006, but I can't name a single thing that was less expensive, and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US ($9 Beer Night).
I specifically went looking for cheap Lacoste stuff in France, and there was essentially dollar to euro parity, while the exchange rate was about 1.5:1. In other words, while I would pay $70 (just got a couple for $30 each on sale) for a shirt in the US, in France the same shirt was going for 70 euros. Food and drink prices seemed to be roughly comparable as well. Consumer Electronics, however, were considerably more expensive than in the US, as was gas. The metro was no less expensive than the DC subway, and the trains weren't cheaper than Amtrak, though 1000% better. I'd have to assume the reason that you believe it's actually cheaper is because you enjoy being banged out for taxes all the time.
Re:Frist? (Score:5, Informative)
A handy note for those that don't know, Under X11 in addition to the rgb and bgr subpixel orderings, you can chose vrgb and vgbr vertical orientations to allow subpixel rendering (ClearType) for odd or rotated lcd screens.