Nice article, but what a strange title. Faster chips are leaving programmers in their dust? Huh? I wasn't aware that I was competing with cpu speed. All this time, I thought more processing speed expanded my possibilites. After all, my entire field (mathematical optimization) would be pretty useless without lots and lots of processing power.
I talked to a dude with an OR background, and he said that in the 80s people laughed at the notion of using this kind of math to solve business problems. Processing power increases the opportunities for programmers, without question.
Anyway, fun to read, just a very strange take on the relationship between programmers and cpu speed.
The point is that more processor speed expands your possibilities only if you are smart enough to actually use it. Lazy (dare I say "blub") programmers are being left in the dust.
(Of course, this isn't the first time some programmers have resisted change. I remember a great rant about how if you program in assembly and never hit in the cache, the Pentium 4 was no faster than the Pentium III and thus useless. That guy probably quit programming entirely when multicore arrived.)
I talked to a dude with an OR background, and he said that in the 80s people laughed at the notion of using this kind of math to solve business problems. Processing power increases the opportunities for programmers, without question.
Anyway, fun to read, just a very strange take on the relationship between programmers and cpu speed.