[Techtalk] Coding on fast computers while considering slow computers

[Tracey]

On 06/20/2012 03:27 AM, Wim De Smet wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 3:25 AM, Akkana Peck<akkana at shallowsky.com>  wrote:
>
>> That's always been true: developers expect hot new machines every year
>> or two, and management obliges because otherwise they'll feel slighted.
>>
>> I've long felt that developers should be encouraged to use older,
>> slower, lower memory machines as their primary desktop machines.
>> You'd see a lot less software bloat. They could always have a few
>> powerful machines around to use as build servers if needed.
>> And yes, I say that as a developer myself.
> I don't agree. Nobody writes slow software on purpose, while everyone
> wants to be writing software to be better, easier and more pleasant to
> use.

I don't agree that developers should be forced to code on older / slower 
computers either, for the reasons Wim has stated. You want their IDE's 
to load quickly. You don't want to shackle them to old technology.

What I think is a good idea to give developers (and others in the 
application writing process) a good feel for how their work loads on 
various machines is the concept of "eating your own dog food". Make them 
use the software on an average machine and a slow machine. Someone else 
mentioned a plugin that would emulate this. There are likely other ways 
of doing it.

There are also ways of writing automated tests that time various 
actions. That leads me to another point. Good code takes both developers 
and testers (QA). I work in QA, and I've written automated testing. 
Without good testing, you wind up with code bloat (among other things). 
Good testing can and will catch things that cause pain for users - not 
just bugs, but slowness in the interface. There's no need to set 
artificial limitations on your developers' machines in order to catch 
and correct interface problems.

Tracey C