I was briefly looking at yet another JavaScript framework this morning. It was backed by a Ruby engine for optimal “MVC goodness.” Having never measured the performance of Ruby, I’m not going to claim Ruby’s fast or slow; but I will say that it’s unlikely that it’s as fast as a compiled language.
It got me to thinking — as more and more people (from big IT to homeowners) try to save energy as the costs of energy continue to rise, …
What if the act of running an (installed or web) application incurred a precise monetary fee for the amount of energy it consumed (possibly measured as CPU time)? Certainly, there’s already a charge for electricity today, which is not precisely measured …
Poorly written applications, CPU burners and I/O thrashers bug me the most when using a laptop with only a battery. But what if web hosts charged that way, or applications you “rented” as software as a service charged for “use.” The more unreasonable the charge, the more likely users will complain about performance.
(Thinking to my self about how FAST my PC is sitting under my desktop, but how fast Windows 3.1 would boot on it vs. Windows or Mac OSX).
Are applications just becoming more and more bloated, or truly better?
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More bloated. But they take less time to write, and time=money.