Jonathan Blow on Apple's M1 Processor (Faster CPUs don't matter)

Jonathan Blow tells why he thinks Apple's M1 processor won't be impactful.
Clipped from a stream recorded on November 30, 2020.

[aichpvee]

Looking forward to seeing how cranky Jon Blow is about bad programmers when he's 80. It's gonna be awesome!

[julkiewitz]

Lol, it sounds like a crazy scammy coaching session about unlocking one's potential (you could be 100x faster starting right now!), except it's about CPUs and it's completely legit.

[gbroton]

Faster cpu for React and JS applications. Hell yeah!

[toffeethedev]

"YOUR SOFTWARE CAN BE 100X FASTER STARTING TODAY (you just have to write it first)", legendary

[avashurov]

I care because these programmers will switch to these new faster computers and write even slower code which will hardly work on the rest of the computers

[OverG]

A similar analogy with mobile phones. Someone invents a better battery. What phone manufacturers do? They make thinner phones. Someone invents a faster CPU, we make the software slower.

[rabbitcreative]

When I first played MW2: Mercenaries on a Pentium-1 120 MHz, it ran like shit. Absolute shit. Some months later a patch was released and it ran flawlessly on the same hardware. I've also experience this in my web-development career. When I started writing less Ruby/PHP, and more SQL, everything got faster.

[davidjohnston]

I write efficient parallel algorithms in C to do my arithmetic computations (cryptographic stuff mostly). So aside from the OS overhead, I am making use of the CPU capacity. However they are usually command line programs that produce a number or transform data, rather than graphicy things that go through layers of libraries. The speeding up of CPUs has enabled me to get more computation done. For example, a program that takes 2 days to run on my work laptop runs in an hour on my new 18 core, hyperthreaded linux box.

[HairyPixels]

I need a faster CPU so I can port all my applications to JavaScript and run them in Chrome.

[vladinosky]

If something can be done it will be done Mr. blow, either making CPUs 100x faster and software libraries 100x more bloated! Alright?? So let me emulate my intel instruction sets through my arm instruction set which runs a java machine which run javascript on my 3d browser. Thank you! :)

[____uncompetative]

I boosted my productivity by making my pointer larger (System Preferences - search for Mouse - Pointer size Accessibility) and making the Pointer Outline Color BLACK and the Pointer Fill Colour RED. That's right RED. Now I don't spend ages trying to find it on my 6K display.

[SaHaRaSquad]

Funny how half the comments here either don't understand the point he's trying to make or try to discredit him. Sure, convince yourself that he's wrong, while you load the next website with 5MB.

[PauloConstantino]

lol "blowfan" is such a great name. that shadow pic of him is also so lol. hahaha

[yann]

I'm on Windows, I've got about 50 useless processes running right now, wouldn't it be great if they could be useless 100 times faster ?

[code]

i accidentally formatted my 15 year old mac recently, and it returned it to the operating system it shipped with rather than the latest os. it went from extremely laggy and fans screaming for every click/scroll/video-play to being as fast as my new M1and never hearing the fan. there is almost 0 difference in functionality...

[anishkapatel]

I conclude that coding on a slow machine will give the motivation to code faster software. S( the industry should strive less on speed and more on efficiency, which i think what M1 did..

[Coldkenny]

Jonathan is such a cool dude to listen to. Any other experienced people talking about programming I should check out ?

[amhm]

I wish I knew how to write my own Software

[jaylong]

Finally - someone who really understands programming!

[deneb]

The hardware designers at Apple are probably aware of the same fact, which is why the M1 barely consumes any power. Why focus on getting the most performance out of the design if it's going to be wasted on the programmers, many of which are probably in the same building, when there's the easy consumer-facing win of extended battery life?