‍fuchsiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa @f0x@pixie.town

Potentially controversial opinion: I think that "making software more efficient" is the wrong thing to focus on right now.

There's a significant kernel of truth to the idea that "it's easy to make good code performant, but it's hard to make performant code good" - and so before going all-in on optimizing code as the primary objective, we should make sure that we're optimizing the right thing.

And right now, we're not. We're very much not.

There are significant problems to be solved in how we address software development, and the power dynamics embedded into it - the most obvious example would be the still-widespread fear of dependencies, which actively interferes with making software work better for people, and results in an endless treadmill of broken shit.

And guess what, there *are* significant efficiency benefits to be gained here - everybody using the same well-optimized implementation is going to be much better than everybody using their own homegrown half-optimized "clever" implementation.

But by putting all the focus on software efficiency and performance as the #1 priority, we risk removing all the oxygen in the room for figuring out better ways to deal with dependencies and many of the other industry-wide problems I haven't even mentioned here yet, and ending up in a *worse* place (even efficiency-wise!) than where we *could* be if we started with other problems first.

TL;DR: software efficiency and performance is important, but if you treat it as a goal to chase directly, you will end up with broken and faux-simple software that isn't even as efficient as it could be. Fix the big problems with software first, *then* think about how to optimize the remainder.

>>>>> “If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”

>>>>> We did, except it wasn’t called autism [ . . . ]

>>>> [ . . . ] “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” [ . . . ]

>>> [ . . . ] The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost *textbook* depiction of autistic children. [ . . . ]

>> I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. [ . . . ]

>> [ . . . ] If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.

>> [ . . . ] What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. [ . . . ]

> “How come nobody ever heard of ‘dyslexia’ until widespread literacy became a thing?”

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