What every programmer should know about memory

Re:What every programmer should know about memory by klochner on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @02:06PM (#1512219)

Does every programmer really need to know the physics behind dynamic ram?

What every programmer should know is the latency of the various memory types (cache, RAM, virtual) and their respective sizes.

Here's a nice graphic:

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/what-your-computer-does...

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Re:What every programmer should know about memory by mahmud on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @07:53PM (#1513146)

Not every programmer needs to be a hardcore systems hacker; you can ignore the low-level details and lead a healthy productive life. But me, personally, I get a massive inferiority complex if I don't dive into Nasm and GDB every 2-4 months. It would pain me not to know useless things about obscure stuff.

Yesterday I was prancing through reddit when I followed this link: http://pvk.ca/

My stomach sank when I realized I wouldn't have the time to "follow along" (i.e. waste the day reproducing his results, checking facts, researching and following links) because I am about to start a lead-dev/PM position and need to work on SaaS and EA stuff. So I closed the tab and moved on to focus on what matters. It wasn't until 1AM that I realized what I have done; aarongough sent me a link to his toy prototyping language and I have just spent 5 hours reimplementing it in Lisp, in the process re-digging into the Self papers! (and discovering warts, but that's another story.)

I am an Adderall prescription away from leading a healthy productive life, without unnecessary knowledge about stuff.

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Re:What every programmer should know about memory by johngunderman on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @05:36PM (#1512848)

Duartes has a bunch of great articles. Its too bad he isn't writing anymore. Anyone know why all he stopped?

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