[vojta_letal]

> Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. ... Only in software, it’s fine if a program runs at 1% or even 0.01% of the possible performance.

> I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos, but not scroll web pages? How is that ok?

IMO the comparison should be buildings <-> fine-tuned libraries (i.e. video decoding algorithms), modern applications <-> cities.

Go to any city center in Europe. Urban planning a century ago was much more elegant and elaborate taking into consideration the city as a whole. Nowadays developers and investors often ignore important aspects, such as surrounding buildings, infrastructure, making cities inefficient for the people who actually live there.

Any system which has plenty of resources has to become inefficient. It's just that the Moore's law allows for pretty damn inefficiency.

[TeMPOraL]

If we're talking cities, then I don't see how "Any system which has plenty of resources has to become inefficient" follows.

The problem of modern urban design is that of unrestricted freedom for developers. They build mostly whatever the like, however they like, the city be damned as long as they make a profit off their construction. What's lacking here is care - personal care about the city, and centralized care in form of a city that can tell them they can either submit to the constraints of a more holistic planning, or take their business elsewhere.

[anthk]

>Go to any city center in Europe. Urban planning a century ago was much more elegant and elaborate taking into consideration the city as a whole.

Eh, no. Just a castle/wall, shops around in the main St's, a market in the middle, and expanding chaotically from that.

[vojta_letal]

That's more than a century ago. I was thinking about stuff built like in 1850-1950.