Lots of devs are now using fake loading bars to emphasise certain tasks e.g. Spinning up a Droplet on Digital Ocean. I heard that loading bar is just a placebo

Lots of devs are now using fake loading bars to emphasise certain tasks e.g. Spinning up a Droplet on Digital Ocean. I heard that loading bar is just a placebo to emphisise the creation of a new droplet as being important. Apparently the droplet is finished initialising long before the loading bar's 4 or 5 second length. It's probably why this loading bar apprears to load so perfectly -- it's not timed on anything but a counter. In fact I had to draw out the experience of topping up in our app. It happened too quickly and people didn't know what was just happened. They clicked their pay button and were brought to the balance screen. They all panicked for some reason and ran back to history to check the transaction went through. We put in a success message before being brought to balance screen and panic is gone. The success messasge is just elaborting on what already happened -- it's a placebo. I think you're right about the real world. Real buttons are often just broken but in the world of software theres lots of bright and dark patterns behind the buttons -- no software button broke from mechanical failure.