4 ms·

Whenever one of my developers tells me that my phone is too slow when their app lags on my Android 4.1 phone, I tell them the specs of Apollo 11 computer and s

Whenever one of my developers tells me that my phone is too slow when their app lags on my Android 4.1 phone, I tell them the specs of Apollo 11 computer and scold them for being unable to deliver a smoothly scrolling list of messages on a freaking supercomputer in my palm.

thombat 7y ago
But do you also give them a free hand to implement the entire stack below to meet that goal, along with the budgeting advice "waste anything but time"?
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  That is overkill, and in the end they manage to deliver an acceptable results. You see, the problem of app developers, especially in big companies, is that they are given a top-notch smartphones, so they naturally target such hardware as a benchmark for performance, which moves every year. That's why a 2016 Moto Z play smartphone ran smoothly in 2016, but works really slow in 2020 - because all the regular apps (Gmail, Chrome, FB, etc) were updated with newer flagship smartphones in mind. "New build works really fast on my new Pixel 4", the Gmail developer thinks, "ship in to production!"
  - masklinn 7y ago
    Have you considered maybe giving them test phones with the configurations they're supposed to support instead of "scolding" them like misbehaving children because they're apparently working with the phones they have but supposed to magically support phones they don't?
    - Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
      Yes, I had. They all have easy unrestricted access to a variety of 'old' (of the oldest supported OS versions) phones lying on a special shelf in our office.
masklinn 7y ago
Yes because the AGC was well known for its smoothly scrolling message lists on its large high-density display.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  No, it is known for smooth landings on the Moon.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and specifically because of the display size? On the CPU side, you can figure out how to position a line of text in less than 100 instructions if you store it right. But even if you use 10 million instructions to lay out a handful of lines, you'll never have to hitch. On the GPU side, the pre-retina A5 had a fill rate of 2 billion pixels per second, and a brand new high-DPI phone has 100-200 million pixels per second to draw at 60fps. Let alone comparing like to like. A high-end qualcomm chip from 2013-2014 would match that, and a low end phone would have half the power and half the pixels. We are in a wonderful age of overpowered GPUs for 2D work. There are no excuses for dropped frames.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and specifically because of the display size? What I'm arguing is that the problems have little to do with one another, and I'm guessing so do the means. That's like saying building a viaduct is easy because the pyramids exist.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      It's all about quickly responding to input. Because it's the CPU stuff that's the problem here, and that's not fundamentally different. The display differences are a very separate thing and not the cause of the problem.

thombat 7y ago

But do you also give them a free hand to implement the entire stack below to meet that goal, along with the budgeting advice "waste anything but time"?

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
That is overkill, and in the end they manage to deliver an acceptable results. You see, the problem of app developers, especially in big companies, is that they are given a top-notch smartphones, so they naturally target such hardware as a benchmark for performance, which moves every year. That's why a 2016 Moto Z play smartphone ran smoothly in 2016, but works really slow in 2020 - because all the regular apps (Gmail, Chrome, FB, etc) were updated with newer flagship smartphones in mind. "New build works really fast on my new Pixel 4", the Gmail developer thinks, "ship in to production!"
- masklinn 7y ago
  Have you considered maybe giving them test phones with the configurations they're supposed to support instead of "scolding" them like misbehaving children because they're apparently working with the phones they have but supposed to magically support phones they don't?
  - Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    Yes, I had. They all have easy unrestricted access to a variety of 'old' (of the oldest supported OS versions) phones lying on a special shelf in our office.

masklinn 7y ago

Yes because the AGC was well known for its smoothly scrolling message lists on its large high-density display.

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
No, it is known for smooth landings on the Moon.
Dylan16807 7y ago
Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and specifically because of the display size? On the CPU side, you can figure out how to position a line of text in less than 100 instructions if you store it right. But even if you use 10 million instructions to lay out a handful of lines, you'll never have to hitch. On the GPU side, the pre-retina A5 had a fill rate of 2 billion pixels per second, and a brand new high-DPI phone has 100-200 million pixels per second to draw at 60fps. Let alone comparing like to like. A high-end qualcomm chip from 2013-2014 would match that, and a low end phone would have half the power and half the pixels. We are in a wonderful age of overpowered GPUs for 2D work. There are no excuses for dropped frames.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and specifically because of the display size? What I'm arguing is that the problems have little to do with one another, and I'm guessing so do the means. That's like saying building a viaduct is easy because the pyramids exist.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    It's all about quickly responding to input. Because it's the CPU stuff that's the problem here, and that's not fundamentally different. The display differences are a very separate thing and not the cause of the problem.