5 ms·

Of all the woes of modern UI, latency on text input is what I find most irritating. It's physical, visceral, mental, I don't know; when you've been raised by in

by K0SM0S 7y ago

Of all the woes of modern UI, latency on text input is what I find most irritating. It's physical, visceral, mental, I don't know; when you've been raised by incredibly snappy video games (1980-1990s, 2D glory), it's asinine to suffer input lag in 2020 of some x86 platform. It's just alien an experience, like time suddenly reversed for userland or something. In the browser, given the steaming pile of code that some pages have become, I may understand some lag, quirks. They broke the web and Chrome is helping so... Yeah. But in a text editor of all applications? No. I mean, just... no. (Looking at you, atom, vscode... WHY?) Whatever the hell you're trying to search / display / message (I assume, trying to help me...): please begin by not interrupt my input feedback? That should be, I don't know, the only sane priority for UX, to actually respond to the user? Otherwise the computer feels... broken, subpar, unfit for the task? Am I alone in having these feelings when using devices?.. /rant over. I'm not that old for god's sake, 37 and they've got me jaded by UX quality already. All it took was two short decades to flush down the drain the precious good that didn't need fixing. Ah. I'm sure we'll get back there. Eventually. Even if I have to write it myself (surely, we'll be legions). Someday I wonder what we're waiting for. And then I remember that this is the year of the Linux desktop... It's not that easy, is it?

kierank 7y ago
https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
torgian 7y ago
I gotta agree here. UX seemed so simple just ten- twenty years ago... and still I wonder how the hell people programmed 16 bit video games in a tiny system. And everything on the web front is so bloated. Yes, I can make a pretty UX with that, but at what cost? I think that the faster and cheaper computers that we have today have made it easier to overlook how bloated everything has become. Upside is, it does make a lot of things easier. Downside is, everything is slower and fatter. Mostly because of new frameworks, languages, etc that all aim to accomplish something, just easier. And I get it. I understand why we want to make it easier. But again, what are the costs?
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > And everything on the web front is so bloated. Um, you're posting this on a site that's basically the polar opposite to "bloat" on the web. Badly-engineered systems have always existed somewhere; even the COBOL-based proprietary solutions referenced in the OP are a fairly obvious example of that.
  - torgian 7y ago
    Ok, then the _majority_ seems to be bloated. And I feel like this is the new normal. HN, in my opinion, is an island of simplicity in a sea of complexity.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  This is pure speculation on my part but I like to think that there's literally billions to save. It's about the order of magnitude: even 1 minute per year per person amounts to something like 15,000 man-days (>100 million man hours!). 1 minute per year!
badsectoracula 7y ago
I have a feeling that many programmers and engineers are blind to latency. Not in a sense that they are bad programmers/engineers, but in a sense that they simply cannot feel the difference, so they make stuff that introduce latency they themselves cannot perceive. So you get stuff like Wayland that introduces latency issues and when you try to explain the issue you feel like trying to describe the difference between magenta and fuchsia to a blind person.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  Oh my, I've never thought of it this way. I really get what you mean. Can't agree more. That might very well be it. Could it be trained, through exposure, e.g. with video games as I implied? Or is it maybe related to "snapiness" of the brain?— I think it's been shown that we clearly have difference response times, some people being several times faster/slower than others (with no explicit correlation to a "level" of intelligence", more like the characteristics of different engines in terms of latency / acceleration / max speed / torque / etc).
  - badsectoracula 7y ago
    TBH i don't know. I was playing video and computer games since a very young age, so it might have to do with this but at the same time i know i wasn't paying much attention to latency until my late 20s. Even at 25 i'd be running Beryl (one of the first compositors) with its massive latency and i'd be writing games with software rendered mouse cursors, both being incredibly poor in terms of latency and i'd just not notice it. So perhaps it can be learned?

by K0SM0S 7y ago

kierank 7y ago

https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/

torgian 7y ago

I gotta agree here. UX seemed so simple just ten- twenty years ago... and still I wonder how the hell people programmed 16 bit video games in a tiny system. And everything on the web front is so bloated. Yes, I can make a pretty UX with that, but at what cost? I think that the faster and cheaper computers that we have today have made it easier to overlook how bloated everything has become. Upside is, it does make a lot of things easier. Downside is, everything is slower and fatter. Mostly because of new frameworks, languages, etc that all aim to accomplish something, just easier. And I get it. I understand why we want to make it easier. But again, what are the costs?

zozbot234 7y ago
> And everything on the web front is so bloated. Um, you're posting this on a site that's basically the polar opposite to "bloat" on the web. Badly-engineered systems have always existed somewhere; even the COBOL-based proprietary solutions referenced in the OP are a fairly obvious example of that.
- torgian 7y ago
  Ok, then the _majority_ seems to be bloated. And I feel like this is the new normal. HN, in my opinion, is an island of simplicity in a sea of complexity.
K0SM0S 7y ago
This is pure speculation on my part but I like to think that there's literally billions to save. It's about the order of magnitude: even 1 minute per year per person amounts to something like 15,000 man-days (>100 million man hours!). 1 minute per year!

badsectoracula 7y ago

I have a feeling that many programmers and engineers are blind to latency. Not in a sense that they are bad programmers/engineers, but in a sense that they simply cannot feel the difference, so they make stuff that introduce latency they themselves cannot perceive. So you get stuff like Wayland that introduces latency issues and when you try to explain the issue you feel like trying to describe the difference between magenta and fuchsia to a blind person.

K0SM0S 7y ago
Oh my, I've never thought of it this way. I really get what you mean. Can't agree more. That might very well be it. Could it be trained, through exposure, e.g. with video games as I implied? Or is it maybe related to "snapiness" of the brain?— I think it's been shown that we clearly have difference response times, some people being several times faster/slower than others (with no explicit correlation to a "level" of intelligence", more like the characteristics of different engines in terms of latency / acceleration / max speed / torque / etc).
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  TBH i don't know. I was playing video and computer games since a very young age, so it might have to do with this but at the same time i know i wasn't paying much attention to latency until my late 20s. Even at 25 i'd be running Beryl (one of the first compositors) with its massive latency and i'd be writing games with software rendered mouse cursors, both being incredibly poor in terms of latency and i'd just not notice it. So perhaps it can be learned?