7 ms·

Don't know about 1983, but a lot of software is definitely slower than it was 10, 20 years ago. Something that used to result in 2MB application with 5MB in me

by rplnt 6y ago

Don't know about 1983, but a lot of software is definitely slower than it was 10, 20 years ago. Something that used to result in 2MB application with 5MB in memory requirement is now done as half a gigabyte of resources that will spawn dozens of processes totaling at least 1GB of memory. Sure, computers are faster, but not by that much apparently. Looking at all those electron (et al) apps. Cheap to write beats user experience I guess.

The_Colonel 6y ago
I miss some concrete examples. What exactly was faster to do 20 years ago than now?
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Scrolling text in text editors. Was always buttersmooth on 7 MHz Amiga. Is choppy in many of today's IDEs. I get that IDE does more than a text editor, but it would be great if adding extra features would not compromise existing ones.
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    So apples to oranges. Adding features will almost inevitably make software slower. Sometimes the difference is smaller, sometimes larger.
    - new2628 6y ago
      I guess the underlying point is that in the same time period CPU speed has increased thousandfold, so you'd expect that to compensate for the few extra features that were added.
      - The_Colonel 6y ago
        IDEs don't have "extra few features", they have massive amount of functionality added. "extra few features" would fit more to likes of vim.
    - rplnt 6y ago
      Bare syntax highlighting in a text editor on a large file. Nothing extra fancy like indexing or analysis. Not an issue 15 years ago, in VS code you can scroll faster than that.
      - The_Colonel 6y ago
        Which editor did you use? I mean I definitely remember scrolling issues 15 years ago on a large file with syntax highlighting. I used e.g. gedit (linux) and pspad (windows) during that time and both completely froze on larger files.
- andi999 6y ago
  Here is one: when you switched on a C64, the booting(startup) took probably less than 3 seconds. Booting a notebook these days takes longer (luckily it is not as bad as when we didnt have SSDs). But generally I do not think the premise is correct. Loading a game from a datasette took easily 15 minutes (later there was acceleration only a few minutes)
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    Loading a game from a floopy was much faster than loading a modern game as soon as floppies became popular enough to carry games. Loading a game from a cardigde (what was usual at the time) was much faster than anything we use now, but this is not a fair comparison.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Why isn't it a fair comparison? If my mother's only criteria is how fast does something load then why should she care about anything else? It's a fact that nowadays a lot of apps are very slow, on computers and phones alike -- and socially and culturally that's unacceptable for non-technical people.
      - The_Colonel 6y ago
        If the speed is the only criterium then you can just play old games. It's not fair comparison since the games are completely different beasts today - huge open worlds, detailed textures, complex AIs. Game studios could design games which are super fast to load and play but some other aspect would suffer instead. It's a trade off and it looks like users are OK with waiting a little bit if it means better gameplay.
        pdimitar 6y ago
        Okay, but how did games enter this global thread's discussion? That's definitely way off-topic. My mom simply wanted instantly loading calendar and grocery list apps. I know that's achievable because I've done (parts of) such apps in the past and they were faster than others. It's not such a stretch to imagine people being frustrated with lags everywhere (and those lags do objectively exist). And I've met a good amount of people frustrated with the current breed of software as well. Modern apps don't bring almost anything new or improved to the table. They should be lightning fast but they are not.
- miltondts 6y ago
  Visual studio startup and debugging. Source: https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    IDEs are I think a good example. There were IDEs in the 80s and 90s but they are very different from now. For example back then they did not index files at startup since there was no function for that (like "find references"). These days IDEs provide a lot of "intelligence" and static analysis for which you need memory, a lot of reads and processing. So yeah, I guess VS got slower but it's because it's now doing much more (useful) things.
  - vivab0rg 6y ago
    Golden video. Thanks for this.
- rplnt 6y ago
  Let's go with emojis in Slack. That was not an issue in any chat sowftware offering them decades ago. In 2020 I can't have them enabled on MacBook Pro, because if someone were to use many of them, the CPU usage would spike (A LOT), even on background. Since this has been the case for at least three years now, I don't consider it a random bug, but rather an issue with the technologies used. As mentioned in a reply bellow, syntax highlighting is a feature that was (and is) blazingly fast in every software except atom-based editors. Startup times are atrocious too. Spotify. And as mentioned in my comment, speed can be influenced by the size or memory requirements. And that becomes issue on its own when you want to use multiple of these applications. I constantly run into full ram and swapping with 16GB. Mostly caused by web applications, but the root cause is the same. Size on disk (or when updating) also matters on phones a lot.
misterS 6y ago
I'm not disagreeing, but just because something uses more memory does not mean it's slower per se.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  Memory speed does not increase as fast as CPU performance.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  It may not be slower, but it's definitely less efficient. You can really see the loss of efficiency in modern software by using the same program/application on a modern machine vs a 10 or 15 year old machine. I have a couple of older laptops (2001 era Dell Latitude CPx with a PIII 500MHz, 2011 Lenovo Ideapad netbook with the Atom N450 1.6GHz) that I will occasionally play around with. I've found that most of what the article author said applies; textual interfaces with minimal or no mouse usage runs perfectly well on either of those old beasts, even with code written in 2020 and optimized for modern hardware. The "suckless" suite of tools in particular (dwm, st, surf, etc.) make those otherwise unusable machines into something approaching modern workstation utility. You don't want to even try to run any modern graphically rich software on those devices as you'll be frustrated immediately, and it will be clear just how bloated and unnecessary a lot of modern design has become. I feel as long as we keep advancing in raw computing power, the software can be allowed to grow and make use of the extra power, but we will eventually reach a standoff where the hardware stops advancing and at that point we will need to focus on reducing, not increasing, software bloat if we wish to maintain efficiency.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  Actually it does albeit indirectly, because you are not running a single application on a modern computer. When they all start starving for memory they get slower.
lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
If 5MB of memory means swaping out to a floppy disk 30 years ago and 1GB usage doesn't today because your macbook has 32gb of ram the older program is still going to be slower. I think there's an important distinction between "modern programs could be faster" (which is unambiguously true) and "modern programs are slower than older programs or even analogue equivalents" which ends up often relying of invalid comparisons or rose colored glasses about what computing was like. Often times what's being optimized for isn't even the speed of experience and maybe that's ok. Chrome spawns a million processes so if a tab crashes it doesn't end your browsing session, VS code being written in electron means writing plugins is a breeze and thus has built a thriving ecosystem in a record amount of time. If nothing else the world of software is a lot more flexible in 2020 than 1990 and maybe people prefer that to raw speed (given there's not a huge demand for native terminal based applications there's an argument to be made)
- jonhohle 6y ago
  Has document writing or spreadsheet creation changed much since the 90s? Word and Excel 6 were significantly faster than current versions and were running on PCs with 8 or 16MB of RAM and, at least for my use cases, did effectively the same job they do today. In some cases they did it better. How has document creation changed in two decades that justifies two orders of magnitude more RAM and CPU performance, 10x power draw, etc.? If your house was built with 100x the resources and consumed that much more power, and it took longer to turn on the lights or cook a meal would it be justified because the building process was easier and you could add new light fixtures more easily? That would be lunacy, but for some reason we think it’s OK in software to avoid the craftsmanship the profession demands while treat users like fools who should just accept that computers are faster so their apps should be slower. It’s garbage reasoning. The ergonomics of developers should always come second to providing the best for customers.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    >10x power draw I can run xlookup functions on a 1000 row excel spreadsheet on my cell phone.
programAgaib 6y ago
As I write a program in react native, I realize the problem is at least half attributed to Apple. Having to make Apps that will get published and not banned, all while trying to keep costs low forces developers into JavaScript solutions. If it was low cost to develop a native iPhone app, this would not be an issue.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  What's the high cost to develop a native iPhone app? Having to learn the language?
  - rbrtl 6y ago
    Or perhaps the $100 Developer account fee
  - jsymolon 6y ago
    Constant hardware upgrades.
  - abiogenesis 6y ago
    Buy a Mac?
- rbrtl 6y ago
  As you "program" in React Native, are you really qualified to speak on who "at least half" of the issues are attributed to? What do you mean when you say that the problem is half Apple's fault? Or, like every other comment your account hasd made in the last 24-48 hours, is it just an attempt to start an Apple flamewar?
  - youDrinkKoolade 6y ago
    Value your privacy more.
hazz99 6y ago
> Cheap to write beats user experience I guess. I think it'd be more accurate to say value to the user beats the cost to write the software, which then beats user experience. Something can offer a lot of value and use but still be a pain to use.
ourlordcaffeine 6y ago
Some colleagues of mine were having ram issues: Running slack, rstudio, atom and a browser was almost maxing out an 8gb machine. Why does an IM client need over a gig of ram?
- celeritascelery 6y ago
  Because electron. Developers have become so focused on ease of development they forget about delighting their customers.

by rplnt 6y ago

The_Colonel 6y ago

I miss some concrete examples. What exactly was faster to do 20 years ago than now?

burntoutfire 6y ago
Scrolling text in text editors. Was always buttersmooth on 7 MHz Amiga. Is choppy in many of today's IDEs. I get that IDE does more than a text editor, but it would be great if adding extra features would not compromise existing ones.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  So apples to oranges. Adding features will almost inevitably make software slower. Sometimes the difference is smaller, sometimes larger.
  - new2628 6y ago
    I guess the underlying point is that in the same time period CPU speed has increased thousandfold, so you'd expect that to compensate for the few extra features that were added.
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      IDEs don't have "extra few features", they have massive amount of functionality added. "extra few features" would fit more to likes of vim.
  - rplnt 6y ago
    Bare syntax highlighting in a text editor on a large file. Nothing extra fancy like indexing or analysis. Not an issue 15 years ago, in VS code you can scroll faster than that.
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      Which editor did you use? I mean I definitely remember scrolling issues 15 years ago on a large file with syntax highlighting. I used e.g. gedit (linux) and pspad (windows) during that time and both completely froze on larger files.
andi999 6y ago
Here is one: when you switched on a C64, the booting(startup) took probably less than 3 seconds. Booting a notebook these days takes longer (luckily it is not as bad as when we didnt have SSDs). But generally I do not think the premise is correct. Loading a game from a datasette took easily 15 minutes (later there was acceleration only a few minutes)
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Loading a game from a floopy was much faster than loading a modern game as soon as floppies became popular enough to carry games. Loading a game from a cardigde (what was usual at the time) was much faster than anything we use now, but this is not a fair comparison.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Why isn't it a fair comparison? If my mother's only criteria is how fast does something load then why should she care about anything else? It's a fact that nowadays a lot of apps are very slow, on computers and phones alike -- and socially and culturally that's unacceptable for non-technical people.
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      If the speed is the only criterium then you can just play old games. It's not fair comparison since the games are completely different beasts today - huge open worlds, detailed textures, complex AIs. Game studios could design games which are super fast to load and play but some other aspect would suffer instead. It's a trade off and it looks like users are OK with waiting a little bit if it means better gameplay.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Okay, but how did games enter this global thread's discussion? That's definitely way off-topic. My mom simply wanted instantly loading calendar and grocery list apps. I know that's achievable because I've done (parts of) such apps in the past and they were faster than others. It's not such a stretch to imagine people being frustrated with lags everywhere (and those lags do objectively exist). And I've met a good amount of people frustrated with the current breed of software as well. Modern apps don't bring almost anything new or improved to the table. They should be lightning fast but they are not.
miltondts 6y ago
Visual studio startup and debugging. Source: https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  IDEs are I think a good example. There were IDEs in the 80s and 90s but they are very different from now. For example back then they did not index files at startup since there was no function for that (like "find references"). These days IDEs provide a lot of "intelligence" and static analysis for which you need memory, a lot of reads and processing. So yeah, I guess VS got slower but it's because it's now doing much more (useful) things.
- vivab0rg 6y ago
  Golden video. Thanks for this.
rplnt 6y ago
Let's go with emojis in Slack. That was not an issue in any chat sowftware offering them decades ago. In 2020 I can't have them enabled on MacBook Pro, because if someone were to use many of them, the CPU usage would spike (A LOT), even on background. Since this has been the case for at least three years now, I don't consider it a random bug, but rather an issue with the technologies used. As mentioned in a reply bellow, syntax highlighting is a feature that was (and is) blazingly fast in every software except atom-based editors. Startup times are atrocious too. Spotify. And as mentioned in my comment, speed can be influenced by the size or memory requirements. And that becomes issue on its own when you want to use multiple of these applications. I constantly run into full ram and swapping with 16GB. Mostly caused by web applications, but the root cause is the same. Size on disk (or when updating) also matters on phones a lot.

misterS 6y ago

I'm not disagreeing, but just because something uses more memory does not mean it's slower per se.

timw4mail 6y ago
Memory speed does not increase as fast as CPU performance.
morganvachon 6y ago
It may not be slower, but it's definitely less efficient. You can really see the loss of efficiency in modern software by using the same program/application on a modern machine vs a 10 or 15 year old machine. I have a couple of older laptops (2001 era Dell Latitude CPx with a PIII 500MHz, 2011 Lenovo Ideapad netbook with the Atom N450 1.6GHz) that I will occasionally play around with. I've found that most of what the article author said applies; textual interfaces with minimal or no mouse usage runs perfectly well on either of those old beasts, even with code written in 2020 and optimized for modern hardware. The "suckless" suite of tools in particular (dwm, st, surf, etc.) make those otherwise unusable machines into something approaching modern workstation utility. You don't want to even try to run any modern graphically rich software on those devices as you'll be frustrated immediately, and it will be clear just how bloated and unnecessary a lot of modern design has become. I feel as long as we keep advancing in raw computing power, the software can be allowed to grow and make use of the extra power, but we will eventually reach a standoff where the hardware stops advancing and at that point we will need to focus on reducing, not increasing, software bloat if we wish to maintain efficiency.
abiogenesis 6y ago
Actually it does albeit indirectly, because you are not running a single application on a modern computer. When they all start starving for memory they get slower.

lordCarbonFiber 6y ago

If 5MB of memory means swaping out to a floppy disk 30 years ago and 1GB usage doesn't today because your macbook has 32gb of ram the older program is still going to be slower. I think there's an important distinction between "modern programs could be faster" (which is unambiguously true) and "modern programs are slower than older programs or even analogue equivalents" which ends up often relying of invalid comparisons or rose colored glasses about what computing was like. Often times what's being optimized for isn't even the speed of experience and maybe that's ok. Chrome spawns a million processes so if a tab crashes it doesn't end your browsing session, VS code being written in electron means writing plugins is a breeze and thus has built a thriving ecosystem in a record amount of time. If nothing else the world of software is a lot more flexible in 2020 than 1990 and maybe people prefer that to raw speed (given there's not a huge demand for native terminal based applications there's an argument to be made)

jonhohle 6y ago
Has document writing or spreadsheet creation changed much since the 90s? Word and Excel 6 were significantly faster than current versions and were running on PCs with 8 or 16MB of RAM and, at least for my use cases, did effectively the same job they do today. In some cases they did it better. How has document creation changed in two decades that justifies two orders of magnitude more RAM and CPU performance, 10x power draw, etc.? If your house was built with 100x the resources and consumed that much more power, and it took longer to turn on the lights or cook a meal would it be justified because the building process was easier and you could add new light fixtures more easily? That would be lunacy, but for some reason we think it’s OK in software to avoid the craftsmanship the profession demands while treat users like fools who should just accept that computers are faster so their apps should be slower. It’s garbage reasoning. The ergonomics of developers should always come second to providing the best for customers.
- selectodude 6y ago
  >10x power draw I can run xlookup functions on a 1000 row excel spreadsheet on my cell phone.

programAgaib 6y ago

As I write a program in react native, I realize the problem is at least half attributed to Apple. Having to make Apps that will get published and not banned, all while trying to keep costs low forces developers into JavaScript solutions. If it was low cost to develop a native iPhone app, this would not be an issue.

oarsinsync 6y ago
What's the high cost to develop a native iPhone app? Having to learn the language?
- rbrtl 6y ago
  Or perhaps the $100 Developer account fee
- jsymolon 6y ago
  Constant hardware upgrades.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  Buy a Mac?
rbrtl 6y ago
As you "program" in React Native, are you really qualified to speak on who "at least half" of the issues are attributed to? What do you mean when you say that the problem is half Apple's fault? Or, like every other comment your account hasd made in the last 24-48 hours, is it just an attempt to start an Apple flamewar?
- youDrinkKoolade 6y ago
  Value your privacy more.

hazz99 6y ago

> Cheap to write beats user experience I guess. I think it'd be more accurate to say value to the user beats the cost to write the software, which then beats user experience. Something can offer a lot of value and use but still be a pain to use.

ourlordcaffeine 6y ago

Some colleagues of mine were having ram issues: Running slack, rstudio, atom and a browser was almost maxing out an 8gb machine. Why does an IM client need over a gig of ram?

celeritascelery 6y ago
Because electron. Developers have become so focused on ease of development they forget about delighting their customers.