4 ms·

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.

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.