7 ms·

You just don't remember 20 years ago. The modern OSs at the time were sluggish too, as they were pushing the limits of their hardware. Your computer today wou

You just don't remember 20 years ago. The modern OSs at the time were sluggish too, as they were pushing the limits of their hardware. Your computer today would be pretty quick if it only did what your computer of 20 years ago did and in only 1024x768. OSs today do a lot more than 20 years ago at about the same speed as 20 years ago. Now, we can debate if all the extras are necessary, but that seems like a different debate than speed.

eloisius 5y ago
I think that’s what GP was saying. It feels like everything is doing way more behind the scenes, and it feels sluggish. I almost can’t type anything long in Slack because the key input latency is so awful. What is it doing? Firing off a cascade of JS event hooks that pre-query reaction gifs, fetching away status for every user I might have mentioned, or what? Slack is obviously a pathological example, but it illustrates what’s feeling more and more common in modern GUI applications.
- markdog12 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/programmer_just/status/1253098759266893827 https://twitter.com/programmer_just/status/12530987592668938...
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  >What is it doing? Firing off a cascade of JS event hooks that pre-query reaction gifs, fetching away status for every user I might have mentioned, or what? Probably not sluggish for any of that, just that some incompetent dev didn’t want to deal with the built in input control or the inconsistency between OSes so they rolled their own and coded it badly. Number of times I’ve had to deal with devs doing things like deciding we must create a custom color picker only for them to code it and it glitches if you drag your mouse off the edge of the color wheel. Or coding their own text controls that break OS spellcheck or autocomplete and have input delay for some reason. Just isn’t that much talent about up to the task of building inputs yet all the low talents rush to roll their own for the smallest reasons.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    That sounds more realistic, and it's something you can observe in sites like Facebook Marketplace. It's a SPA with all custom-built controls. About ten years ago I sneered at "jQuery-sprinkle" frontends, but I never imagined how bad thick SPA apps would be.
NullPrefix 5y ago
>OSs today do a lot more A lot more telemetry and other botnet you mean?
justin66 5y ago
> You just don't remember 20 years ago. The modern OSs at the time were sluggish too, as they were pushing the limits of their hardware. I would venture to guess that you will not find anyone whose experience with Windows 2000 included any slowness comparable to what we see today, if they got it on a new PC of the time or if they installed it themselves on a newish PC of the time. It’s tempting to blame input and display latency on the increased amount of work an OS does versus wherever we happen to sit on the curve of Moore’s law, but that discounts the fact that the values, priorities, and abilities of the engineers and designers involved in OS development might have changed. This is the sort of thing that can be tested and measured. I’d wager if you benchmark a good-spec twenty year old PC and any Windows 11 PC on common user tasks in the UI, the twenty year old machine will be faster while using a higher percentage of its CPU time performing the simple tasks you’re testing against. It’s more or less impossible to use a significant fraction of the CPU’s time dragging the mouse pointer around and opening and closing menus, or even opening and closing normal user apps, on a modern desktop PC, as you might very well see on the old one, so one might want to contemplate why the new PC’s UI has so much latency built in compared to the old one… (I remember 20 years ago)
- eloisius 5y ago
  https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
  - justin66 5y ago
    That’s extremely good stuff, but hopefully it’s obvious from my previous comment that keypress latency isn’t really what I was talking about testing. With some good software and a modern USB 3 keyboard you can engineer a program that on a windows 11 pc puts a character on the screen at some respectable time multiple (sigh) of an Apple II, but how much unavoidable UI and other OS slowness would a user have to navigate through just to start up such a program? (and do we really think hardware performance is the limiting factor there, or poor software engineering and design?)
- actionfromafar 5y ago
  I tested NT 3 something on a DEC workstation on Alpha CPU, at a trade show in the early 90s. Already then, it didn't seem like dragging things around would eat a significant amount of CPU. I started a bunch of AVI videos playing at the same time, while dragging windows around, and everything was smooth.
tarsinge 5y ago
The speed to complete operations is different than the feeling of snappiness, i.e. there is less latency in classic Finder even if the file copy takes longer. Sure there are valid reasons like a lot more animations nowadays and sometimes network latency (any web app), but that doesn't change the fact it's more sluggish.
Keyframe 5y ago
Win2k and XP definitely fept snappy at that time on new hardware. It's easily verifiable by installing OS' of the time on machine of the appropriate time. Functionality-wise I have no idea what is it exactly that modern OS' do that's 'a lot more'. There are a lot more of abstractions going on which is for sure.
- simooooo 5y ago
  Lack of window animation alone makes things feel snappy.
- ralphc 5y ago
  Running the old hardware the main thing missing is modern web browsing, with security, certificates, https, tls, and javascript.
  - Keyframe 5y ago
    How is that related to testing OS responsiveness of the time or.. at all?
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Nope, I have video recordings from my Windows 2000 days. Things load up as soon as I double click on the icon. Like fully ready for me to start typing. It's not a false memory.
ralphc 5y ago
Not only do I remember 20 years ago but I collect vintage hardware and I run Windows 2000 on several Pentium III machines. It's faster on that old hardware than windows 10 on my i7's. File explorer is especially a culprit here, office applications a close second, back then it just does what it needs to do, and does it efficiently. What the hell does Windows 10 and 11 do in explorer I don't know but there's a lot of bloat.
- lproven 5y ago
  As a Windows early-adopter — v2.01 — and a user for over 30 years at this point (which incidentally is precisely why I avoid it these days, run & work in Linux and am always investigating alternatives), Windows 2000 was my favourite version of all time. But the NT 4 desktop, before the bloated sluggish abomination of Active Desktop™®, was the high point. And NT 4 was significantly more sluggish than NT 3.51, despite the mistake of moving the GDI into the kernel in an attempt to improve performance. 2K with Active Desktop removed would be ideal, but I don't think it's possible.

eloisius 5y ago

I think that’s what GP was saying. It feels like everything is doing way more behind the scenes, and it feels sluggish. I almost can’t type anything long in Slack because the key input latency is so awful. What is it doing? Firing off a cascade of JS event hooks that pre-query reaction gifs, fetching away status for every user I might have mentioned, or what? Slack is obviously a pathological example, but it illustrates what’s feeling more and more common in modern GUI applications.

markdog12 5y ago
https://twitter.com/programmer_just/status/1253098759266893827 https://twitter.com/programmer_just/status/12530987592668938...
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
>What is it doing? Firing off a cascade of JS event hooks that pre-query reaction gifs, fetching away status for every user I might have mentioned, or what? Probably not sluggish for any of that, just that some incompetent dev didn’t want to deal with the built in input control or the inconsistency between OSes so they rolled their own and coded it badly. Number of times I’ve had to deal with devs doing things like deciding we must create a custom color picker only for them to code it and it glitches if you drag your mouse off the edge of the color wheel. Or coding their own text controls that break OS spellcheck or autocomplete and have input delay for some reason. Just isn’t that much talent about up to the task of building inputs yet all the low talents rush to roll their own for the smallest reasons.
- eloisius 5y ago
  That sounds more realistic, and it's something you can observe in sites like Facebook Marketplace. It's a SPA with all custom-built controls. About ten years ago I sneered at "jQuery-sprinkle" frontends, but I never imagined how bad thick SPA apps would be.

NullPrefix 5y ago

>OSs today do a lot more A lot more telemetry and other botnet you mean?

justin66 5y ago

> You just don't remember 20 years ago. The modern OSs at the time were sluggish too, as they were pushing the limits of their hardware. I would venture to guess that you will not find anyone whose experience with Windows 2000 included any slowness comparable to what we see today, if they got it on a new PC of the time or if they installed it themselves on a newish PC of the time. It’s tempting to blame input and display latency on the increased amount of work an OS does versus wherever we happen to sit on the curve of Moore’s law, but that discounts the fact that the values, priorities, and abilities of the engineers and designers involved in OS development might have changed. This is the sort of thing that can be tested and measured. I’d wager if you benchmark a good-spec twenty year old PC and any Windows 11 PC on common user tasks in the UI, the twenty year old machine will be faster while using a higher percentage of its CPU time performing the simple tasks you’re testing against. It’s more or less impossible to use a significant fraction of the CPU’s time dragging the mouse pointer around and opening and closing menus, or even opening and closing normal user apps, on a modern desktop PC, as you might very well see on the old one, so one might want to contemplate why the new PC’s UI has so much latency built in compared to the old one… (I remember 20 years ago)

eloisius 5y ago
https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
- justin66 5y ago
  That’s extremely good stuff, but hopefully it’s obvious from my previous comment that keypress latency isn’t really what I was talking about testing. With some good software and a modern USB 3 keyboard you can engineer a program that on a windows 11 pc puts a character on the screen at some respectable time multiple (sigh) of an Apple II, but how much unavoidable UI and other OS slowness would a user have to navigate through just to start up such a program? (and do we really think hardware performance is the limiting factor there, or poor software engineering and design?)
actionfromafar 5y ago
I tested NT 3 something on a DEC workstation on Alpha CPU, at a trade show in the early 90s. Already then, it didn't seem like dragging things around would eat a significant amount of CPU. I started a bunch of AVI videos playing at the same time, while dragging windows around, and everything was smooth.

tarsinge 5y ago

The speed to complete operations is different than the feeling of snappiness, i.e. there is less latency in classic Finder even if the file copy takes longer. Sure there are valid reasons like a lot more animations nowadays and sometimes network latency (any web app), but that doesn't change the fact it's more sluggish.

Keyframe 5y ago

Win2k and XP definitely fept snappy at that time on new hardware. It's easily verifiable by installing OS' of the time on machine of the appropriate time. Functionality-wise I have no idea what is it exactly that modern OS' do that's 'a lot more'. There are a lot more of abstractions going on which is for sure.

simooooo 5y ago
Lack of window animation alone makes things feel snappy.
ralphc 5y ago
Running the old hardware the main thing missing is modern web browsing, with security, certificates, https, tls, and javascript.
- Keyframe 5y ago
  How is that related to testing OS responsiveness of the time or.. at all?

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

Nope, I have video recordings from my Windows 2000 days. Things load up as soon as I double click on the icon. Like fully ready for me to start typing. It's not a false memory.

ralphc 5y ago

Not only do I remember 20 years ago but I collect vintage hardware and I run Windows 2000 on several Pentium III machines. It's faster on that old hardware than windows 10 on my i7's. File explorer is especially a culprit here, office applications a close second, back then it just does what it needs to do, and does it efficiently. What the hell does Windows 10 and 11 do in explorer I don't know but there's a lot of bloat.

lproven 5y ago
As a Windows early-adopter — v2.01 — and a user for over 30 years at this point (which incidentally is precisely why I avoid it these days, run & work in Linux and am always investigating alternatives), Windows 2000 was my favourite version of all time. But the NT 4 desktop, before the bloated sluggish abomination of Active Desktop™®, was the high point. And NT 4 was significantly more sluggish than NT 3.51, despite the mistake of moving the GDI into the kernel in an attempt to improve performance. 2K with Active Desktop removed would be ideal, but I don't think it's possible.