3 ms·

> But surely you can see that the latency question is a question of letting the Moore's law equivalent of cloud commoditizing infrastructure take its course. If

> But surely you can see that the latency question is a question of letting the Moore's law equivalent of cloud commoditizing infrastructure take its course. If it's not good enough today, then wait 5 years and check back again. Wait, speed of light also improves exponentially?

pantulis 4y ago
Speed of light is negligible here. Latencies from your computer to its connected display are measured in ms, the same order of magnitude to move bits across the ocean. It's "only" a matter of moving more bits at the same time across the networking infrastructure as the cloud gaming industry is doing.
- FredPret 4y ago
  I see you haven’t clicked on a GUI on a server a continent or two away
- azeirah 4y ago
  I tried Jetbrains remote workstations with Jetbrains space. I had a pretty reliable ~150ms connection. It sucked SO BAD. 150ms + input latency before I see a response? It's a horrendous experience. Ask any pro gamer what they think about gaming with a ping higher than 20-30. Same thing for development.
  - scottlamb 4y ago
    > 150ms + input latency before I see a response? It's a horrendous experience. Definitely, but there are ways to mitigate that: * Better design. With VS Code Remote or Google Cider, the code is stored remotely and the language server runs remotely (so there's lag before the completion pull-down appears) but the UI is local. Characters you type should appear with no round trip required. That seems like table stakes for a good remote development environment in the world the author describes. You can also imagine some prefetching of near-future likely completions [edit to clarify: e.g. prefetch the completion menus that will appear if the user starts typing any of the locals in scope, including not only the names of the locals but also their methods] so that latency is hidden too. For CLI stuff, mosh predicts the characters you type will echo and corrects if not. etc. * Closer datacenters. Typical RTT from Los Angeles to New York is ~66 ms. 150 ms is far! * Lower index of refraction. Instead of traditional fiber, hollow-core fiber or bouncing off LEO satellites like Starlink. Not going to happen universally by 2030, but it will happen some day.
- IHLayman 4y ago
  I work for a Japanese company from the east coast, and I can tell you from personal experience that latency matters and that you can't beat the speed of light. 1 light millisecond is about 186 miles. Communicate with a server halfway around the globe and you have a 277ms round trip. On a reaction test online my reaction time is 243ms, but I am pretty slow at reactions. My typing speed is about 70wpm (about 350cpm or a character every 100-150ms). Trust me when I say that people notice slowdown when response is >100ms. So ok, you'd think that 9300 miles is close enough (50 light-ms each way), but even that can show lag because your infrastructure needs to react to whatever you are typing (even Vim nowadays will connect to a language server to do tab completion and symbol lookups) and then send you a legitimate response. And all of this is ignoring the most obvious arguments: * Your local silicon is fast enough to do development and has been for 10 years now. Stop using a bloated IDE. * If you production environment is so different than your local simulation of that environment, then you have bigger problems. * Why rent your compute per month when you can own your compute and use it however the hell you want to use it?
rajko_rad 4y ago
hahah isn't the solution to this just edge computing? e.g. cloudflare workers, fly.io, or seaplane? Can't solve the speed of light, but can certainly reduce the distance... Like it or not, enabling many collaborative apps already requires solving this today, lots of work in that direction!

pantulis 4y ago

Speed of light is negligible here. Latencies from your computer to its connected display are measured in ms, the same order of magnitude to move bits across the ocean. It's "only" a matter of moving more bits at the same time across the networking infrastructure as the cloud gaming industry is doing.

FredPret 4y ago
I see you haven’t clicked on a GUI on a server a continent or two away
azeirah 4y ago
I tried Jetbrains remote workstations with Jetbrains space. I had a pretty reliable ~150ms connection. It sucked SO BAD. 150ms + input latency before I see a response? It's a horrendous experience. Ask any pro gamer what they think about gaming with a ping higher than 20-30. Same thing for development.
- scottlamb 4y ago
  > 150ms + input latency before I see a response? It's a horrendous experience. Definitely, but there are ways to mitigate that: * Better design. With VS Code Remote or Google Cider, the code is stored remotely and the language server runs remotely (so there's lag before the completion pull-down appears) but the UI is local. Characters you type should appear with no round trip required. That seems like table stakes for a good remote development environment in the world the author describes. You can also imagine some prefetching of near-future likely completions [edit to clarify: e.g. prefetch the completion menus that will appear if the user starts typing any of the locals in scope, including not only the names of the locals but also their methods] so that latency is hidden too. For CLI stuff, mosh predicts the characters you type will echo and corrects if not. etc. * Closer datacenters. Typical RTT from Los Angeles to New York is ~66 ms. 150 ms is far! * Lower index of refraction. Instead of traditional fiber, hollow-core fiber or bouncing off LEO satellites like Starlink. Not going to happen universally by 2030, but it will happen some day.
IHLayman 4y ago
I work for a Japanese company from the east coast, and I can tell you from personal experience that latency matters and that you can't beat the speed of light. 1 light millisecond is about 186 miles. Communicate with a server halfway around the globe and you have a 277ms round trip. On a reaction test online my reaction time is 243ms, but I am pretty slow at reactions. My typing speed is about 70wpm (about 350cpm or a character every 100-150ms). Trust me when I say that people notice slowdown when response is >100ms. So ok, you'd think that 9300 miles is close enough (50 light-ms each way), but even that can show lag because your infrastructure needs to react to whatever you are typing (even Vim nowadays will connect to a language server to do tab completion and symbol lookups) and then send you a legitimate response. And all of this is ignoring the most obvious arguments: * Your local silicon is fast enough to do development and has been for 10 years now. Stop using a bloated IDE. * If you production environment is so different than your local simulation of that environment, then you have bigger problems. * Why rent your compute per month when you can own your compute and use it however the hell you want to use it?

rajko_rad 4y ago

hahah isn't the solution to this just edge computing? e.g. cloudflare workers, fly.io, or seaplane? Can't solve the speed of light, but can certainly reduce the distance... Like it or not, enabling many collaborative apps already requires solving this today, lots of work in that direction!