5 ms·

I'm a bit pessimistic about this now, and largely given up beating the drum Even in industries where customers are on extremely bad connections [0], I couldn't

I'm a bit pessimistic about this now, and largely given up beating the drum Even in industries where customers are on extremely bad connections [0], I couldn't convince people to give up their bloated component libraries or cache things in indexedDB. Fact is not many web developers know how to write for these environments and not many businesses will incentivize for it, even when their customers complain. Though the optimist in me will say this - if anyone actually does web dev where people do actually care about this, I'd love to hear about it. [0] My experience here https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/220205.html https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/220205.html

nicbou 4y ago
I live from a website I run. Performance is super important for me for a few reasons: 1. It's just text on a page. There are no excuses. 2. People use my website on the train, where the reception is so-so.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dspillett 4y ago
In DayJob we produce web based applications, as do friends in other companies. One common refrain when commenting on the heavy payload for the applications is that they are not targetting mobile phones (good job, the apps are not terrible useable on a small display) and the clients won't care (which is actually true, for the most part at least). Some don't seem to realise that tethering to the mobile network is a thing when something is amiss with the local network's connection to the outside world (more common now than it used to be, with more people working remotely) or trying to get stuff done while travelling - so users might have a decent sized screen & chunky processor but still be talking to us over a low-bandwidth & high-latencey link. A lot of devs should spend more time with Chrom{ium|e}'s network throttling options turned on. It is far from perfect, but gives at least some insight into the troubles experienced by those with less than ideal connectivity. Perhaps I'll see if, next time I have my infrastructure hat on, there is a way to enforce that as a policy that can't be overridden!
- solardev 4y ago
  I hear that "we're not really targeting mobile" excuse less and less often these days (phones are, what, half of users?). But I do hear another excuse frequently: performance isn't free, as in spending time on performance optimization means something else has to give: more features, quicker delivery, better testing, readability and documentation, package reinvention, whatever. People cobble together npm packages because it saves time vs having to reinvent their whole color conversion solution, or page routing system, or unit converter or whatever. And sometimes management is the one unwilling to budge. I couldn't get us to spend ANY time on performance until I showed them a video like, "Hey, I know this works fine on our latest Macs, but check out what happens when I try to run this on a 2-year-old budget Windows laptop, like our users would have. It barely even runs." Only then did we start testing with not just network throttling but CPU throttling too. There are still some really slow computers out there.
commandlinefan 4y ago
I’ve never met anybody who was using angular who could actually justify why they were using it at all. They just use it because everybody else is.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  It's batteries included and highly leverages reactive programming (rxjs is first class). The dependency injection is a really nice and clean pattern. I have nothing but good things to say about Angular as both a React and Angular user. They both do the same things in different ways and depending on the team, may provide benefits over the other but it's case-by-case. I've also never met a React user who could explain why React is supposedly better than Angular, other than because everybody else is.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    I don’t understand this chain of “I’ve never met anybody who…” when you can just ask. I had to use Angular 2 and 3, and I find React to have a better, simpler abstraction.” Was this so hard? This thread paints people who don’t share your preferences as simpletons without preferences at all. That should be a red flag.
  - solardev 4y ago
    I started in Angular v1 and it's exactly what you said: batteries included. We were able to build out an ecommerce website with few (maybe zero? can't remember exactly) external dependencies, just what shipped with Angular, because it was so well-engineered, feature-complete, and well thought out. Yeah, there was a bit of a learning curve, but not any more so than learning React + eight other big packages. Fast forward half a decade, of course I'm using React now because every employer demands it, but god, what a duct-taped ecosystem! You have to reinvent SO MANY wheels and hack them together, when Angular had it all so tightly integrated. I am really pretty sad that React won out in the end. It's honestly kinda useless on its own (there's not even basic page routing). Thankfully, Next.js solves a lot of that and makes React useful and easy with a brunch of preconfigured libraries and features they wrote well-integrated together. React by itself is nowhere near Angular, but Next.js is amazing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
coding123 4y ago
Reactivity Data Initial Page View SS Delayed Delayed Quick CS Instant Delayed Super Slow It depends on what kind of site you are optimizing for. If you run a site you expect to see someone only for a few minutes go with SS. If you expect them to stick around, like they are checking statuses and updates, CS is better for user experience. It's not impossible to have CS with lighter components too, but generally apps that have had a longer lifetime and revisions will get heavyweight components.
- svnpenn 4y ago
  You didn't include DS and ES...
gonehome 4y ago
One thing I remember thinking was neat when I visited friends at FB (Meta) HQ in Menlo Park was they had fb.com/shitty (or something like that) which simulated terrible connections. They even had little stations with crappy and yellowed with age compaq CRT monitors and really old hardware, old Nokia phones etc. I thought that was pretty cool, don't know if that's something they still do though (this would have been back in 2013 or so).
- reaperducer 4y ago
  My company let me expense for super low end cell phones from 7-Eleven and put each one on a different MVNO. Once a year I take them into the actual places where our users will use the web sites To see how the web sites perform. The visitors are 70% mobile users, and I shadow a few of them in the locations where the sites are used, like parking garages and basements and industrial buildings with lots of opportunities for interference. Very illuminating. And I suspect more accurate than many of the bad connection simulators I've seen.
- waste_monk 4y ago
  >they had fb.com/shitty (or something like that) https://mbasic.facebook.com/ https://mbasic.facebook.com/ perhaps? It is still available and is designed for the lowest of low-end dumbphones. It's a decent workaround if you need access to facebook's chat services on your phone but don't want to install that accursed messenger app.

nicbou 4y ago

I live from a website I run. Performance is super important for me for a few reasons: 1. It's just text on a page. There are no excuses. 2. People use my website on the train, where the reception is so-so.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dspillett 4y ago

In DayJob we produce web based applications, as do friends in other companies. One common refrain when commenting on the heavy payload for the applications is that they are not targetting mobile phones (good job, the apps are not terrible useable on a small display) and the clients won't care (which is actually true, for the most part at least). Some don't seem to realise that tethering to the mobile network is a thing when something is amiss with the local network's connection to the outside world (more common now than it used to be, with more people working remotely) or trying to get stuff done while travelling - so users might have a decent sized screen & chunky processor but still be talking to us over a low-bandwidth & high-latencey link. A lot of devs should spend more time with Chrom{ium|e}'s network throttling options turned on. It is far from perfect, but gives at least some insight into the troubles experienced by those with less than ideal connectivity. Perhaps I'll see if, next time I have my infrastructure hat on, there is a way to enforce that as a policy that can't be overridden!

solardev 4y ago
I hear that "we're not really targeting mobile" excuse less and less often these days (phones are, what, half of users?). But I do hear another excuse frequently: performance isn't free, as in spending time on performance optimization means something else has to give: more features, quicker delivery, better testing, readability and documentation, package reinvention, whatever. People cobble together npm packages because it saves time vs having to reinvent their whole color conversion solution, or page routing system, or unit converter or whatever. And sometimes management is the one unwilling to budge. I couldn't get us to spend ANY time on performance until I showed them a video like, "Hey, I know this works fine on our latest Macs, but check out what happens when I try to run this on a 2-year-old budget Windows laptop, like our users would have. It barely even runs." Only then did we start testing with not just network throttling but CPU throttling too. There are still some really slow computers out there.

commandlinefan 4y ago

I’ve never met anybody who was using angular who could actually justify why they were using it at all. They just use it because everybody else is.

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
It's batteries included and highly leverages reactive programming (rxjs is first class). The dependency injection is a really nice and clean pattern. I have nothing but good things to say about Angular as both a React and Angular user. They both do the same things in different ways and depending on the team, may provide benefits over the other but it's case-by-case. I've also never met a React user who could explain why React is supposedly better than Angular, other than because everybody else is.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  I don’t understand this chain of “I’ve never met anybody who…” when you can just ask. I had to use Angular 2 and 3, and I find React to have a better, simpler abstraction.” Was this so hard? This thread paints people who don’t share your preferences as simpletons without preferences at all. That should be a red flag.
- solardev 4y ago
  I started in Angular v1 and it's exactly what you said: batteries included. We were able to build out an ecommerce website with few (maybe zero? can't remember exactly) external dependencies, just what shipped with Angular, because it was so well-engineered, feature-complete, and well thought out. Yeah, there was a bit of a learning curve, but not any more so than learning React + eight other big packages. Fast forward half a decade, of course I'm using React now because every employer demands it, but god, what a duct-taped ecosystem! You have to reinvent SO MANY wheels and hack them together, when Angular had it all so tightly integrated. I am really pretty sad that React won out in the end. It's honestly kinda useless on its own (there's not even basic page routing). Thankfully, Next.js solves a lot of that and makes React useful and easy with a brunch of preconfigured libraries and features they wrote well-integrated together. React by itself is nowhere near Angular, but Next.js is amazing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

coding123 4y ago

Reactivity Data Initial Page View SS Delayed Delayed Quick CS Instant Delayed Super Slow It depends on what kind of site you are optimizing for. If you run a site you expect to see someone only for a few minutes go with SS. If you expect them to stick around, like they are checking statuses and updates, CS is better for user experience. It's not impossible to have CS with lighter components too, but generally apps that have had a longer lifetime and revisions will get heavyweight components.

svnpenn 4y ago
You didn't include DS and ES...

gonehome 4y ago

One thing I remember thinking was neat when I visited friends at FB (Meta) HQ in Menlo Park was they had fb.com/shitty (or something like that) which simulated terrible connections. They even had little stations with crappy and yellowed with age compaq CRT monitors and really old hardware, old Nokia phones etc. I thought that was pretty cool, don't know if that's something they still do though (this would have been back in 2013 or so).

reaperducer 4y ago
My company let me expense for super low end cell phones from 7-Eleven and put each one on a different MVNO. Once a year I take them into the actual places where our users will use the web sites To see how the web sites perform. The visitors are 70% mobile users, and I shadow a few of them in the locations where the sites are used, like parking garages and basements and industrial buildings with lots of opportunities for interference. Very illuminating. And I suspect more accurate than many of the bad connection simulators I've seen.
waste_monk 4y ago
>they had fb.com/shitty (or something like that) https://mbasic.facebook.com/ https://mbasic.facebook.com/ perhaps? It is still available and is designed for the lowest of low-end dumbphones. It's a decent workaround if you need access to facebook's chat services on your phone but don't want to install that accursed messenger app.