5 ms·

> Seriously though, go load up any natively compiled app on your OS of choice and compare the speed of it doing any given task to what you get out of web-based

by tln 4y ago

> Seriously though, go load up any natively compiled app on your OS of choice and compare the speed of it doing any given task to what you get out of web-based versions, electron versions, etc. There isn't a comparison. My experience is a bit different... Google Docs loads faster than Numbers Figma loads faster than Illustrator VS code loads faster than Xcode (not a fair comparison) Quicknote.io loads faster than SimpleNote (which is blazing fast!) Google Meet loads faster than Zoom For VS code, it creates a whole new chromium process, but for websites like quicknote.io, do you count the browser base usage and loading time? Or just the incremental time to load up in a new tab?

pwinnski 4y ago
The initial claim wasn't about load-time, it was about "doing any given task," and I frequently encounter delays when actually using Google Doc, delays I never experience with compiled text editors or spreadsheets. All that and TextEdit still starts up much more quickly than Google Docs for me. Your mileage may vary, of course.
brigandish 4y ago
Slight nitpick, the equivalent for Google Docs would be Pages, and the equivalent for Numbers would Google Sheets.
BeefWellington 4y ago
"Loads" is an interesting take to consider when looking at application performance. Simply starting the application is largely irrelevant. What's the experience using it? What features do you have access to? Those are the things that matter. If we wanted to take that point though, even if we assume the browser-based stuff gets the startup time for free (since most people have a browser open most of the time I'd wager), what's the process of loading a local file on my system like? Docs or Sheets might "load" faster than LibreOffice but what's the time-to-use look like? Do I have to sync files somewhere Docs/Sheets can have access to it? What's the "[double-]click to load local file" part of the equation here? What about the actual use of the application? Is there the instant responsiveness to open color selection dialogs in the case of Illustrator? How useable is it from a plugin perspective? Are we actually comparing comparable applications? There's lots to ask there. This is why I don't think startup time actually matters. What matters is what the experience of using something like Figma is over Illustrator, Sheets vs Numbers, XCode vs VSCode, etc. The example I gave of two local apps is a relevant and more directly comparable one. Eclipse does everything just faster than VSCode. VSCode is my typical "general editor of choice" for a variety of things but the slowness of reading a few large Java packages led me to get a current version of Eclipse and give it a go. Seriously, go try it out on any substantially large Java project. There's measurable lag in syntax highlighting upon opening a file, switching between files, performing some basic "find references" type tasks, and so on. In Eclipse it's just fast. Maybe everything will eventually be JS-based and it will become a meaningless comparison. I don't buy that we're there yet.
pier25 4y ago
> Figma loads faster than Illustrator Since CS6, all Adobe apps have been getting worse and worse in terms of start speed, UI performance, etc. Some apps like Acrobat Pro are an absolute disgrace in terms of performance. It's like it's trying to do PDF editing in an AngularJS app from 10 years ago.
nyanpasu64 4y ago
VS Code loads slower than Sublime or Kate (though they're a bit lighter on features than Code, not sure it's slower than Qt Creator). And Google Docs takes many seconds (worse on older hardware) to load 100-150 page documents (4 seconds for warm load on Firefox on a top-of-the-line (for single-threaded) Ryzen 5600X) than LibreOffice Writer (just over 1 second on warm startup, 0.6 seconds if Writer is already running).

by tln 4y ago

pwinnski 4y ago

The initial claim wasn't about load-time, it was about "doing any given task," and I frequently encounter delays when actually using Google Doc, delays I never experience with compiled text editors or spreadsheets. All that and TextEdit still starts up much more quickly than Google Docs for me. Your mileage may vary, of course.

brigandish 4y ago

Slight nitpick, the equivalent for Google Docs would be Pages, and the equivalent for Numbers would Google Sheets.

BeefWellington 4y ago

"Loads" is an interesting take to consider when looking at application performance. Simply starting the application is largely irrelevant. What's the experience using it? What features do you have access to? Those are the things that matter. If we wanted to take that point though, even if we assume the browser-based stuff gets the startup time for free (since most people have a browser open most of the time I'd wager), what's the process of loading a local file on my system like? Docs or Sheets might "load" faster than LibreOffice but what's the time-to-use look like? Do I have to sync files somewhere Docs/Sheets can have access to it? What's the "[double-]click to load local file" part of the equation here? What about the actual use of the application? Is there the instant responsiveness to open color selection dialogs in the case of Illustrator? How useable is it from a plugin perspective? Are we actually comparing comparable applications? There's lots to ask there. This is why I don't think startup time actually matters. What matters is what the experience of using something like Figma is over Illustrator, Sheets vs Numbers, XCode vs VSCode, etc. The example I gave of two local apps is a relevant and more directly comparable one. Eclipse does everything just faster than VSCode. VSCode is my typical "general editor of choice" for a variety of things but the slowness of reading a few large Java packages led me to get a current version of Eclipse and give it a go. Seriously, go try it out on any substantially large Java project. There's measurable lag in syntax highlighting upon opening a file, switching between files, performing some basic "find references" type tasks, and so on. In Eclipse it's just fast. Maybe everything will eventually be JS-based and it will become a meaningless comparison. I don't buy that we're there yet.

pier25 4y ago

> Figma loads faster than Illustrator Since CS6, all Adobe apps have been getting worse and worse in terms of start speed, UI performance, etc. Some apps like Acrobat Pro are an absolute disgrace in terms of performance. It's like it's trying to do PDF editing in an AngularJS app from 10 years ago.

nyanpasu64 4y ago

VS Code loads slower than Sublime or Kate (though they're a bit lighter on features than Code, not sure it's slower than Qt Creator). And Google Docs takes many seconds (worse on older hardware) to load 100-150 page documents (4 seconds for warm load on Firefox on a top-of-the-line (for single-threaded) Ryzen 5600X) than LibreOffice Writer (just over 1 second on warm startup, 0.6 seconds if Writer is already running).