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The following is not any sort of critique on the author’s work. The design looks quite fresh, in fact. This is merely a tangential observation. Anyone else see

The following is not any sort of critique on the author’s work. The design looks quite fresh, in fact. This is merely a tangential observation. Anyone else see the mock-up and think “this looks slow”? Logically, it’s not a defensible inference in the slightest. There’s nothing about this design that would necessitate performance tradeoffs. But that’s the barely-conscious, emotional first impression I had. I wonder if there’s something about “modern” design (or a specific subset thereof) that correlates with subpar performance.

the__alchemist 4y ago
Yep! My pattern-matching brain assessed as both slow load time (probably not infact true due to it being an installable browser extension?), and high input latency.
zozbot234 4y ago
> Anyone else see the mock-up and think “this looks slow”? It just looks clumsy and distracting compared to plain HN, IMHO. It highlights elements like usernames, the total amount of comments(!) or the upvote/favorite actions, that users will only rarely interact with or even want to look for. Meanwhile other actions have to be hidden beneath a "…" widget, lest the page become too cluttered. The factory HN look does a much better job of bringing the comment text into focus and reflects the threading hierarchy without needing a lot of padding to space things out.
crazygringo 4y ago
No, funny -- for me it's precisely the opposite. The design is clean, modern, minimalist -- and I associate sites that look like that with loading in a blink. It's the sites where everything is crammed in and packed with ads that load slowly, like most news sites. Everything about this style of design says "fast" to me.
qsort 4y ago
I had your exact same reaction. Related story: In my free time I am a coach for a competitive math team, I recently had to design an application to automate multiple choice problem submissions. Nothing stellar, your run-of-the-mill CRUD app. But it was under some interesting engineering constraints: users would have to log in from a variety of devices, phones, tablets, bad chromebooks, etc., possibly on slow cellular connections. So naturally I went for a simple server-rendered design, with stock Bootstrap hosted on a CDN. The overwhemling reaction was "this is so fast". Now, being server-rendered with absolutely no XHR, the app spends most of the time doing nothing, but it's interesting laymen think it's fast. I think we came to associate "modern" designs with piles of javascript, requests everywhere, popups, ads, and the like. Probably the correlation is indeed there, even if it's obviously not causation.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  A few years ago I learned to code using YouTube how to videos and stackoverflow. I made a Saas for the industry I work in. I use php, bootstrap and jQuery. I even built it as a SPA technically. It is faster than basically any modern CRM in existence. 30+ companies use it daily. It runs in a namecheap shared hosting for $4 a month.
- bovermyer 4y ago
  The ability of simple server-side applications to solve problems quickly and efficiently is vastly underrated these days.
bachmeier 4y ago
> Logically, it’s not a defensible inference in the slightest. We have different views of "defensible". I imagine clicking something on that page and waiting for a response. I learned to make that association based on experience.
gitgud 4y ago
Yes, as soon as I saw "Modern UI" I rolled my eyes and thought of common modern web components and how annoying they can be.... loading spinners, animations, annoying transitions. I was also pleasantly surprised at the speed and snappiness. It must of taken some restraint to keep it so fast
slmjkdbtl 4y ago
For me it's the word "modern" makes me think it'll be slow and unnecessary, I think it's just the fact that a lot of apps titled "modern" are slow bad that made us think this when we see the word. (OP's app is decent tho)

the__alchemist 4y ago

Yep! My pattern-matching brain assessed as both slow load time (probably not infact true due to it being an installable browser extension?), and high input latency.

zozbot234 4y ago

> Anyone else see the mock-up and think “this looks slow”? It just looks clumsy and distracting compared to plain HN, IMHO. It highlights elements like usernames, the total amount of comments(!) or the upvote/favorite actions, that users will only rarely interact with or even want to look for. Meanwhile other actions have to be hidden beneath a "…" widget, lest the page become too cluttered. The factory HN look does a much better job of bringing the comment text into focus and reflects the threading hierarchy without needing a lot of padding to space things out.

crazygringo 4y ago

No, funny -- for me it's precisely the opposite. The design is clean, modern, minimalist -- and I associate sites that look like that with loading in a blink. It's the sites where everything is crammed in and packed with ads that load slowly, like most news sites. Everything about this style of design says "fast" to me.

qsort 4y ago

I had your exact same reaction. Related story: In my free time I am a coach for a competitive math team, I recently had to design an application to automate multiple choice problem submissions. Nothing stellar, your run-of-the-mill CRUD app. But it was under some interesting engineering constraints: users would have to log in from a variety of devices, phones, tablets, bad chromebooks, etc., possibly on slow cellular connections. So naturally I went for a simple server-rendered design, with stock Bootstrap hosted on a CDN. The overwhemling reaction was "this is so fast". Now, being server-rendered with absolutely no XHR, the app spends most of the time doing nothing, but it's interesting laymen think it's fast. I think we came to associate "modern" designs with piles of javascript, requests everywhere, popups, ads, and the like. Probably the correlation is indeed there, even if it's obviously not causation.

phpthrowaway99 4y ago
A few years ago I learned to code using YouTube how to videos and stackoverflow. I made a Saas for the industry I work in. I use php, bootstrap and jQuery. I even built it as a SPA technically. It is faster than basically any modern CRM in existence. 30+ companies use it daily. It runs in a namecheap shared hosting for $4 a month.
bovermyer 4y ago
The ability of simple server-side applications to solve problems quickly and efficiently is vastly underrated these days.

bachmeier 4y ago

> Logically, it’s not a defensible inference in the slightest. We have different views of "defensible". I imagine clicking something on that page and waiting for a response. I learned to make that association based on experience.

gitgud 4y ago

Yes, as soon as I saw "Modern UI" I rolled my eyes and thought of common modern web components and how annoying they can be.... loading spinners, animations, annoying transitions. I was also pleasantly surprised at the speed and snappiness. It must of taken some restraint to keep it so fast

slmjkdbtl 4y ago

For me it's the word "modern" makes me think it'll be slow and unnecessary, I think it's just the fact that a lot of apps titled "modern" are slow bad that made us think this when we see the word. (OP's app is decent tho)