7 ms·

Obviously this isn't the same thing, but yes - this seems right. But, I remember my first time going to Google's campus in 2010 and connecting to their guest wi

by cududa 4y ago

Obviously this isn't the same thing, but yes - this seems right. But, I remember my first time going to Google's campus in 2010 and connecting to their guest wifi network. 1Gbps! Insanely cool! Pulled up gmail and google docs and it worked PERFECTLY! My first thought was "...oh this is why their webapps suck - they have no idea how it's being used in the real world where latency is above 10ms"

Dalewyn 4y ago
For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome only runs properly from second execution onwards after the underlying operating system has cached most of the stuff Chrome wants in RAM in anticipation of subsequent executions. I want to say this is optimization for ever more powerful hardware, but I'm inclined to say it's also sheer incompetency that Chrome literally can't fallback gracefully if it doesn't get data as quickly as it wants.
- polio 4y ago
  In the first-boot-on-HDD scenario, why would latency make the program fail to start at all? I'd expect it to just start slowly.
  - cududa 4y ago
    JIT. It's using a "known state"/ cached blob to start then quickly falls apart as it does it's "SSD expected" memory management voodoo.
  - herendin 4y ago
    Unanticipated race condition perhaps? A process takes 2 minutes instead of 5 seconds, and then a later part of the startup fails because it has no way to handle the totally unexpected lack of data
  - rasz 4y ago
    For starters Chrome will not wait for extensions to load/initialize. Its possible in case of HDD there might be more things that simply time out/chrome disables because it doesnt want to wait.
- cududa 4y ago
  Made some offhanded comment about Chrome perf on Twitter earlier this year and a Google friend replied something like "Well, pretty much the whole Chrome team just got upgraded to local test machines with at least 32gb of RAM. Godspeed everyone."
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    Makes you wonder what would happen if companies occasionally did the exact opposite to their engineers. "Oh, you know that 32 GB machine you've got? We're replacing it with this new 16 GB one. If the test suite is too slow on your new machine, I guess you'll just have to make the tests faster."
    - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
      What would happen is those engineers would rightly be concerned that their leadership had lost their marbles, and would quickly find new jobs elsewhere. These kinds of “fun” thought experiments don’t pan out in the real world.
      - cududa 4y ago
        You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. Windows Vista devs with 8GB of DDR2 when real world customers had 512mb of DDR learned this lesson hard. EDIT: Also - client side native software and web dev are insanely different. Web/ serverside people seem to disregard this. Constantly.
        Our_Benefactors 4y ago
        > You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. I cannot parse this sentence. What does vista having its minimum requirements poorly defined have to do with being forced to develop on underpowered hardware? If my boss says “we are giving you a worse machine because we think that will make you write better code” I am out of there. There are plenty of ways to emulate weaker hardware and do performance testing and to make it a development priority that don’t involve intentionally hamstringing your engineers.
- RedShift1 4y ago
  This seems weird to me, can you define "run properly"?
- doubled112 4y ago
  I've seen this exact behaviour in a few Electron apps on a Raspberry Pi 400. Make sure nothing else is running, start the application, expect failure, start it again, works as expected.
- password4321 4y ago
  I was just whining how when Chrome-based browsers first open up on my 5400rpm hdd, I paste in the URL and press Enter, then it loads the default home page and wipes out what I pasted... "you're goin' nowhere!"
  - copperx 4y ago
    That's far from being only a Chrome problem. That extremely irritating behavior is going to be with us until OS developers see the light and we get hard/soft realtime GUIs.
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    Opening Google maps, the text entry is editable far, far before when it should be. As soon as the page loads, I can start typing. Then the JavaScript starts running, and helpfully selects the text entry, placing the cursor at the beginning of the text field. Then some cached suggestion loads, inserting some suggested search for the area being viewed. The end result is that anything I type gets jumbled or overwritten multiple times before the page settles down and can actually be used.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      This is the general curse of async UI these days, and it's everywhere from the web to native desktop apps to the OS itself. Obviously, it can be done right, but it seems that most devs who are so eager to jump on the async bandwagon have no idea that they have to make that effort now.
- MikusR 4y ago
  Chrome also runs a full built in antivirus scan of your whole PC on first launch after updating.
herpderperator 4y ago
How did they have a 1Gbps Wi-Fi AP in 2010, and how did you have a 1Gbps Wi-Fi client in 2010? Wi-Fi is barely 1Gbps over a decade later.
- cududa 4y ago
  Dualband bonded 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi 4. No idea if it was effective speed or reported.
- gsich 4y ago
  Wouldn't matter much for the usecase that was presented in parent. Latency can still be at ~1ms.
bluedino 4y ago
You'd think everyone working from home where they have real-world internet speeds would fix that.
- cududa 4y ago
  Well people weren't working from home in 2010
liquidgecka 4y ago
Okay, something I can speak too! (Though I left in 2009 but it's close enough) I was a SRE on Gmail, and I can assure you that the experience for devs was not great intentionally. We had a pool of dedicated machines that ran various versions specifically used for development. I made sure those where always on our worst clusters (slowest CPUs and disks) so the dev experience was always the worst case scenario for performance. :-)
- cududa 4y ago
  Would love to hear more about that! I feel like there was a very specific period between 2010 and 2012 when web app stuff just sucked but Google Docs etc was great fun ~2006-2009

by cududa 4y ago

Dalewyn 4y ago

For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome only runs properly from second execution onwards after the underlying operating system has cached most of the stuff Chrome wants in RAM in anticipation of subsequent executions. I want to say this is optimization for ever more powerful hardware, but I'm inclined to say it's also sheer incompetency that Chrome literally can't fallback gracefully if it doesn't get data as quickly as it wants.

polio 4y ago
In the first-boot-on-HDD scenario, why would latency make the program fail to start at all? I'd expect it to just start slowly.
- cududa 4y ago
  JIT. It's using a "known state"/ cached blob to start then quickly falls apart as it does it's "SSD expected" memory management voodoo.
- herendin 4y ago
  Unanticipated race condition perhaps? A process takes 2 minutes instead of 5 seconds, and then a later part of the startup fails because it has no way to handle the totally unexpected lack of data
- rasz 4y ago
  For starters Chrome will not wait for extensions to load/initialize. Its possible in case of HDD there might be more things that simply time out/chrome disables because it doesnt want to wait.
cududa 4y ago
Made some offhanded comment about Chrome perf on Twitter earlier this year and a Google friend replied something like "Well, pretty much the whole Chrome team just got upgraded to local test machines with at least 32gb of RAM. Godspeed everyone."
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Makes you wonder what would happen if companies occasionally did the exact opposite to their engineers. "Oh, you know that 32 GB machine you've got? We're replacing it with this new 16 GB one. If the test suite is too slow on your new machine, I guess you'll just have to make the tests faster."
  - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
    What would happen is those engineers would rightly be concerned that their leadership had lost their marbles, and would quickly find new jobs elsewhere. These kinds of “fun” thought experiments don’t pan out in the real world.
    - cududa 4y ago
      You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. Windows Vista devs with 8GB of DDR2 when real world customers had 512mb of DDR learned this lesson hard. EDIT: Also - client side native software and web dev are insanely different. Web/ serverside people seem to disregard this. Constantly.
      - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
        > You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. I cannot parse this sentence. What does vista having its minimum requirements poorly defined have to do with being forced to develop on underpowered hardware? If my boss says “we are giving you a worse machine because we think that will make you write better code” I am out of there. There are plenty of ways to emulate weaker hardware and do performance testing and to make it a development priority that don’t involve intentionally hamstringing your engineers.
RedShift1 4y ago
This seems weird to me, can you define "run properly"?
doubled112 4y ago
I've seen this exact behaviour in a few Electron apps on a Raspberry Pi 400. Make sure nothing else is running, start the application, expect failure, start it again, works as expected.
password4321 4y ago
I was just whining how when Chrome-based browsers first open up on my 5400rpm hdd, I paste in the URL and press Enter, then it loads the default home page and wipes out what I pasted... "you're goin' nowhere!"
- copperx 4y ago
  That's far from being only a Chrome problem. That extremely irritating behavior is going to be with us until OS developers see the light and we get hard/soft realtime GUIs.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  Opening Google maps, the text entry is editable far, far before when it should be. As soon as the page loads, I can start typing. Then the JavaScript starts running, and helpfully selects the text entry, placing the cursor at the beginning of the text field. Then some cached suggestion loads, inserting some suggested search for the area being viewed. The end result is that anything I type gets jumbled or overwritten multiple times before the page settles down and can actually be used.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    This is the general curse of async UI these days, and it's everywhere from the web to native desktop apps to the OS itself. Obviously, it can be done right, but it seems that most devs who are so eager to jump on the async bandwagon have no idea that they have to make that effort now.
MikusR 4y ago
Chrome also runs a full built in antivirus scan of your whole PC on first launch after updating.

herpderperator 4y ago

How did they have a 1Gbps Wi-Fi AP in 2010, and how did you have a 1Gbps Wi-Fi client in 2010? Wi-Fi is barely 1Gbps over a decade later.

cududa 4y ago
Dualband bonded 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi 4. No idea if it was effective speed or reported.
gsich 4y ago
Wouldn't matter much for the usecase that was presented in parent. Latency can still be at ~1ms.

bluedino 4y ago

You'd think everyone working from home where they have real-world internet speeds would fix that.

cududa 4y ago
Well people weren't working from home in 2010

liquidgecka 4y ago

Okay, something I can speak too! (Though I left in 2009 but it's close enough) I was a SRE on Gmail, and I can assure you that the experience for devs was not great intentionally. We had a pool of dedicated machines that ran various versions specifically used for development. I made sure those where always on our worst clusters (slowest CPUs and disks) so the dev experience was always the worst case scenario for performance. :-)

cududa 4y ago
Would love to hear more about that! I feel like there was a very specific period between 2010 and 2012 when web app stuff just sucked but Google Docs etc was great fun ~2006-2009