7 ms·

Interesting how the developers of Windows 3.1 were forced to use relatively low end computers. The hardware & bandwidth of your average HN reader is likely muc

by pud 15y ago

Interesting how the developers of Windows 3.1 were forced to use relatively low end computers. The hardware & bandwidth of your average HN reader is likely much better than your users' setups. Does anyone here keep low end computers on hand for testing? With the proliferation of client-side Javascript processing, hardware is becoming more important. What about testing over dial-up or slow DSL? Anyone know of an easy way to simulate a slow bandwidth connection? Perhaps tether your MacBook to your iPhone and turn off 3G, to test at Edge speed. Lowest I go is testing on IE8 in a VM on my MacBook Pro. That's probably not good enough (or... bad enough, technically). I'd like to see a discussion about this topic. Testing with low end hardware & bandwidth, etc.

wazoox 15y ago
> Does anyone here keep low end computers on hand for testing? My main work desktop is a 2005 vintage machine (Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, Geforce MX4000) and it's still quite sufficient as a dev machine. Of course, I have a whole bunch of Opteron servers to run CPU-heavy stuff when necessary.
Chirono 15y ago
Anyone know of an easy way to simulate a slow bandwidth connection? There was some talk a while ago about an app called slowy that does just this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3294687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3294687
hboon 15y ago
If you are using Lion and have Xcode 4 (or was it 4.1). Check out link conditioner which lets you simulate slower and less stable connections.
- ZenPsycho 15y ago
  tried it. didn't work.
  - hboon 15y ago
    Can't install/run or when it doesn't have any effect when enabled?
ZenPsycho 15y ago
by far the best way to simulate a slow connection is with Charles Proxy
bane 15y ago
I learned this lesson many years ago, back in the early/mid 90s. There was a well known American developer named Tran (Thomas Pytel) who wrote some mindblowing stuff back in those days...very proper hacky things in bizarre screen modes using more colors than should have been possible, and using sound hardware in crazy ways to produce more sound channels than anybody thought possible in those days, and all running faster than should have been possible on the hardware of those days. Incredible optimized stuff for the early 90s. My friends and I would always try and by the best hardware available to run this stuff as quickly as possible. The first person with a 486dx2-66 pretty much ended up running their system on display mode during meetups on all the old demos. What did Tran have? A 386sx16 if I recall. A machine that was so slow, so last gen, that he was probably unable to even watch most of the demoscene releases available at the time. No math co-processor, 16MHz, and yet he managed to write an amazing amount of highly influential and important code used far outside of the demoscene (most notably PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE which was used in many game productions during that era). I remember him crediting the fact that his home machine was so slow that it forced him to optimize the hell out of his code to make it run decently, and the side effect was that people with faster machines had their minds blown. I personally think that Tran, and his works, should be mandatory study for any developers, as an inspiration for what they can do with minimal hardware and the importance of optimization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pytel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pytel A short list of his accomplishments from those days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2878 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2878 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2879 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2879 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2880 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2880 http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/demo_misc.html http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/demo_misc.html One of his most famous works Amnesia Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69aA4XSimo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69aA4XSimo Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_ZMuyO0m4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_ZMuyO0m4&feature=relat... One of the first PC games to feature Multi-plane parallax scrolling http://www.mobygames.com/game/kaeon http://www.mobygames.com/game/kaeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66 One of the lead Programmers for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(video_game) One of the lead Programmers for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal
Tangurena 15y ago
One previous employer had a corporate policy that forbade having low-end computers for testing. The closest we could come was to test the desktop software in a virtual, and starve the virtual for memory. When we had to move to .NET 3.5 for some feature, there were about a dozen customers we had to refund because they were still using Win2k as late as 2009. This software was primarily used by accountants and actuaries, an audience well known for being technology laggards.
dspillett 15y ago
> What about testing over dial-up or slow DSL? Assuming I'm in a location with reasonable signal, I tether my netbook to my mobile phone and use that to simulate the unholy trinity of relatively slow CPU, small screen, and slow high-latency connection. The data rate I see varies wildly, but on average is somewhere close to first generation ADSL links over here (512kbit/sec) - I've seen 3mbit/sec on HSDPA but only on speedtest apps and even then only in ideal conditions (strong signal, silly hour of the morning so relatively little contention for the cell's resources, ...). If I want to test worst conditions than that I tell the phone to force itself to use GPRS/EDGE only (there doesn't seem to be a GPRS and GPRS only option other than breaking out the old spare phone that doesn't support EDGE). Of course I can use the phone directly if I want to test against a much smaller screen and an even slower CPU.
albb0920 15y ago
I'm still using HTC Magic to test my android projects, which is really great to find bottlenecks.
ww520 15y ago
Constraint does wonder to innovation and design, whether it slower machine or less funding.

by pud 15y ago

wazoox 15y ago

> Does anyone here keep low end computers on hand for testing? My main work desktop is a 2005 vintage machine (Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, Geforce MX4000) and it's still quite sufficient as a dev machine. Of course, I have a whole bunch of Opteron servers to run CPU-heavy stuff when necessary.

Chirono 15y ago

Anyone know of an easy way to simulate a slow bandwidth connection? There was some talk a while ago about an app called slowy that does just this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3294687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3294687

hboon 15y ago

If you are using Lion and have Xcode 4 (or was it 4.1). Check out link conditioner which lets you simulate slower and less stable connections.

ZenPsycho 15y ago
tried it. didn't work.
- hboon 15y ago
  Can't install/run or when it doesn't have any effect when enabled?

ZenPsycho 15y ago

by far the best way to simulate a slow connection is with Charles Proxy

bane 15y ago

I learned this lesson many years ago, back in the early/mid 90s. There was a well known American developer named Tran (Thomas Pytel) who wrote some mindblowing stuff back in those days...very proper hacky things in bizarre screen modes using more colors than should have been possible, and using sound hardware in crazy ways to produce more sound channels than anybody thought possible in those days, and all running faster than should have been possible on the hardware of those days. Incredible optimized stuff for the early 90s. My friends and I would always try and by the best hardware available to run this stuff as quickly as possible. The first person with a 486dx2-66 pretty much ended up running their system on display mode during meetups on all the old demos. What did Tran have? A 386sx16 if I recall. A machine that was so slow, so last gen, that he was probably unable to even watch most of the demoscene releases available at the time. No math co-processor, 16MHz, and yet he managed to write an amazing amount of highly influential and important code used far outside of the demoscene (most notably PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE which was used in many game productions during that era). I remember him crediting the fact that his home machine was so slow that it forced him to optimize the hell out of his code to make it run decently, and the side effect was that people with faster machines had their minds blown. I personally think that Tran, and his works, should be mandatory study for any developers, as an inspiration for what they can do with minimal hardware and the importance of optimization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pytel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pytel A short list of his accomplishments from those days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2878 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2878 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2879 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2879 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2880 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2880 http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/demo_misc.html http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/demo_misc.html One of his most famous works Amnesia Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69aA4XSimo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69aA4XSimo Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_ZMuyO0m4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_ZMuyO0m4&feature=relat... One of the first PC games to feature Multi-plane parallax scrolling http://www.mobygames.com/game/kaeon http://www.mobygames.com/game/kaeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66 One of the lead Programmers for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(video_game) One of the lead Programmers for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Tangurena 15y ago

One previous employer had a corporate policy that forbade having low-end computers for testing. The closest we could come was to test the desktop software in a virtual, and starve the virtual for memory. When we had to move to .NET 3.5 for some feature, there were about a dozen customers we had to refund because they were still using Win2k as late as 2009. This software was primarily used by accountants and actuaries, an audience well known for being technology laggards.

dspillett 15y ago

> What about testing over dial-up or slow DSL? Assuming I'm in a location with reasonable signal, I tether my netbook to my mobile phone and use that to simulate the unholy trinity of relatively slow CPU, small screen, and slow high-latency connection. The data rate I see varies wildly, but on average is somewhere close to first generation ADSL links over here (512kbit/sec) - I've seen 3mbit/sec on HSDPA but only on speedtest apps and even then only in ideal conditions (strong signal, silly hour of the morning so relatively little contention for the cell's resources, ...). If I want to test worst conditions than that I tell the phone to force itself to use GPRS/EDGE only (there doesn't seem to be a GPRS and GPRS only option other than breaking out the old spare phone that doesn't support EDGE). Of course I can use the phone directly if I want to test against a much smaller screen and an even slower CPU.

albb0920 15y ago

I'm still using HTC Magic to test my android projects, which is really great to find bottlenecks.

ww520 15y ago

Constraint does wonder to innovation and design, whether it slower machine or less funding.