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First, I commend you for writing efficient and snappy apps. People who care about quality and user experience are rare in any field! However, Google Calendar (w

First, I commend you for writing efficient and snappy apps. People who care about quality and user experience are rare in any field! However, Google Calendar (which I use a lot) takes 20-25 seconds to load on my relatively recent i7 laptop whenever its cache is evicted. I haven't timed Gmail, but it is also very slow (many seconds) when it needs to reload everything. Google's apps are some of the worst offenders, but Proton Mail's apps are similarly slow. This is all consistent across several devices, so I wouldn't call it a straw man at all. Honestly, who doesn't encounter sites with loading screens that last in the high single digit seconds? This is very common, and is completely unacceptable to my mind.

nawgz 4y ago
Counting "opening" as time to interacting: - Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook (2017, dual core) took about 5s - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook with an "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" took about 10s I'm not sure what your expectations are but it looks to me like web was faster than native for this use case, and even in the worst case under a factor of 2 slower. Pray tell, how long does your phone take to open your calendar?
- infamia 4y ago
  > Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity Are you using the personal version of Workspaces, or just the free version? I use the enterprise version of Google Workspaces, which has a lot more going on than the free version of Google's apps. Maybe that's a big part of the difference. To be clear, I get a 20-25 sec. cold start time on both my i7 Windows work laptop, my new AMD Linux machine, and a personal Windows machine with both OSes using different browsers (i.e., Chrome and Firefox). > I'm not sure what your expectations are... Your acceptance of a 10-second start time, while sneering at the possibility of maybe waiting 50-100ms for an interaction, is precisely the cognitive dissonance I mentioned originally. Possibly waiting 100ms for an interaction to complete is not good... but waiting 10 secs. (and more) to even begin working is very solidly in the "also not good category". Both approaches clearly have compromises. Knowing when to use each approach and resisting latching on to one approach due to personal affinity, is where our trade craft hopefully shines through. I know I don't always live up to that ideal, but we all (hopefully) try to move in that direction every day.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    > Your acceptance of a 10-second start time, while sneering at the possibility of maybe waiting 50-100ms for an interaction, is precisely the cognitive dissonance I mentioned originally Your inability to read the conversation is hilarious I just showed you that native mobile apps have the exact same startup time. You have exactly 0 evidence to the contrary, actually you ignored the question, and now you're saying I have cognitive dissonance. Philosophically speaking: application toolkits take a moment to load, and then they behave like applications. Static views requiring server confirmation before UI updates DO NOT and NEVER WILL behave like applications, and so I hate using them, regardless of if the first view is a few seconds quicker. Any "time savings" are erased instantly by morale, and any real clock gains are wiped out by the time just a few interactions have gone by. If I'm using a tool to do significant work, and I have to wait for a server roundtrip before I can move between stages of that work, I'm going to be less efficient. This is why I've been saying HTMX has its use case - for shit UIs. You are advocating for building shit UIs because the first load is faster. Go away, that's not a compromise.
    - infamia 4y ago
      >>> - Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook (2017, dual core) took about 5s - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook with an "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" took about 10s ... Your inability to read the conversation is hilarious I just showed you that native mobile apps have the exact same startup time. >>> You referenced "Opening Google Calendar" on several devices where a web browser is the only option. I had assumed you were talking about "Opening Google Calendar" in a mobile browser, since we've been talking about websites and browsers the entire time. If you wanted to add native mobile apps into the discussion, you ought to communicate that clearly. > Go away, that's not a compromise. Opinions vary, Basecamp/Hey is well thought of regarding their UI/UX and they use HTML over the wire, so I'm content. It sounds like you are content as well, so to each their own.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        > I had assumed you were talking about "Opening Google Calendar" in a mobile browser, since we've been talking about websites and browsers the entire time. If you wanted to add native mobile apps into the discussion, you ought to communicate that clearly. I felt like "web was faster than native for this use case" made it reasonably clear. The alternative would have been they tested some other office program and it took about 7 seconds but forgot to say that. Either way you decided to ignore "faster than native" in your rush to call cognitive dissonance, and that's on you rather than them.

nawgz 4y ago

Counting "opening" as time to interacting: - Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook (2017, dual core) took about 5s - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook with an "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" took about 10s I'm not sure what your expectations are but it looks to me like web was faster than native for this use case, and even in the worst case under a factor of 2 slower. Pray tell, how long does your phone take to open your calendar?

infamia 4y ago
> Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity Are you using the personal version of Workspaces, or just the free version? I use the enterprise version of Google Workspaces, which has a lot more going on than the free version of Google's apps. Maybe that's a big part of the difference. To be clear, I get a 20-25 sec. cold start time on both my i7 Windows work laptop, my new AMD Linux machine, and a personal Windows machine with both OSes using different browsers (i.e., Chrome and Firefox). > I'm not sure what your expectations are... Your acceptance of a 10-second start time, while sneering at the possibility of maybe waiting 50-100ms for an interaction, is precisely the cognitive dissonance I mentioned originally. Possibly waiting 100ms for an interaction to complete is not good... but waiting 10 secs. (and more) to even begin working is very solidly in the "also not good category". Both approaches clearly have compromises. Knowing when to use each approach and resisting latching on to one approach due to personal affinity, is where our trade craft hopefully shines through. I know I don't always live up to that ideal, but we all (hopefully) try to move in that direction every day.
- nawgz 4y ago
  > Your acceptance of a 10-second start time, while sneering at the possibility of maybe waiting 50-100ms for an interaction, is precisely the cognitive dissonance I mentioned originally Your inability to read the conversation is hilarious I just showed you that native mobile apps have the exact same startup time. You have exactly 0 evidence to the contrary, actually you ignored the question, and now you're saying I have cognitive dissonance. Philosophically speaking: application toolkits take a moment to load, and then they behave like applications. Static views requiring server confirmation before UI updates DO NOT and NEVER WILL behave like applications, and so I hate using them, regardless of if the first view is a few seconds quicker. Any "time savings" are erased instantly by morale, and any real clock gains are wiped out by the time just a few interactions have gone by. If I'm using a tool to do significant work, and I have to wait for a server roundtrip before I can move between stages of that work, I'm going to be less efficient. This is why I've been saying HTMX has its use case - for shit UIs. You are advocating for building shit UIs because the first load is faster. Go away, that's not a compromise.
  - infamia 4y ago
    >>> - Opening Google Calendar on my personal phone with my personal calendar took about 6s to interactivity - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook (2017, dual core) took about 5s - Opening Google Calendar on my MacBook with an "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" took about 10s ... Your inability to read the conversation is hilarious I just showed you that native mobile apps have the exact same startup time. >>> You referenced "Opening Google Calendar" on several devices where a web browser is the only option. I had assumed you were talking about "Opening Google Calendar" in a mobile browser, since we've been talking about websites and browsers the entire time. If you wanted to add native mobile apps into the discussion, you ought to communicate that clearly. > Go away, that's not a compromise. Opinions vary, Basecamp/Hey is well thought of regarding their UI/UX and they use HTML over the wire, so I'm content. It sounds like you are content as well, so to each their own.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > I had assumed you were talking about "Opening Google Calendar" in a mobile browser, since we've been talking about websites and browsers the entire time. If you wanted to add native mobile apps into the discussion, you ought to communicate that clearly. I felt like "web was faster than native for this use case" made it reasonably clear. The alternative would have been they tested some other office program and it took about 7 seconds but forgot to say that. Either way you decided to ignore "faster than native" in your rush to call cognitive dissonance, and that's on you rather than them.