3 ms·

Who should we blame for slow softwares?

For example me opening the setting page of my phone, it always pops up after 100-500ms. What exactly is my phone doing in that period? Solving the eigenvalue of the galaxy? This shouldn't be this slow. But why is this happening? Who should be blame?

milleniall 3y ago
We blame the specs, there is no need to make it faster. It is actually that simple.
- akasakahakada 3y ago
  I am sure that "please make it slow" is neither listed in the spec.
pestatije 4y ago
Well, you bought your mobile regardless of that fault, didn't you
- ineedausername 4y ago
  Maybe he didn't have much of a choice, or funds to buy a faster one. OP could always decide to go hermit ofcourse and live in the jungle eating roots, so he is partly to blame.
sharemywin 4y ago
I would blame this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Ig3X59_qA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Ig3X59_qA
cpach 4y ago
Blame the vendor.
gashmol 4y ago
Managers.
proc0 4y ago
It's enterprise software. With exceptions, enterprise software is designed to facilitate collaboration of large number of engineers working in parallel. As a result performance is not as high priority as readability and infrastructure. Large tech companies need a constant flow of new engineers, and also want the knowledge of systems to be spread out across as many people as possible, both of which limit software development to optimize readability and boilerplate code. The price is paid in how fragile and bloated apps are, despite hardware constantly getting better. Of course performance is still taken into account, but it needs to be justified with user telemetry and/or post-launch user feedback.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
The design of everything requiring internet access and APIs to do various things. In your example my guess is the settings is checking for updates in the background. Most web service APIs are pretty fast and a 200-500ms response time is actually good. Its just that if everything requires checking some API or logging into an API or whatever interaction with an API (personalized ads, etc.) then that all stacks up.
ThatGeoGuy 4y ago
The incentive structures of the organizations producing the software. If your software is slow, it's probably because nobody was incentivized to make it not-slow. There's plenty of software out there that's fast, but if perceived slowness isn't costing someone money and making a company's life harder, it's unlikely to get solved. Two examples: 1. My gmail can be horrifically slow some days. It's not because Google is unable to make IMAP sync fast, or that there's some inherent protocol limitation for what I perceive as 'being slow.' I run my own mail on DigitalOcean and I consistently am faster to sync large quantities of mail relative to a gmail address. Google isn't incentivized to make their free service faster, since they aren't losing money when I complain that gmail is 5 seconds slower to sync similar or lower volumes of mail compared to my own personal server. Note: I understand why there's good reasons for this. 2. Netflix and Youtube have a ton of backend servers and services that can be selected to immediately stream to any given computer on the planet, should someone click on a video. These are extremely highly performant and allow basic compute-heavy loads to be spun up at literally the click of a button on a webpage. It is specifically some engineer's job to get delivery windows on videos down as much as humanly possible because the organization makes more money from users (people tend to avoid services with huge delays, thus decreasing ad / subscription revenue) and spends less money if they aren't wasting compute. Software speed is entirely dictated by the incentive structure around it. If you want to complain about why software is slow, it is useful to understand who's problem that is, and whether perceived performance is enough of a blip on the radar to be worth investing someone's time in it.
clusmore 4y ago
Have you tried turning animations off? The setting should be in the Accessibility section somewhere. When you open an app from the app drawer, there is that little animation where the app icon grows, the screen fades to white/black, and then the app display fades into view, which all adds up to about 100-500ms. If you disable the animation it should open almost instantly.
- akasakahakada 4y ago
  Animation is literally the first thing I go to kill in every new device.

milleniall 3y ago

We blame the specs, there is no need to make it faster. It is actually that simple.

akasakahakada 3y ago
I am sure that "please make it slow" is neither listed in the spec.

pestatije 4y ago

Well, you bought your mobile regardless of that fault, didn't you

ineedausername 4y ago
Maybe he didn't have much of a choice, or funds to buy a faster one. OP could always decide to go hermit ofcourse and live in the jungle eating roots, so he is partly to blame.

sharemywin 4y ago

I would blame this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Ig3X59_qA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Ig3X59_qA

cpach 4y ago

Blame the vendor.

gashmol 4y ago

Managers.

proc0 4y ago

It's enterprise software. With exceptions, enterprise software is designed to facilitate collaboration of large number of engineers working in parallel. As a result performance is not as high priority as readability and infrastructure. Large tech companies need a constant flow of new engineers, and also want the knowledge of systems to be spread out across as many people as possible, both of which limit software development to optimize readability and boilerplate code. The price is paid in how fragile and bloated apps are, despite hardware constantly getting better. Of course performance is still taken into account, but it needs to be justified with user telemetry and/or post-launch user feedback.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

The design of everything requiring internet access and APIs to do various things. In your example my guess is the settings is checking for updates in the background. Most web service APIs are pretty fast and a 200-500ms response time is actually good. Its just that if everything requires checking some API or logging into an API or whatever interaction with an API (personalized ads, etc.) then that all stacks up.

ThatGeoGuy 4y ago

The incentive structures of the organizations producing the software. If your software is slow, it's probably because nobody was incentivized to make it not-slow. There's plenty of software out there that's fast, but if perceived slowness isn't costing someone money and making a company's life harder, it's unlikely to get solved. Two examples: 1. My gmail can be horrifically slow some days. It's not because Google is unable to make IMAP sync fast, or that there's some inherent protocol limitation for what I perceive as 'being slow.' I run my own mail on DigitalOcean and I consistently am faster to sync large quantities of mail relative to a gmail address. Google isn't incentivized to make their free service faster, since they aren't losing money when I complain that gmail is 5 seconds slower to sync similar or lower volumes of mail compared to my own personal server. Note: I understand why there's good reasons for this. 2. Netflix and Youtube have a ton of backend servers and services that can be selected to immediately stream to any given computer on the planet, should someone click on a video. These are extremely highly performant and allow basic compute-heavy loads to be spun up at literally the click of a button on a webpage. It is specifically some engineer's job to get delivery windows on videos down as much as humanly possible because the organization makes more money from users (people tend to avoid services with huge delays, thus decreasing ad / subscription revenue) and spends less money if they aren't wasting compute. Software speed is entirely dictated by the incentive structure around it. If you want to complain about why software is slow, it is useful to understand who's problem that is, and whether perceived performance is enough of a blip on the radar to be worth investing someone's time in it.

clusmore 4y ago

Have you tried turning animations off? The setting should be in the Accessibility section somewhere. When you open an app from the app drawer, there is that little animation where the app icon grows, the screen fades to white/black, and then the app display fades into view, which all adds up to about 100-500ms. If you disable the animation it should open almost instantly.

akasakahakada 4y ago
Animation is literally the first thing I go to kill in every new device.