8 ms·

I don't understand what he's angry about. Photoshop, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, these are all enormously complicated programs that require resources to load.

I don't understand what he's angry about. Photoshop, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, these are all enormously complicated programs that require resources to load. That doesn't make them bloatware and it doesn't make the programmers lazy. His proposed solution sucks too. Show the UI while it's loading so the user can impotently click around waiting for the program to "turn on". Windows does this when it boots up and it drives me insane -- if the OS or program isn't in a usable state when you show it to me, don't show it to me Loading speed is just one of a multitude of factors that come into play when making software. According to this Adobe employee it should be the chief most concern, even dominating other things like features, usability, UX, cost, technological debt, etc.

rsanchez1 15y ago
It's the same for any complex program, smartphone or desktop. I have Picsel Smart Office on my phone and it has a boot time, because it's an office app and has to load resources to use the app. And on his proposed solution, he asks developers to empower users, to not make users feel belittled, and at the same time he asks developers to trick users into thinking the full app has loaded. How can you avoid belittling someone and trick them at the same time?
tintin 15y ago
You are wrong. Everytime I start Blender (3D content creation suite) I'm blown away by the time it takes to start. Less than 2 seconds! Ready to use! Do I call Blender a complicates program? Yes I do. The feature list can compete with the one of 3ds Max.
- talmand 15y ago
  I think it's unfair for you to call him wrong, what's wrong with what he said in the context of what he was saying? I remember Blender loading fast as well. But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? Because I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lazy loading going on. Maybe some things finish loading in the background so they are not available right away or maybe some things are loaded on demand to spread out the loading time.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? I hope not.
  - tintin 15y ago
    Of course Blender is lazy loading as you like to call it. Why load features the user is not using atm? The base of the program is just way better than lets say Photoshop. Ever checked an online Photo editor? (http://pixlr.com/editor/ http://pixlr.com/editor/ for example after a quick Google). Open the page and there it is: your interface ready to use.
    - gt384u 15y ago
      To clarify, "lazy" isn't a pejorative in this case. It's just the technical term for deferring work until it needs to be done. "Eager" would be the term for doing everything right away.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    Loading on demand is a vast improvement over loading everything up front, though. Loading on demand means you never pay the price for functionality that isn't used, and if your load time is divided into little pieces, it's far more likely to slip into spaces where the user is otherwise preoccupied, thus becoming essentially free. Lazy loading is a way to truly reduce loading time, not just a way to hide it as you seem to imply.
    - talmand 15y ago
      Well, lazy loading is a way to hide loading time. But I didn't mean that lazy loading is bad since I think it is rather underutilized in desktop applications. Taking Photoshop as an example, I would explore the means to get the basic app up and running providing basic tools then load the rest in the background not waiting for demand. Loading on demand is nice as long as it can be done quickly. There's nothing worse than having the app loaded, click on a menu item, and then have to wait for that feature to load.
    - 15y ago
- pre 15y ago
  Blender's startup speed astounds me when compared to just about everything else I use. It starts faster than Vim half the time!
mattmanser 15y ago
Think of the 100s of millions or even billions of hours of unhappiness caused by whatever utter wanker designed the windows update system. All that misery waiting to go home to your actual life but you can't because your laptop's displaying 'Do not turn off or unplug your computer'. No, just sit here and watch me. Or those times you accidentally opened Word or Photoshop or MySql Workbench (god that's slow) or whatever. You made a mistake? Well fuck you. I'm not listening to you, says your computer, I'm just going to ignore you for a little bit. That's why. And they're not enormously complicated, paint opens instantly and has the same UI. Word is little more than a glorified textbox. Programmatically all the features make those programs enormously complex, but the actual common use of the programs are simplicity itself.
- talmand 15y ago
  Don't like that feature of Windows Update? Turn off automatic updates and do it manually when you wish. Although I agree with the annoyance of accidentally opening something like Photoshop and having to wait to close it. But a good number of resources that is loading is third-party stuff that demands to be present immediately on startup as opposed to being loaded on demand. But whatever. Paint has the same UI as what? I hope you're not comparing it to Photoshop or any other professional level software. I believe the modern version of Word is a good bit more than a glorified textbox. But then you point out exactly why these programs load slowly in your last sentence. Maybe just start using less complex software?
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Their interface is the same. Are you utterly blind? Stop looking at the UX as a programmer and imagining the complexity of the features. The actual screen is displaying exactly the same stuff. There's a big white box to draw in and bunch of buttons to press. You do not need to initalize all the 3rd party tools, you just have to find out which tiny little icon to add on a task bar or extra menu items to add, and why didn't you cache that when the extension was first detected? And how silly of me, of course all the corporations these days let you turn off the updates on their computers don't they? Stop telling your users that 'if they just..', do the opposite with UI than you do with your code, start programming for the best case scenario, not the worst case.
powertower 15y ago
Sounds to me like he's either temporarily enraged, or is trying to get fired. The spashscreen does 1 thing, it tells the user that the app is loading and you don't need to click the exe/icon again. His solution to a 5-10 second load time is to provide a fake UI, record phantom mouse clicks, and also give the user a game to play, only makes everything worse. Some apps have to initialize, and without that you are left with an empty shell of a UI that has no functionality. Or even worse, a slugish UI that initializes in-place or during work... Which then causes the typical user to go online and rant about how his app is broken or unresponsive. Though I like what he has posted on the rest of his blog... http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/ http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/
- kzrdude 15y ago
  > The spashscreen does 1 thing, it tells the user that the app is loading and you don't need to click the exe/icon again. This is the wrong way to notify. Let its dock icon bounce on (or similar), instead of obscuring the center of the working area on the computer.
  - LoneWolf 15y ago
    Excuse me but I don't see that being possible in Windows In kde it was mac I have no idea but your solution only works in some places.
    - derefr 15y ago
      Then that is a problem with the GUI, not a problem with the program. Don't settle for what's possible; change what's possible.
- wmil 15y ago
  Adobe has been laying people off, he could be trying to draw attention to himself in order to find a new job. Anyways he's solving the wrong problem. What he really wants is to have the OS log him in, lock the screen, and load his common apps before he gets to work.
darwinGod 15y ago
Agree.I wouldn't care if MS Office,Photoshop takes some extra time to start.The wait would be worth it.For all the bashing Microsoft gets,MS Office and Active Directory are products which really,really way better when compared to their open source counterparts.So,let the engineers have their 30 seconds of glory! :-)
- viraptor 15y ago
  AD has pretty much no serious replacement, but MSO is for me as bad as everything else out there. Office in general constantly crashes and the only thing that is reasonable in Outlook is the calendar integration. It's so bad, that in 2007 it still didn't have a good threading view of messages. Communicator is a joke where you can't even do local list search - you either have to query global company address list, or manually scroll through your contacts... In general no - I can't agree they're "really, really way better" than OS replacements. They're better for some people, worse for others.
sixothree 15y ago
What's wrong with letting the user browse for a file to open?
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  you'll have to search the filesystem which means hitting the disk , moving the disk head away from where it was when it was loading the program.
jarek-foksa 15y ago
You don't write "enormously complicated programs" in the first place, you split big app into small pieces with as little coupling as possible to keep things simple.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Personally I agree and usually prefer more "unix like" applications like this. However from a support point of view there is value in everyone running the same consistent program rather than several hundred mini programs piped together in some way. It also makes purchasing easier, for example you can just buy photoshop/illustrator/whatever and have all the features you need straight up rather than having to choose between programs for different actions (say one program for drawing vectors , another for applying filter effects, another for format conversion etc etc).
cageface 15y ago
Personally I don't care how long it takes an app to start provided it stays running once it does start. If I'm doing non-trivial work in an app the boot time is negligible compared to the time I spend working in that app. Given the tremendous engineering challenges apps of these size pose the last place I'd like to see developers spend their precious time is on this.
davedx 15y ago
Loading times like that ARE UX. Wow. What do you think he's writing about? His Experience as a User.

rsanchez1 15y ago

It's the same for any complex program, smartphone or desktop. I have Picsel Smart Office on my phone and it has a boot time, because it's an office app and has to load resources to use the app. And on his proposed solution, he asks developers to empower users, to not make users feel belittled, and at the same time he asks developers to trick users into thinking the full app has loaded. How can you avoid belittling someone and trick them at the same time?

tintin 15y ago

You are wrong. Everytime I start Blender (3D content creation suite) I'm blown away by the time it takes to start. Less than 2 seconds! Ready to use! Do I call Blender a complicates program? Yes I do. The feature list can compete with the one of 3ds Max.

talmand 15y ago
I think it's unfair for you to call him wrong, what's wrong with what he said in the context of what he was saying? I remember Blender loading fast as well. But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? Because I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lazy loading going on. Maybe some things finish loading in the background so they are not available right away or maybe some things are loaded on demand to spread out the loading time.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? I hope not.
- tintin 15y ago
  Of course Blender is lazy loading as you like to call it. Why load features the user is not using atm? The base of the program is just way better than lets say Photoshop. Ever checked an online Photo editor? (http://pixlr.com/editor/ http://pixlr.com/editor/ for example after a quick Google). Open the page and there it is: your interface ready to use.
  - gt384u 15y ago
    To clarify, "lazy" isn't a pejorative in this case. It's just the technical term for deferring work until it needs to be done. "Eager" would be the term for doing everything right away.
- mikeash 15y ago
  Loading on demand is a vast improvement over loading everything up front, though. Loading on demand means you never pay the price for functionality that isn't used, and if your load time is divided into little pieces, it's far more likely to slip into spaces where the user is otherwise preoccupied, thus becoming essentially free. Lazy loading is a way to truly reduce loading time, not just a way to hide it as you seem to imply.
  - talmand 15y ago
    Well, lazy loading is a way to hide loading time. But I didn't mean that lazy loading is bad since I think it is rather underutilized in desktop applications. Taking Photoshop as an example, I would explore the means to get the basic app up and running providing basic tools then load the rest in the background not waiting for demand. Loading on demand is nice as long as it can be done quickly. There's nothing worse than having the app loaded, click on a menu item, and then have to wait for that feature to load.
  - 15y ago
pre 15y ago
Blender's startup speed astounds me when compared to just about everything else I use. It starts faster than Vim half the time!

mattmanser 15y ago

Think of the 100s of millions or even billions of hours of unhappiness caused by whatever utter wanker designed the windows update system. All that misery waiting to go home to your actual life but you can't because your laptop's displaying 'Do not turn off or unplug your computer'. No, just sit here and watch me. Or those times you accidentally opened Word or Photoshop or MySql Workbench (god that's slow) or whatever. You made a mistake? Well fuck you. I'm not listening to you, says your computer, I'm just going to ignore you for a little bit. That's why. And they're not enormously complicated, paint opens instantly and has the same UI. Word is little more than a glorified textbox. Programmatically all the features make those programs enormously complex, but the actual common use of the programs are simplicity itself.

talmand 15y ago
Don't like that feature of Windows Update? Turn off automatic updates and do it manually when you wish. Although I agree with the annoyance of accidentally opening something like Photoshop and having to wait to close it. But a good number of resources that is loading is third-party stuff that demands to be present immediately on startup as opposed to being loaded on demand. But whatever. Paint has the same UI as what? I hope you're not comparing it to Photoshop or any other professional level software. I believe the modern version of Word is a good bit more than a glorified textbox. But then you point out exactly why these programs load slowly in your last sentence. Maybe just start using less complex software?
- mattmanser 15y ago
  Their interface is the same. Are you utterly blind? Stop looking at the UX as a programmer and imagining the complexity of the features. The actual screen is displaying exactly the same stuff. There's a big white box to draw in and bunch of buttons to press. You do not need to initalize all the 3rd party tools, you just have to find out which tiny little icon to add on a task bar or extra menu items to add, and why didn't you cache that when the extension was first detected? And how silly of me, of course all the corporations these days let you turn off the updates on their computers don't they? Stop telling your users that 'if they just..', do the opposite with UI than you do with your code, start programming for the best case scenario, not the worst case.

powertower 15y ago

Sounds to me like he's either temporarily enraged, or is trying to get fired. The spashscreen does 1 thing, it tells the user that the app is loading and you don't need to click the exe/icon again. His solution to a 5-10 second load time is to provide a fake UI, record phantom mouse clicks, and also give the user a game to play, only makes everything worse. Some apps have to initialize, and without that you are left with an empty shell of a UI that has no functionality. Or even worse, a slugish UI that initializes in-place or during work... Which then causes the typical user to go online and rant about how his app is broken or unresponsive. Though I like what he has posted on the rest of his blog... http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/ http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/

kzrdude 15y ago
> The spashscreen does 1 thing, it tells the user that the app is loading and you don't need to click the exe/icon again. This is the wrong way to notify. Let its dock icon bounce on (or similar), instead of obscuring the center of the working area on the computer.
- LoneWolf 15y ago
  Excuse me but I don't see that being possible in Windows In kde it was mac I have no idea but your solution only works in some places.
  - derefr 15y ago
    Then that is a problem with the GUI, not a problem with the program. Don't settle for what's possible; change what's possible.
wmil 15y ago
Adobe has been laying people off, he could be trying to draw attention to himself in order to find a new job. Anyways he's solving the wrong problem. What he really wants is to have the OS log him in, lock the screen, and load his common apps before he gets to work.

darwinGod 15y ago

Agree.I wouldn't care if MS Office,Photoshop takes some extra time to start.The wait would be worth it.For all the bashing Microsoft gets,MS Office and Active Directory are products which really,really way better when compared to their open source counterparts.So,let the engineers have their 30 seconds of glory! :-)

viraptor 15y ago
AD has pretty much no serious replacement, but MSO is for me as bad as everything else out there. Office in general constantly crashes and the only thing that is reasonable in Outlook is the calendar integration. It's so bad, that in 2007 it still didn't have a good threading view of messages. Communicator is a joke where you can't even do local list search - you either have to query global company address list, or manually scroll through your contacts... In general no - I can't agree they're "really, really way better" than OS replacements. They're better for some people, worse for others.

sixothree 15y ago

What's wrong with letting the user browse for a file to open?

jiggy2011 15y ago
you'll have to search the filesystem which means hitting the disk , moving the disk head away from where it was when it was loading the program.

jarek-foksa 15y ago

You don't write "enormously complicated programs" in the first place, you split big app into small pieces with as little coupling as possible to keep things simple.

jiggy2011 15y ago
Personally I agree and usually prefer more "unix like" applications like this. However from a support point of view there is value in everyone running the same consistent program rather than several hundred mini programs piped together in some way. It also makes purchasing easier, for example you can just buy photoshop/illustrator/whatever and have all the features you need straight up rather than having to choose between programs for different actions (say one program for drawing vectors , another for applying filter effects, another for format conversion etc etc).

cageface 15y ago

Personally I don't care how long it takes an app to start provided it stays running once it does start. If I'm doing non-trivial work in an app the boot time is negligible compared to the time I spend working in that app. Given the tremendous engineering challenges apps of these size pose the last place I'd like to see developers spend their precious time is on this.

davedx 15y ago

Loading times like that ARE UX. Wow. What do you think he's writing about? His Experience as a User.