6 ms·

It's one of the things that are infuriating for technical folks but meh for everybody else. In the days of programs taking forever to load or web pages downloa

It's one of the things that are infuriating for technical folks but meh for everybody else. In the days of programs taking forever to load or web pages downloading images slowly we knew what technical limitations were there. Now we know how much sluggishness comes from cruft, downright hostility (tracking), sloppy developer work, etc.. we know this is a human problem and that angers us. But for non-technical people it hasn't changed too much. Computing wasn't super pleasant 25 years ago and it's not now. Instead of waiting half a minute for Word to load they wait 4-5 seconds for Spotify to load. They were never interested in Notepad or Cmd or Paint. It doesn't bother them that now they open slower than in 1999.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
grishka 3y ago
It's very surprising to me how much non-tech people are willing to put up with. They'd patiently wait for their phone to freeze for a solid 5 seconds because they installed an antivirus on it, and then proceed to try to use it at 2 FPS. The quality bar is so low now, it went underground. It's so easy to compete with the status quo. You just pretend that all the "progress" that happened in software development technologies over the last 15 years didn't happen. And, most importantly, you treat JS as a macro language for a glorified word processor and don't try to build actual applications with this stack.
- daniel_reetz 3y ago
  Many non-technical users assume blame for slowness and clunkiness. So many times I've heard self-blame when helping out family. "I shouldn't have so many pictures on my desktop" (there are 8 pictures). "I just can't figure out these phones" phone is dark patterning or has hidden functionality six menu items deep and behind a swipe/long press. "I never should have let it update, it's never been the same" - a forced update.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    I have heard that gem for about 2 decades now. When the reality is more cpu/memory usually cleared things up. In the old times a good defrag did not hurt either. People blame themselves when a lot of the time it is rubish software/hardware. Then you have the other side of that coin. The yes clickers. If it asks a question just answer it however you need to do for whatever it is you wanted to work. Surprising number of dark patterns on that gem... Then they hand it to you and expect a miracle in 5 mins. Sorry this is the first time I have every seen something like this it may take me a few mins to figure out what is wrong before I can even begin to fix it.
    - wott 3y ago
      > Then they hand it to you and expect a miracle in 5 mins. Sorry this is the first time I have every seen something like this it may take me a few mins to figure out what is wrong before I can even begin to fix it. Oh yeah, like when I have to fix the smartphones of people who have been using them for years while I do not own or use a smartphone. I will fix it, but I've got to learn how to launch/exit an application first ;-) Many people (hi mum!) are surprised that you may take a few minutes to calmly observe, probe, assess, read and think a bit before engaging in the actual fixing. It never occurred to them that one may do something else than clicking, more or less randomly and as fast as possible, when something shows up. And do not worry about your example altering their future behaviour, it will unshakeably go on as it always went :-)
  - andrepd 3y ago
    Oh the "too many pictures" thing is a favourite of my older relatives. They think it must be "weighing it down" or something and they have to delete pictures to make it go faster.
    - nneonneo 3y ago
      On the flip side, I recently visited a local tourist attraction, where a visitor asked me to take a photo for him - and then promptly had to spend 2 minutes deleting files on his phone because he’d literally run out of storage space and his phone wouldn’t let him take another photo. Bit of an awkward moment!
- rickmode 3y ago
  I agree though I’d say non-technical people are naive and so don’t know why the experience is not ideal or fun or smooth. I suspect if asked the right questions, non-technical people would also complain. Computers have always been just useful enough for as long as I’ve used them (since the 80s). We’ve _always_ put up with a lot of nonsense and pain because the alternative is worse.
- yafbum 3y ago
  Latency is one of the things my iPhone owning friends complain the most about when they try another phone (usually a Samsung loaded to the brim with bloatware)
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    This. My daily driver is a geriatric iphone 7. When I bought a new Galaxy A33 a few months ago for my mum, I took it for a spin for a day. I was shocked by how much lag there was, for example when scrolling. I know the A33 is a low-maybe-mid-tier phone. But it was brand new, whereas I bought my iPhone used in 2017 when the 8 was already out and maybe even the X (if not, it was right around the corner). It actually was a very weird feeling because the scroll itself was way smoother than on the iphone, probably thanks to the somewhat higher refresh rate. But there was a noticeable and weird lag between my finger movement and the screen contents moving. Also, scrolling would sometimes randomly glitch for no reason in basic apps, like the settings.
    - Aerbil313 3y ago
      What's the situation for new iPhones? Is the compute power of chips more powerful than my computer eaten away by software latency? I'm thinking about buying one. My iPhone 7 only started to very sligthly lag after the iOS 16 released and its update lifetime ended. I'm still using it. I don't even notice the lag if I don't pay special attention. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy, rather a NixOS nerd but I need a phone that reliably works.
      - freeone3000 3y ago
        The lack of latency comes from decisions at every layer of the stack — apps don’t control scrolling or layout, the OS does. iOS is consistently responsive to user input throughout all versions and levels.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - llbeansandrice 3y ago
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  I'm even more amazed at my IT colleagues (so "tech" people) putting up with windows' doing god knows what constantly. We have the exact same machines, yet mine somehow basically never has its fan on running Linux and compiling Rust, whereas theirs is often audible while running Windows with a couple of chrome tabs open and outlook. They also don't bat an eye when lazy devs recommend we should reboot the servers daily. They put up with laggy VNC when they have a perfectly good remote desktop solution set up. I guess, if it sorta kinda works, people just get used to it. The fans blowing like a jet engine. Apps taking forever to load. Windows getting stuck for no discernible reason.
  - Merad 3y ago
    > We have the exact same machines, yet mine somehow basically never has its fan on running Linux and compiling Rust, whereas theirs is often audible while running Windows with a couple of chrome tabs open and outlook. I think some of this is just poor defaults. Every windows laptop I've had in the last 10 years has defaulted to a thermal management profile that ran the fans aggressively. Usually you have to install some crapware from the manufacturer (it's "Dell Optimizer" on my current machine) that allows you to change the thermal profile to quiet mode, and it's totally fine after that.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I can buy that, but, anecdotally, my machine is noticeably warmer when I'm under Windows [0], and it does blow its fan too, just like my colleagues'. So, I don't think it's just a question of fan profiles. Plus, on Linux, I can't control the fan. I can't even read its speed. On Windows, they have all the "recommended" HP crap, but it's true that I didn't fiddle with those, and I doubt my colleagues did, either. --- [0] I do use Windows rarely, but when I do, it's for fairly long stretches (multiple days on end) so it has the time to do its scanning, updating and whatever elsing.
  - andrepd 3y ago
    I have to put up with laggy VNC sadly, but not by choice.
  - 3y ago
FemmeAndroid 3y ago
The strange thing for me is how much time we spent in the early 2000s discussing website responsiveness and quick loading times as ways to improve user engagement and productivity. Although I can't provide any statistics that I'm intimately familiar with, I recall reading numerous case studies where improvements in responsiveness resulted in significant productivity gains for end users. If I recall correctly, this wasn't just about dial-up connections and multi-second page loads. This belief was still prevalent even when discussing sub-second responsiveness. Perhaps the direction of the case studies started to shift, and we stopped hearing about it. However, it seems to me more like we pushed hard to reach a certain level of speed in our computer usage, then became complacent, and have been regressing ever since.
- sigg3 3y ago
  I don't have any data on it but I think people gradually came to accept the slower loading times as a reasonable cost, in return they got true multimedia and the fat client experience (first with flash, then jquery and so on) which was impossible in hypermedia. Currently node unifies (or seems to unify) the FE and BE into something that looks pretty worrying (or rather alien) to someone who grew up with LAMP stack and CGI for dynamic content. Enter htmx to turn the tide again.
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    >Enter htmx to turn the tide again. Doesn't htmx use server side rendering for everything? So every interaction incurs a network roundtrip?
    - pacifika 3y ago
      Yes, and returning a html fragment is generally fast.
      - _dain_ 3y ago
        Only if you're on a good connection and close to the data centre.
nneonneo 3y ago
I've literally started using Word and Excel less often because of just how long it takes them to start up. Like, I just want to write a quick document or edit my CV, why do I have to sit here and wait for 10-20 seconds?? Electron apps don't have to be shit; VS Code demonstrates this. But the VS Code people are also insanely performance-focused; your average app developer does not care.
jtriangle 3y ago
The thing is, users do care, they just don't understand how to articulate it. The Doherty threshold is real, and it's baked into our physiology as humans. So it does bother them, it's not 'meh', it's just the status quo. Every once in awhile you run across an application or website that's fast, and it's jarring how much better it feels to use. That's something worth striving for.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

grishka 3y ago

It's very surprising to me how much non-tech people are willing to put up with. They'd patiently wait for their phone to freeze for a solid 5 seconds because they installed an antivirus on it, and then proceed to try to use it at 2 FPS. The quality bar is so low now, it went underground. It's so easy to compete with the status quo. You just pretend that all the "progress" that happened in software development technologies over the last 15 years didn't happen. And, most importantly, you treat JS as a macro language for a glorified word processor and don't try to build actual applications with this stack.

daniel_reetz 3y ago
Many non-technical users assume blame for slowness and clunkiness. So many times I've heard self-blame when helping out family. "I shouldn't have so many pictures on my desktop" (there are 8 pictures). "I just can't figure out these phones" phone is dark patterning or has hidden functionality six menu items deep and behind a swipe/long press. "I never should have let it update, it's never been the same" - a forced update.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  I have heard that gem for about 2 decades now. When the reality is more cpu/memory usually cleared things up. In the old times a good defrag did not hurt either. People blame themselves when a lot of the time it is rubish software/hardware. Then you have the other side of that coin. The yes clickers. If it asks a question just answer it however you need to do for whatever it is you wanted to work. Surprising number of dark patterns on that gem... Then they hand it to you and expect a miracle in 5 mins. Sorry this is the first time I have every seen something like this it may take me a few mins to figure out what is wrong before I can even begin to fix it.
  - wott 3y ago
    > Then they hand it to you and expect a miracle in 5 mins. Sorry this is the first time I have every seen something like this it may take me a few mins to figure out what is wrong before I can even begin to fix it. Oh yeah, like when I have to fix the smartphones of people who have been using them for years while I do not own or use a smartphone. I will fix it, but I've got to learn how to launch/exit an application first ;-) Many people (hi mum!) are surprised that you may take a few minutes to calmly observe, probe, assess, read and think a bit before engaging in the actual fixing. It never occurred to them that one may do something else than clicking, more or less randomly and as fast as possible, when something shows up. And do not worry about your example altering their future behaviour, it will unshakeably go on as it always went :-)
- andrepd 3y ago
  Oh the "too many pictures" thing is a favourite of my older relatives. They think it must be "weighing it down" or something and they have to delete pictures to make it go faster.
  - nneonneo 3y ago
    On the flip side, I recently visited a local tourist attraction, where a visitor asked me to take a photo for him - and then promptly had to spend 2 minutes deleting files on his phone because he’d literally run out of storage space and his phone wouldn’t let him take another photo. Bit of an awkward moment!
rickmode 3y ago
I agree though I’d say non-technical people are naive and so don’t know why the experience is not ideal or fun or smooth. I suspect if asked the right questions, non-technical people would also complain. Computers have always been just useful enough for as long as I’ve used them (since the 80s). We’ve _always_ put up with a lot of nonsense and pain because the alternative is worse.
yafbum 3y ago
Latency is one of the things my iPhone owning friends complain the most about when they try another phone (usually a Samsung loaded to the brim with bloatware)
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  This. My daily driver is a geriatric iphone 7. When I bought a new Galaxy A33 a few months ago for my mum, I took it for a spin for a day. I was shocked by how much lag there was, for example when scrolling. I know the A33 is a low-maybe-mid-tier phone. But it was brand new, whereas I bought my iPhone used in 2017 when the 8 was already out and maybe even the X (if not, it was right around the corner). It actually was a very weird feeling because the scroll itself was way smoother than on the iphone, probably thanks to the somewhat higher refresh rate. But there was a noticeable and weird lag between my finger movement and the screen contents moving. Also, scrolling would sometimes randomly glitch for no reason in basic apps, like the settings.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    What's the situation for new iPhones? Is the compute power of chips more powerful than my computer eaten away by software latency? I'm thinking about buying one. My iPhone 7 only started to very sligthly lag after the iOS 16 released and its update lifetime ended. I'm still using it. I don't even notice the lag if I don't pay special attention. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy, rather a NixOS nerd but I need a phone that reliably works.
    - freeone3000 3y ago
      The lack of latency comes from decisions at every layer of the stack — apps don’t control scrolling or layout, the OS does. iOS is consistently responsive to user input throughout all versions and levels.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - llbeansandrice 3y ago
vladvasiliu 3y ago
I'm even more amazed at my IT colleagues (so "tech" people) putting up with windows' doing god knows what constantly. We have the exact same machines, yet mine somehow basically never has its fan on running Linux and compiling Rust, whereas theirs is often audible while running Windows with a couple of chrome tabs open and outlook. They also don't bat an eye when lazy devs recommend we should reboot the servers daily. They put up with laggy VNC when they have a perfectly good remote desktop solution set up. I guess, if it sorta kinda works, people just get used to it. The fans blowing like a jet engine. Apps taking forever to load. Windows getting stuck for no discernible reason.
- Merad 3y ago
  > We have the exact same machines, yet mine somehow basically never has its fan on running Linux and compiling Rust, whereas theirs is often audible while running Windows with a couple of chrome tabs open and outlook. I think some of this is just poor defaults. Every windows laptop I've had in the last 10 years has defaulted to a thermal management profile that ran the fans aggressively. Usually you have to install some crapware from the manufacturer (it's "Dell Optimizer" on my current machine) that allows you to change the thermal profile to quiet mode, and it's totally fine after that.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I can buy that, but, anecdotally, my machine is noticeably warmer when I'm under Windows [0], and it does blow its fan too, just like my colleagues'. So, I don't think it's just a question of fan profiles. Plus, on Linux, I can't control the fan. I can't even read its speed. On Windows, they have all the "recommended" HP crap, but it's true that I didn't fiddle with those, and I doubt my colleagues did, either. --- [0] I do use Windows rarely, but when I do, it's for fairly long stretches (multiple days on end) so it has the time to do its scanning, updating and whatever elsing.
- andrepd 3y ago
  I have to put up with laggy VNC sadly, but not by choice.
- 3y ago

FemmeAndroid 3y ago

The strange thing for me is how much time we spent in the early 2000s discussing website responsiveness and quick loading times as ways to improve user engagement and productivity. Although I can't provide any statistics that I'm intimately familiar with, I recall reading numerous case studies where improvements in responsiveness resulted in significant productivity gains for end users. If I recall correctly, this wasn't just about dial-up connections and multi-second page loads. This belief was still prevalent even when discussing sub-second responsiveness. Perhaps the direction of the case studies started to shift, and we stopped hearing about it. However, it seems to me more like we pushed hard to reach a certain level of speed in our computer usage, then became complacent, and have been regressing ever since.

sigg3 3y ago
I don't have any data on it but I think people gradually came to accept the slower loading times as a reasonable cost, in return they got true multimedia and the fat client experience (first with flash, then jquery and so on) which was impossible in hypermedia. Currently node unifies (or seems to unify) the FE and BE into something that looks pretty worrying (or rather alien) to someone who grew up with LAMP stack and CGI for dynamic content. Enter htmx to turn the tide again.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >Enter htmx to turn the tide again. Doesn't htmx use server side rendering for everything? So every interaction incurs a network roundtrip?
  - pacifika 3y ago
    Yes, and returning a html fragment is generally fast.
    - _dain_ 3y ago
      Only if you're on a good connection and close to the data centre.

nneonneo 3y ago

I've literally started using Word and Excel less often because of just how long it takes them to start up. Like, I just want to write a quick document or edit my CV, why do I have to sit here and wait for 10-20 seconds?? Electron apps don't have to be shit; VS Code demonstrates this. But the VS Code people are also insanely performance-focused; your average app developer does not care.

jtriangle 3y ago

The thing is, users do care, they just don't understand how to articulate it. The Doherty threshold is real, and it's baked into our physiology as humans. So it does bother them, it's not 'meh', it's just the status quo. Every once in awhile you run across an application or website that's fast, and it's jarring how much better it feels to use. That's something worth striving for.