5 ms·

Is this really true that software is getting slower? I've been using a budget Windows 10 desktop lately, and I'm shocked by how fast everything is running: ESRI

Is this really true that software is getting slower? I've been using a budget Windows 10 desktop lately, and I'm shocked by how fast everything is running: ESRI ArcGIS, Firefox, code editors, etc. I remember having a budget desktop PC back in the mid 2000's and it was a significantly worse experience on very basic workflows (Excel, regular web browsing, etc)

crazygringo 3y ago
Agreed. Between SSDs, blazing faster home DSL internet, and multicore processors, using a computer is much faster than it's ever been before. Sure there's more software bloat, and webpage bloat, but if anything the overall user experience has gotten faster. And that's even with resource hogs like Retina displays and 4K video. Like, go look up YouTube videos of people using older systems (not VM's). A Mac in 1989 takes forever to open an application, open a file, or save a file. The HDD clicking away... Remember how Word implemented "fast save" to shorten save times, which appended a lot of changes rather than rewriting the whole file? Nobody worries about that today.
- Xeamek 3y ago
  Counter argument - HN post from 6 months ago: "Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    But here's a counterpoint from within that same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447704 There's also the note that this person was running NT on a later system far, far faster than it was designed for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447461 When we're trying to reproduce what older systems were like, it's important not to be combining software from earlier era on hardware from a later one.
- troupo 3y ago
  > Between SSDs, blazing faster home DSL internet, and multicore processors, using a computer is much faster than it's ever been before. How much faster? Our hardware is several orders of magnitude faster than 20-30 years ago. And yet it takes multiple seconds to start even the simplest app doing nothing, and don't get me started on more complex software
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > And yet it takes multiple seconds to start even the simplest app doing nothing This is what I don't get when people say. On my MacBook, I just launched TextEdit. The entire "launch" time is basically taken up by a window zoom effect that is maybe half a second. I just put chrome://restart into my browser bar, and Chrome quit and fully relaunched in about three quarters of a second. (And then obviously it takes more time to load the tab contents.) Double-clicking on a multi-page, 2 MB PDF takes about two-thirds of a second to open Preview and render. As far as I'm concerned, everything's lightning fast. There's absolute no "taking multiple seconds", whether it's a simple text editor or an entire web browser.
    - troupo 3y ago
      Macs are now crazy fast due to insane advances in their CPU. On intel macs you could definitely feel the slowdown of all software. I mean, they advertised "instant wake up from sleep" as a feature... That Macs had in 2008. I have a Windows machine that starts from NVMe. It takes a full minute for it to start a handful of startup apps, also in NVme: Firefox, Steam, 1password. What is it doing?
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I just clicked around on some apps on my iPhone 13 that I haven’t used in ages and they all opened in under 1 second. It looks like they basically open instantly but some make a network request to load the first page.
JonChesterfield 3y ago
Hard drive to SSD was a really big deal for general desktop experience. I used a ~first gen 30gb ssd with an intel atom for a while and that was fine provided I didn't try to compile anything. If your budget desktop has the OS on flash, that would do it.
tomcam 3y ago
Well now I need to know what that machine is
jcranmer 3y ago
I tried actually looking for anyone who actually did experiments to confirm whether or not software is getting slower and... uh... I can't really find anyone who has done such an experiment. Possibly, this is just the shittification of search, but everything that turns up is essentially just a link to a thought piece on the bloat of software, which almost invariably degenerates into shitting on Electron. On anecdotal evidence, one thing I recall from the late 90's/early 00's era of computing is the sheer prevalence of splash screens. If you wanted to open an application up, the first thing it displayed was a splash screen, with a progress bar that would animate to show you that it was doing something. And these splash screens have become far less prevalent in modern software, which at least anecdotally throws some doubt on Wirth's Law.
- 392 3y ago
  https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Zambyte 3y ago
Do you think running Windows 10 on the PC from the mid 2000s would be a better or worse experience than running the software that ran om that machine at the time?
- tanseydavid 3y ago
  Running Windows 11 on the same exact machine that I ran Windows 10 on, has been a dramatically worse experience performance-wise. There are several noticeable and unforgivable performance issues that I experience regularly with WIN11. The most-painful is that the WIN11 START MENU will occasionally (about once or twice per day) for no apparent reason, stop responding for 30-45 seconds. During this period, keystrokes are not responded to (but they are going into the keyboard buffer). When it recovers from its "blackout" it will spit out everything in the keyboard buffer. WTF is it doing during those 45 seconds? I can't prove it but I would bet money that it is trying to send telemetry to the Mother-Ship and got its request "load-balanced" onto a node that is not responding.

crazygringo 3y ago

Agreed. Between SSDs, blazing faster home DSL internet, and multicore processors, using a computer is much faster than it's ever been before. Sure there's more software bloat, and webpage bloat, but if anything the overall user experience has gotten faster. And that's even with resource hogs like Retina displays and 4K video. Like, go look up YouTube videos of people using older systems (not VM's). A Mac in 1989 takes forever to open an application, open a file, or save a file. The HDD clicking away... Remember how Word implemented "fast save" to shorten save times, which appended a lot of changes rather than rewriting the whole file? Nobody worries about that today.

Xeamek 3y ago
Counter argument - HN post from 6 months ago: "Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933
- crazygringo 3y ago
  But here's a counterpoint from within that same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447704 There's also the note that this person was running NT on a later system far, far faster than it was designed for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36447461 When we're trying to reproduce what older systems were like, it's important not to be combining software from earlier era on hardware from a later one.
troupo 3y ago
> Between SSDs, blazing faster home DSL internet, and multicore processors, using a computer is much faster than it's ever been before. How much faster? Our hardware is several orders of magnitude faster than 20-30 years ago. And yet it takes multiple seconds to start even the simplest app doing nothing, and don't get me started on more complex software
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > And yet it takes multiple seconds to start even the simplest app doing nothing This is what I don't get when people say. On my MacBook, I just launched TextEdit. The entire "launch" time is basically taken up by a window zoom effect that is maybe half a second. I just put chrome://restart into my browser bar, and Chrome quit and fully relaunched in about three quarters of a second. (And then obviously it takes more time to load the tab contents.) Double-clicking on a multi-page, 2 MB PDF takes about two-thirds of a second to open Preview and render. As far as I'm concerned, everything's lightning fast. There's absolute no "taking multiple seconds", whether it's a simple text editor or an entire web browser.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Macs are now crazy fast due to insane advances in their CPU. On intel macs you could definitely feel the slowdown of all software. I mean, they advertised "instant wake up from sleep" as a feature... That Macs had in 2008. I have a Windows machine that starts from NVMe. It takes a full minute for it to start a handful of startup apps, also in NVme: Firefox, Steam, 1password. What is it doing?
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I just clicked around on some apps on my iPhone 13 that I haven’t used in ages and they all opened in under 1 second. It looks like they basically open instantly but some make a network request to load the first page.

JonChesterfield 3y ago

Hard drive to SSD was a really big deal for general desktop experience. I used a ~first gen 30gb ssd with an intel atom for a while and that was fine provided I didn't try to compile anything. If your budget desktop has the OS on flash, that would do it.

tomcam 3y ago

Well now I need to know what that machine is

jcranmer 3y ago

I tried actually looking for anyone who actually did experiments to confirm whether or not software is getting slower and... uh... I can't really find anyone who has done such an experiment. Possibly, this is just the shittification of search, but everything that turns up is essentially just a link to a thought piece on the bloat of software, which almost invariably degenerates into shitting on Electron. On anecdotal evidence, one thing I recall from the late 90's/early 00's era of computing is the sheer prevalence of splash screens. If you wanted to open an application up, the first thing it displayed was a splash screen, with a progress bar that would animate to show you that it was doing something. And these splash screens have become far less prevalent in modern software, which at least anecdotally throws some doubt on Wirth's Law.

392 3y ago
https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/

Zambyte 3y ago

Do you think running Windows 10 on the PC from the mid 2000s would be a better or worse experience than running the software that ran om that machine at the time?

tanseydavid 3y ago
Running Windows 11 on the same exact machine that I ran Windows 10 on, has been a dramatically worse experience performance-wise. There are several noticeable and unforgivable performance issues that I experience regularly with WIN11. The most-painful is that the WIN11 START MENU will occasionally (about once or twice per day) for no apparent reason, stop responding for 30-45 seconds. During this period, keystrokes are not responded to (but they are going into the keyboard buffer). When it recovers from its "blackout" it will spit out everything in the keyboard buffer. WTF is it doing during those 45 seconds? I can't prove it but I would bet money that it is trying to send telemetry to the Mother-Ship and got its request "load-balanced" onto a node that is not responding.