3 ms·
I'm not sure I understand the premise, because CPU speeds were 20x slower. Just go back a decade or two. They weren't some halcyon days of bug-free software ba
by eterm 3y ago
I'm not sure I understand the premise, because CPU speeds were 20x slower. Just go back a decade or two.
They weren't some halcyon days of bug-free software back then, quite the opposite.
- stavros 3y agoSoftware wasn't bug-free, but it was responsive.
- eterm 3y agoNot all of it was, some of it was very laggy and slow. Indeed the whole OS would frequently freeze up.
- stavros 3y agoSure, but nowadays all of it is laggy and slow. I cringe every time I'm faster than Slack, a text chat program.
- vendiddy 3y agoYep exactly. If we're talking about a cutting-edge app, I get the sluggishness. But IRC used to respond instantly. Feels like apps are doing roughly the same thing but more slowly despite having computers that are orders of magnitude faster.
- Ratiofarmings 3y agoBe careful not to mix slow CPUs with not having SSDs. A OS freezing up is almost always because something is broken or because it's waiting for a HDD to spin up.
- amelius 3y agoWindows 3.1 was based on async programming, and wasn't responsive every now and then.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoWasn't Windows 3.1 or 95 also the one where things looked like they were going faster if you jiggled the mouse?
- pajko 3y agoYes it was Windows 95, probably the original release, as a lot of things were improved in OSR2: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/294907-why-moving-the-mouse-in-windows-95-made-the-os-faster https://www.extremetech.com/computing/294907-why-moving-the-...
- roland35 3y agoThat's why I use vim!
- pornel 3y agoIt may seem responsive if you run old software on modern hardware. It was always slow on contemporary hardware. On affordable PCs Win 3.1 was so slow you could see it redrawing windows and menus. Win 95 was so resource hungry, people wrote songs about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOwQKWiRJAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOwQKWiRJAA). XP seemed fast only at the end of its very long life, due to Longhorn project failing and delaying its famously shitty successor. It wasn't just Windows. Classic MacOS for most of its life could not drag windows with their contents in real time. Mac OS X was a slideshow before 10.4, and Macs kept frequently beachballing until they got SSDs.
- kalleboo 3y ago> Classic MacOS for most of its life could not drag windows with their contents in real time There was shareware you could install which would do it though! Even on a 25 MHz 68030 it was surprisingly usable (more usable than the passive matrix LCD at least) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cQo29SIIgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cQo29SIIgU It got a bit slower in color on an external display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peWIysrf7DY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peWIysrf7DY
- ksherlock 3y agoThat wasn't a hardware limitation. BeOS was outperforming Windows and Mac on the same hardware. If JLG hadn't demanded too much money, Apple would have merged with BeOS (and probably be a distant memory by now but that's a separate issue) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjriSNgFHsM&t=350s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjriSNgFHsM&t=350s
- mateo1 3y agoLike when you were booting windows and waiting an extra 3 minutes for your single processor CPU to finish all the startup tasks before doing anything else?
- crubier 3y agoJust go 9 years back actually. Computers were 20x slower 9 years ago according to Moore's law
- zamadatix 3y agoMoore's law doesn't say anything about the growth rate of performance vs time.