5 ms·

I talk about this so much at my workplace and every time I mention slower phones I get laughed at by my boss. It's idiotic. "Just get an iPhone" Like... my du

I talk about this so much at my workplace and every time I mention slower phones I get laughed at by my boss. It's idiotic. "Just get an iPhone" Like... my dude, you rolled out of uni and started your own business and started out making at least double every month than normal people and you buy a new phone every 2 years. This is not normal. Our target customer is very literally the "average consumer", so this is the dumbest take I've ever seen. I try to minimize garbage collection and optimize React rendering but React is honestly quite difficult to get right when it comes to details in performance, even after a few years of experience :(. It doesn't help that I explicitly don't get time to focus on these kinds of details.

KeplerBoy 2y ago
Meh, are slow phones really an issue? I'm using a motorola android i bought three years ago for around $200 and it's absolutely fine for browsing the web and messaging. I could justify buying an iPhone (after all it comes down to a dollar a day over two/three years), but I don't feel like I have to.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Slow phones on slow connections. Try to access the Internet on modern Germany while crossing through the country on train.
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    Fair enough. As an Austrian I'm deeply familiar with the experience in German trains but that doesn't get any better with an iphone either. I can assure that Apple's RF engineers working around here are suffering the same issues.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      It gets better when Website designers take that into consideration.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    Why? What could possibly be so important to be done that can not wait until I am in a place with a faster connection?
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Why is really the question of universe. Not everyone is you, and some people like to keep themselves busy reading stuff online.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        And there are countless ways to keep oneself busy, the majority of which do not require Javascript-heavy websites.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        As mentioned, not everyone is you.
        rglullis 2y ago
        And not everyone is you, either. OP was saying about devs needing to build their product/applications/websites on underpowered hardware, presumably as a way to have the same experience as most people. That's reasonable, provided that this is the context where people will use your product/application/website. The context you are giving (slow phones on spotty connections) is so specific that becomes irrelevant for any project manager that could be interested in evaluating the merits of the claim. So, yeah, I don't know why you seem so upset about my question, but if you detach yourself from the case, you'd see that your response to "are slow phones really an issue?" does not make a strong argument.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        You are holding it wrong. (TM)
  - em-bee 2y ago
    i have lived in germany. germans should suffer their slow internet until they get fed up and demand better. so no, adapting my website so that it works on a german train is not an important goal. i would even argue that if germany is my audience it is counterproductive. demand better internet.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      How thankful of you, there are many countries that are even worse, but sure the confort of the developer is more relevant than of your users.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        i am living in such a country now. and if those countries are my target audience i will certainly build for that. heck, i might even hire a dev in germany and send him traveling on trains as a test case ;-) but if my target audience is germany, i will probably not focus on the tiny fraction of german train travelers.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Depends on who is your target audience : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729057 Most people don't live in the first world countries, don't have cheap access to high-end devices like a half a decade old android flagship (and 8.4% of people live on less than $2.15 a day), and any website relying on JavaScript for basic features literally won't be able to LOAD for them.
  - nolist_policy 2y ago
    > Most people don't live in the first world countries, [...] any website relying on JavaScript for basic features literally won't be able to LOAD for them. Citation needed.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      Ok, I guess this is one of those cases where I don't break rules when I say : RTFA (the one I linked to)
      - nolist_policy 2y ago
        You can't just link to a wall of text to support random statements. Citation needed.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    even low end smartphones work ok with basic javascript. the people who live on $2 a day mostly have a feature phone that is barely internet capable (remember WAP?) or they have no phone at all. i don't know about modern feature phones, but i expect they can handle javascript just fine, because it doesn't make sense to build a new phone today that doesn't. (i just did a search on some african online sites and found that smartphones can be had from $30, but most importantly that new web capable feature phones are not any cheaper (should those even be called feature phones?)) where internet is available it is usually not that slow either because it doesn't make sense to build a slow internet. i mean, it may be slow compared to what we are used to but even 1Mbps is enough to load at least text oriented websites, even with javascript. those companies do need to offer a service quality that people are willing to pay for. slow internet is a problem of old infrastructure, but developing countries tend not to have old infrastructure to begin with.

KeplerBoy 2y ago

Meh, are slow phones really an issue? I'm using a motorola android i bought three years ago for around $200 and it's absolutely fine for browsing the web and messaging. I could justify buying an iPhone (after all it comes down to a dollar a day over two/three years), but I don't feel like I have to.

pjmlp 2y ago
Slow phones on slow connections. Try to access the Internet on modern Germany while crossing through the country on train.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Fair enough. As an Austrian I'm deeply familiar with the experience in German trains but that doesn't get any better with an iphone either. I can assure that Apple's RF engineers working around here are suffering the same issues.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It gets better when Website designers take that into consideration.
- rglullis 2y ago
  Why? What could possibly be so important to be done that can not wait until I am in a place with a faster connection?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Why is really the question of universe. Not everyone is you, and some people like to keep themselves busy reading stuff online.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      And there are countless ways to keep oneself busy, the majority of which do not require Javascript-heavy websites.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        As mentioned, not everyone is you.
        rglullis 2y ago
        And not everyone is you, either. OP was saying about devs needing to build their product/applications/websites on underpowered hardware, presumably as a way to have the same experience as most people. That's reasonable, provided that this is the context where people will use your product/application/website. The context you are giving (slow phones on spotty connections) is so specific that becomes irrelevant for any project manager that could be interested in evaluating the merits of the claim. So, yeah, I don't know why you seem so upset about my question, but if you detach yourself from the case, you'd see that your response to "are slow phones really an issue?" does not make a strong argument.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        You are holding it wrong. (TM)
- em-bee 2y ago
  i have lived in germany. germans should suffer their slow internet until they get fed up and demand better. so no, adapting my website so that it works on a german train is not an important goal. i would even argue that if germany is my audience it is counterproductive. demand better internet.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    How thankful of you, there are many countries that are even worse, but sure the confort of the developer is more relevant than of your users.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      i am living in such a country now. and if those countries are my target audience i will certainly build for that. heck, i might even hire a dev in germany and send him traveling on trains as a test case ;-) but if my target audience is germany, i will probably not focus on the tiny fraction of german train travelers.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Depends on who is your target audience : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729057 Most people don't live in the first world countries, don't have cheap access to high-end devices like a half a decade old android flagship (and 8.4% of people live on less than $2.15 a day), and any website relying on JavaScript for basic features literally won't be able to LOAD for them.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  > Most people don't live in the first world countries, [...] any website relying on JavaScript for basic features literally won't be able to LOAD for them. Citation needed.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    Ok, I guess this is one of those cases where I don't break rules when I say : RTFA (the one I linked to)
    - nolist_policy 2y ago
      You can't just link to a wall of text to support random statements. Citation needed.
- em-bee 2y ago
  even low end smartphones work ok with basic javascript. the people who live on $2 a day mostly have a feature phone that is barely internet capable (remember WAP?) or they have no phone at all. i don't know about modern feature phones, but i expect they can handle javascript just fine, because it doesn't make sense to build a new phone today that doesn't. (i just did a search on some african online sites and found that smartphones can be had from $30, but most importantly that new web capable feature phones are not any cheaper (should those even be called feature phones?)) where internet is available it is usually not that slow either because it doesn't make sense to build a slow internet. i mean, it may be slow compared to what we are used to but even 1Mbps is enough to load at least text oriented websites, even with javascript. those companies do need to offer a service quality that people are willing to pay for. slow internet is a problem of old infrastructure, but developing countries tend not to have old infrastructure to begin with.