4 ms·

I wish companies would go back to building fast apps, but alas. Everything is feature-packed and requires you to download half the internet. My intellij licens

I wish companies would go back to building fast apps, but alas. Everything is feature-packed and requires you to download half the internet. My intellij license just expired so today I'm back using Sublime Text, and honestly it's a breath of fresh air / relief - and it's not even the fastest editor, iirc it uses Python under the hood. I've installed Zed but getting plugins and keyboard shortcuts all lined up is always challenging. That one took ~2-3 seconds to cold start.

tremon 2y ago
I don't think these apps were ever built to be fast, they were built with the resource constraints of the time. Moore's law is what's making these apps fast.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  Word 2000 definitely was not very quick on a contemporary office PC (Pentium II or III), though I'm pretty certain it was much, much faster than desktop O365 is on a contemporary office PC today, despite those being >100x faster. So Fermi would estimate modern office to probably require at least 1000x more resources than Office 2000.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rollcat 2y ago
  Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh. This is even more sad with Apple. My M1 Mac felt incredibly snappy with Big Sur, but is getting ever so slightly slower with each update. My iPhone SE2 is a complete disaster.
- mleo 2y ago
  They used no networking services either. Now, I open a shared PowerPoint and am stuck waiting for a couple of minutes while it is syncing or doing who knows what. People have no sense of what templates they copy from other documents causing the size of the file and load times to bloat.
kyrra 2y ago
If you like fast apps, maybe check out FilePilot, a Windows explorer alternative. https://filepilot.tech/ https://filepilot.tech/ It's amazingly fast, though it's missing some features and will be really expensive when it leaves beta.
- aloisdg 2y ago
  I like dolphin but pcmanfm is fastet
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  In my opinion Total Commander has always been the most ideal (also fast) file management tool since Windows 3.x. It was named Windows Commander back in the days but it still supports Windows 3.x as Total Commander.
  - vlachen 2y ago
    I never knew it was a Windows program. I've been using it on my Android phones for years.
- gymbeaux 2y ago
  Do you know how it compares to Dolphin for interacting with very large (100k+ files) directories? Dolphin is the only file manager I’ve found that keeps up with the large directories- GNOME (Nautilus) and Windows Explorer are dogshit slow, even after the file list populates. macOS Finder is somewhere in the middle but still very slow.
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    When you have 100k+ files sometimes the filesystem itself matters. Have you set your expectations appropriately, aka compared it to a raw ls/dir ?
  - Lammy 2y ago
    Check out ROX-Filer https://github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer https://github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer
qwerty456127 2y ago
> I wish companies would go back to building fast apps It seems fascinating how much more efficient Windows apps were back in the nineties, capable do to almost everything the same today apps do in a similar manner on orders of magnitude less powerful hardware, often performing even faster. The last time I expressed this, probably also here, somebody suggested the performance drop is the cost of modern security - vulnerability mitigations, cryptography etc.
- dbalatero 2y ago
  I think the performance drop probably has more to do with managers & product folks expecting growth and features at all costs at the expense of keeping performance at some baseline. I also wonder if it's just harder to continually monitor performance in a way that alerts a team early enough to deal with regressions? That said, security _can_ impact performance! I work on Stripe frontend surfaces, and one performance bottleneck we have comes from needing to use iframes to sandbox and isolate code for security. Having to load code in iframes adds an additional network load before we can get to page render.
  - zerkten 2y ago
    I think you need to add that many more developers, or even teams of developers, are building these apps. They have their own fiefdoms and it's less common for devs to have a complete understanding of the code base. Over time decisions are made independently by devs/teams which cause the code bases to get out of alignment with a performant design. This is exacerbated by the growth pressure. It's then really hard for someone to come in and optimize top to bottom because there is everything from a bug to a design problem. Remediation has significant overhead, so only things around the edges are touched. Fast forward a couple of years and you have a code base that devs struggle to evolve and add features to as well as keep performant. The causes are many and we come to the same one whether we complain about performance or maintainability. You probably don't feel this way, but Stripe and other premier engineering companies are way ahead of others in terms of their practices when you compare with the average situation developers are facing. Independent mobile development is often where I see most attention to performance these days. The situation for these devs is a little bit closer to what existed in the nineties. They have a bigger span of control and performance is something they feel directly so are incentivized to ensure it's great.
bell-cot 2y ago
> I wish companies would go back to building fast apps... Similar to the slow-opening glove box in a car, many humans perceive slow computers & software as a signifiers of importance/luxury/prestige. At least at first. By the time they are familiar with the slow software, and impatient to just get their work done - too late, SnailSoft already has their money.
mdhb 2y ago
Instead they decided to build it with React if I remember correctly which is truly one of the fucking dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310738
ben-schaaf 2y ago
> and it's not even the fastest editor, iirc it uses Python under the hood The majority of the app is written in C++. Python is used for plugins.
jacurtis 2y ago
I actually use IntelliJ and Sublime interchangeably throughout the day. I default to sublime for most work because of how snappy fast it is. I only load up Intellij when I need to do something that leverages its full IDE capabilities. To second your comment, I encourage people to try Sublime, you will be shocked at how fast it feels. I still love IntelliJ, its a great product. But it is slow, bloats the computer, needs constant updating. But at least its incredibly powerful as a tradeoff to the bloat. The Office debate is slightly different. It is slow, bloats the computer, needs constant updating. But unlike IntelliJ i dont feel that there is any advantage to all that added weight. We are using a word processor. We type words onto a blank screen. Why is Word and Outlook the most common applications to crash my computer that has an M1 Max Chip with 48Gb of Memory? I can literally run and build AI models on my computer with no problem but you boot up Microsoft Word to type words onto a blank page and you have a 33% chance of crashing the computer. Google Sheets and Docs are actually better tools in my opinion for most people. 99% or more of the features you need are available in the google equivalents. These products are fast and run in a browser! The UI is actually VASTLY superior to Microsoft's ribbon. I still can't find stuff that I need on a routine basis and have to google it. I don't have this problem when using Google's office equivalents.
citizenpaul 2y ago
>I wish companies would go back to building fast apps My prediction is that we are about to enter a great winter of poor performance across the industry as AI slop is put in to production en mass. Along with bugginess that we have not seen since the early dotcom days.

tremon 2y ago

I don't think these apps were ever built to be fast, they were built with the resource constraints of the time. Moore's law is what's making these apps fast.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
formerly_proven 2y ago
Word 2000 definitely was not very quick on a contemporary office PC (Pentium II or III), though I'm pretty certain it was much, much faster than desktop O365 is on a contemporary office PC today, despite those being >100x faster. So Fermi would estimate modern office to probably require at least 1000x more resources than Office 2000.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rollcat 2y ago
Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh. This is even more sad with Apple. My M1 Mac felt incredibly snappy with Big Sur, but is getting ever so slightly slower with each update. My iPhone SE2 is a complete disaster.
mleo 2y ago
They used no networking services either. Now, I open a shared PowerPoint and am stuck waiting for a couple of minutes while it is syncing or doing who knows what. People have no sense of what templates they copy from other documents causing the size of the file and load times to bloat.

kyrra 2y ago

If you like fast apps, maybe check out FilePilot, a Windows explorer alternative. https://filepilot.tech/ https://filepilot.tech/ It's amazingly fast, though it's missing some features and will be really expensive when it leaves beta.

aloisdg 2y ago
I like dolphin but pcmanfm is fastet
qwerty456127 2y ago
In my opinion Total Commander has always been the most ideal (also fast) file management tool since Windows 3.x. It was named Windows Commander back in the days but it still supports Windows 3.x as Total Commander.
- vlachen 2y ago
  I never knew it was a Windows program. I've been using it on my Android phones for years.
gymbeaux 2y ago
Do you know how it compares to Dolphin for interacting with very large (100k+ files) directories? Dolphin is the only file manager I’ve found that keeps up with the large directories- GNOME (Nautilus) and Windows Explorer are dogshit slow, even after the file list populates. macOS Finder is somewhere in the middle but still very slow.
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  When you have 100k+ files sometimes the filesystem itself matters. Have you set your expectations appropriately, aka compared it to a raw ls/dir ?
- Lammy 2y ago
  Check out ROX-Filer https://github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer https://github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer

qwerty456127 2y ago

> I wish companies would go back to building fast apps It seems fascinating how much more efficient Windows apps were back in the nineties, capable do to almost everything the same today apps do in a similar manner on orders of magnitude less powerful hardware, often performing even faster. The last time I expressed this, probably also here, somebody suggested the performance drop is the cost of modern security - vulnerability mitigations, cryptography etc.

dbalatero 2y ago
I think the performance drop probably has more to do with managers & product folks expecting growth and features at all costs at the expense of keeping performance at some baseline. I also wonder if it's just harder to continually monitor performance in a way that alerts a team early enough to deal with regressions? That said, security _can_ impact performance! I work on Stripe frontend surfaces, and one performance bottleneck we have comes from needing to use iframes to sandbox and isolate code for security. Having to load code in iframes adds an additional network load before we can get to page render.
- zerkten 2y ago
  I think you need to add that many more developers, or even teams of developers, are building these apps. They have their own fiefdoms and it's less common for devs to have a complete understanding of the code base. Over time decisions are made independently by devs/teams which cause the code bases to get out of alignment with a performant design. This is exacerbated by the growth pressure. It's then really hard for someone to come in and optimize top to bottom because there is everything from a bug to a design problem. Remediation has significant overhead, so only things around the edges are touched. Fast forward a couple of years and you have a code base that devs struggle to evolve and add features to as well as keep performant. The causes are many and we come to the same one whether we complain about performance or maintainability. You probably don't feel this way, but Stripe and other premier engineering companies are way ahead of others in terms of their practices when you compare with the average situation developers are facing. Independent mobile development is often where I see most attention to performance these days. The situation for these devs is a little bit closer to what existed in the nineties. They have a bigger span of control and performance is something they feel directly so are incentivized to ensure it's great.

bell-cot 2y ago

> I wish companies would go back to building fast apps... Similar to the slow-opening glove box in a car, many humans perceive slow computers & software as a signifiers of importance/luxury/prestige. At least at first. By the time they are familiar with the slow software, and impatient to just get their work done - too late, SnailSoft already has their money.

mdhb 2y ago

Instead they decided to build it with React if I remember correctly which is truly one of the fucking dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310738

ben-schaaf 2y ago

> and it's not even the fastest editor, iirc it uses Python under the hood The majority of the app is written in C++. Python is used for plugins.

jacurtis 2y ago

I actually use IntelliJ and Sublime interchangeably throughout the day. I default to sublime for most work because of how snappy fast it is. I only load up Intellij when I need to do something that leverages its full IDE capabilities. To second your comment, I encourage people to try Sublime, you will be shocked at how fast it feels. I still love IntelliJ, its a great product. But it is slow, bloats the computer, needs constant updating. But at least its incredibly powerful as a tradeoff to the bloat. The Office debate is slightly different. It is slow, bloats the computer, needs constant updating. But unlike IntelliJ i dont feel that there is any advantage to all that added weight. We are using a word processor. We type words onto a blank screen. Why is Word and Outlook the most common applications to crash my computer that has an M1 Max Chip with 48Gb of Memory? I can literally run and build AI models on my computer with no problem but you boot up Microsoft Word to type words onto a blank page and you have a 33% chance of crashing the computer. Google Sheets and Docs are actually better tools in my opinion for most people. 99% or more of the features you need are available in the google equivalents. These products are fast and run in a browser! The UI is actually VASTLY superior to Microsoft's ribbon. I still can't find stuff that I need on a routine basis and have to google it. I don't have this problem when using Google's office equivalents.

citizenpaul 2y ago

>I wish companies would go back to building fast apps My prediction is that we are about to enter a great winter of poor performance across the industry as AI slop is put in to production en mass. Along with bugginess that we have not seen since the early dotcom days.