Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
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Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#2Given the speed of modern computers, I'm fascinated by the fact that so many processes complete in human-scale time (seconds-minutes), rather than milliseconds or years+, depending on problem complexity. If times for compute tasks have some power law distribution (a big if...), I'd expect a very small part of that distribution to overlap with the 'seconds' range.
Then again, computers do so many things in the millisecond range and faster that maybe what we observe IS only a small fraction of the total.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#3This! I once took over programming a point of sale system that our (internal to the company) users were complaining about. Turns out there was no concept of tab sequence, you had to use the mouse for everything. I asked the previous programmer to show me how to use the form he created, and he started typing a phone number using the top row of the keyboard instead of the numpad. But hey, it had lots of javascript!
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#4The core point of the entire thread can be summed up by one of the tweets; "I believe well designed keyboard interfaces and well designed GUI interfaces have exactly the same learning curve."
I agree with this. A properly and well designed keyboard interface is faster than any mouse. On the other hand, a properly designed mouse interface can be fast too. Both need to be applied when it makes sense.
I can also resonate with the GMaps example; people find it rather ridiculous that I prefer to use pen and map to plan routes but GMaps simply does not cover the complex demands of holiday routes with family.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#5Given the speed of modern computers, I'm fascinated by the fact that so many processes complete in human-scale time (seconds-minutes), rather than milliseconds or years+, depending on problem complexity. If times for compute tasks have some power law distribution (a big if...), I'd expect a very small part of that distribution to overlap with the 'seconds' range. Then again, computers do so many things in the millise…
I think it's mostly a cognitive bias, we don't even notice processes that take milliseconds, and we either optimise or simplify (approximate) problems that would have taken years to make solutions more practical.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#6Given the speed of modern computers, I'm fascinated by the fact that so many processes complete in human-scale time (seconds-minutes), rather than milliseconds or years+, depending on problem complexity. If times for compute tasks have some power law distribution (a big if...), I'd expect a very small part of that distribution to overlap with the 'seconds' range. Then again, computers do so many things in the millise…
You have it on the head. The tasks we pick for computing are the ones that can be completed in seconds.
There is plenty of interesting computation we could and would do if what now requires a year would only require a second.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#7Was originally a tweet-storm -> https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296, if anyone is confused by the stream-of-consciousness style.
It is frustrating that I've got a machine on my desk more powerful than supercomputers a generation ago, and it locks up and can't refresh the screen as fast as my relatively slow typing on a regular basis...
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#8I certainly agree. The one case where this isn't necessarily true is a fresh boot. Granted, my reference point starts from the 90s, and that's assuming you're booting from an HDD (not an SSD, flash, or restoring cached state from quick/fast boot).
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#9This puts to more eloquent words the very same thing that I've been ranting about to peers and coworkers for years. Cheers for that; I'm going to share this with them.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#10This! I once took over programming a point of sale system that our (internal to the company) users were complaining about. Turns out there was no concept of tab sequence, you had to use the mouse for everything. I asked the previous programmer to show me how to use the form he created, and he started typing a phone number using the top row of the keyboard instead of the numpad. But hey, it had lots of javascript!
To be fair, I only started using the numpad after I had a temp job in data entry. I hate laptops that don't have them now, but seeing as a lot of laptops cut them off, most people can't think num pads are that important.
Not paying attention to tab order in an enterprise app is a cardinal sin though.