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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

#21

Post by kgwxd »

ambrosite wrote: post #15

I wonder how much of this is a result of UI designers deliberately putting tiny delays/animations into their UIs to make them more "usable"? For example, it was a common piece of advice that if clicking a button opens up a dialog box, there should be a brief animation showing the box expanding from the direction of the button, so the user would associate the clicking of the button with the appearance of the box and u…

Just last week I discovered I could disable animations in Android through the hidden developer options. It's fabulous. The only initial quirk was no visual feedback when a picture is successfully taken, so it felt like i missed the button, but I've gotten used to it already.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#22

Post by Cthulhu_ »

glial wrote: post #2

Given 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…

It's a relief to do a bit of Go from time to time, render a complete html template in 40 ms (with almost 2 MB of JSON data) instead of spending forever figuring out the JS framework du jour to do the same thing, only with it feeling a lot more involved, heavyweight, and slow - even if said framework claims to be faster than all the other JS frameworks.

I think I want to do back-end or terminal-based interfaces again. Native interfaces. Mmmmm

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#23

Post by fallingfrog »

mwcampbell wrote: post #12
fallingfrog wrote: post #3

This! 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!

I don't get your point about typing phone numbers. When I was being taught to touch-type in first and second grade, my teachers told me that I should type on the top row, not the numeric keypad. Not sure why. Maybe because it takes less time to move to the top row and back? Anyway, to me, typing numbers on the top row is not an obvious problem.

I mentioned that because I thought it showed how he'd never really watched one of the users in their job- once you get used to the numpad it's a lot faster. You can type in a long number very quickly without taking your eyes off the screen.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#24

Post by ambrosite »

fallingfrog wrote: post #3

This! 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!

I've always found it easier to type long strings of numbers on the number pad. I don't know why, it's not as though I ever deliberately trained myself to use it, but for me the number pad is much faster than using the top row.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#25

Post by dredmorbius »

There's a ton here, virtually all of which I agree with strongly and have long-harbored and deep frustrations with.

I've addressed a number of them in "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User", arguing that this is a case of Gresham's Law and market interactions, in a domain with a tremendous range of human capabilities. The result though is a disenfranchisement of more capable users.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

There's the whole matter of computer inputs, and the tremendous and persistent utility of keyboards.

There's my immense frustration with mobile computing, where a near perfect set of physical characteristics (form-factor, self-supporting-but-removeable cases, stow-away keyboards) are sabotaged at every possible point by atrocious and user-hostile OS and application design and lock-down, crippled storage and capabilities, gratuitously thwarting advanced use. The lack of form-factor and compatibility standardisation means that keyboard- and case-pairing to devices requires not manufacturer but model-specific compatibility. Warrenties are not honoured (Logitech). Devices aren't updated (Samsung/Google).

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq

On the failure of systems to cross-reference, I give you Pocket, which absolutely and deliberately stymies advanced use and actively gets worse the more you use it. I've submitted long and detailed feedback to Pocket (now part of Mozilla), and whilst acknowleged, there's been absolutely no movement on any of these, even the simplest, such as incremenetal search through my copious tag classification. It literally takes several minutes to swipe through this by hand. The application -- intended for long-form reading -- has no search-in-page functionality.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_...

I'd really like to know how the hell to clobber the tech industry with a cluestick, because the present model is absolutely not working.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#26

Post by celeritascelery »

mwcampbell wrote: post #12
fallingfrog wrote: post #3

This! 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!

I don't get your point about typing phone numbers. When I was being taught to touch-type in first and second grade, my teachers told me that I should type on the top row, not the numeric keypad. Not sure why. Maybe because it takes less time to move to the top row and back? Anyway, to me, typing numbers on the top row is not an obvious problem.

That is until you are entering dozens or hundreds of numbers.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#27

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sunseb wrote: post #17

The web feels slower than it was 10 years ago too. It's fascinating how we tend to over-engineer and bloat things.

The web is hundreds of times more feature-rich than 10 years ago too though. But, sites like HN are some of the few that are still built like they were 10 years ago. The rest all adds rich JS frameworks (for supposed faster interaction after the first load), a few billion social links, ads, cookie banners, "sign up for our newsletter" or "pay our subscription pls" popups when you first land on them, rich fonts, animations, images, etc.

I mean it's a lot nicer if you look at it from a distance after it's loaded, but it's not as snappy as it used to be.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#28

Post by dredmorbius »

megaman22 wrote: post #7

Was 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...

I'd created the Tttthreads variant because reading tweetstorms is (ironically) another horribly bad interface.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#29

Post by Declanomous »

This could be a copy-paste of rants I have written. I think marketing has ruined pretty much everything. Everything has a subscription now, and it's in the cloud.

My experience is that everything is slower than when I first started using computers as a child in the 90's, and it does it worse. You don't own anything anymore, upgrades routinely take away features, and nothing interfaces with anything else.

There are a lot of reasons why building an app on a web framework makes sense, but the fact that I routinely lose access to applications I've paid for because the company has gone out of business or stopped supporting them drives me insane. I can still install Excel 97 if I want to, but I have 0 confidence that anything I've bought from Google will work a year from now.

I mean, there is perceptible lag in character entry that never used to happen. Sure, my computer used to freeze inexplicably, but Atom crashes often enough that I don't consider that a win, and text has a noticeable delay before it appears on the screen when using Atom. Text entry is something I can implement flawlessly on a microcontroller and the majority of applications I use on a daily basis get it wrong.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

#30

Post by ashleyn »

kgwxd wrote: post #21
ambrosite wrote: post #15

I wonder how much of this is a result of UI designers deliberately putting tiny delays/animations into their UIs to make them more "usable"? For example, it was a common piece of advice that if clicking a button opens up a dialog box, there should be a brief animation showing the box expanding from the direction of the button, so the user would associate the clicking of the button with the appearance of the box and u…

Just last week I discovered I could disable animations in Android through the hidden developer options. It's fabulous. The only initial quirk was no visual feedback when a picture is successfully taken, so it felt like i missed the button, but I've gotten used to it already.

I've done this as well. It reminds me of when I upgraded PalmOS devices in Ye Olde Days and home would appear instantly when you tapped it.
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