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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

#231

Post by taeric »

rglullis wrote: post #146
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think pretty much everything in computing is like this. But then there's Dwarf Fortress, Blender, Vim, Emacs, ... Accounting for Sturgeon's Law, things aren't quite so bleak.

Did we forget how Emacs used to mean "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping?" Saying that as an Emacs User for almost 20 years now. Even today there are things that can bring Emacs crawling to its knees. The moment you start adding auto-complete to a big project, or if you have your files hosted in some NFS server, you're SOL.

The autocomplete is somewhat easy to fix in principal. Just offload to a daemon for the autocompletes, for example.

No, I haven't bothered with it. :( I did setup GLOBAL, which is quite nice. Though, many languages nowdays would benefit greatly from a presentation compiler. Which seems silly, at the extreme. It isn't like projects have gotten more complicated in scope. They have ballooned in implementation complexity, though. :(

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

#232

Post by ryandrake »

fusiongyro wrote: post #169
AlexandrB wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the name of usability, we have practically neutered these computing machines. Except usability is getting worse too. There is now less and less content on the average screen and more and more whitespace and "design chrome". Buttons no longer look like buttons, hamburger menus are legion, and many new features are found behind undiscoverable gestures that must be mastered.

There is a big dose of fashion and fad-following in usability. The things you mention are manifestations of poor decisions made in the name of usability, but actually in the interest of being pretty. I think even making the right decisions in terms of usability, tethered to a few short-sighted user stories, will result in this situation. Usability should be in service of a higher purpose, which should be enabling the…

Not only is there a lot of fashion and fad-following, but there is a distinct lack of measurement and metrics. You want this animation or to change the color on this control? Fine--show me the empirical data that demonstrates that it improves usability or any of our KPIs. None of this, "I'm an artist and I subjectively feel this will be good for users." That's total BS. Show me the measurement that justifies your design request, or let's A/B test it.

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

#233

Post by s73ver_ »

tomc1985 wrote: post #223
ravitation wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On nearly every metric that matters to power users software is worse. Citation needed.

Citation: myself and the other power users I have talked with. WTF is this, wikipedia?? Robot.

I'm going to challenge those citations, then.

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

#234

Post by s73ver_ »

tomc1985 wrote: post #196
finchisko wrote: post #182

I think what guy is actually experiencing strong feeling of nostalgia for older times. And I understand that. I see it on myself more and more with coming years too. We were simply born in some era, which holds strong memories in us. We hold sentiment to old things (programs), because somehow they're connected with best memories from time we were much younger. And the best memories are usually bounded to age around 2…

But maybe it is. On nearly every metric that matters to power users software is worse. Control? We have less. Options? Less. Ownership? Not that we ever had it, but now you don't even get a disc. Licenses are even more restrictive. The pace of 'upgrades'? Way, unnecessarily faster And when the business dies now? Now you're fucked. There are stories of mechanics running their shops today with 40-year-old dinosaurs, wh…

"Options? Less."

How so, given that more people are able to write software, and it's easier to create something than ever before?

"And when the business dies now? Now you're fucked."

How is that any different than before?

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

#235

Post by kayamon »

bitwize wrote: post #226
kabdib wrote: post #202

The day I sold my Atari ST, I pulled it out of the stack of old computers, connected it to a monitor, hooked up a disk drive and turned it on. Poof: Desktop with a working mouse cursor in under one second. I booted a nearby PC, and then hit reset until it booted. In the time that the "hot shit" 386 box took to get to a DOS prompt, the ST booted about fifty times. To something with graphics. Modern system boot times d…

Everything is faster when you build it into ROM. The cost is flexibility. Should you wish to run another OS on that ST, ypu would have to bootstrap it through TOS.

On a modern system, you could use flash RAM to get the same speed with all the flexibility advantages.

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

#236

Post by s73ver_ »

fusiongyro wrote: post #39

In the name of usability, we have practically neutered these computing machines. I think optimizing for user experience is partly to blame for this. You don't want users to have a confusing experience the first time they use the application, and you want the application to look good and be inviting. But that may be at cross purposes with making applications that allow open-ended exploration. Exploration implies that…

I simply cannot agree with the take that making things easier to use "neuters" them. Enabling people to actually use these things makes them more powerful, not less.

I think far too often, people get caught up with the false machismo of, "This is hard to use, yet I can use it, so I'm a badass and you're not."

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

#237

Post by Macuyiko »

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.

This is simply amazing! Thanks for sharing!

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

#238

Post by Filligree »

tomc1985 wrote: post #217
white-flame wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a link, but in referencing interactivity tests for some remote software development I did some years back, the maximum time between pressing a button and perceiving its effect to be considered "instant" is around 200ms. You don't want to go slower than that if you want it to "feel" fast & responsive.

Even better. Does that give the animation enough time to show though? At that speed I'd guess you might as well make something instant

At 60 frames per second? Sure, that's enough for 12 frames.

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

#239

Post by vlasev »

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…

No other UI infuriates me more than the McDonalds ordering UI at their locations. Everything is all over the place and the animations make it 100x slower.

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

#240

Post by mitchdoogle »

tomc1985 wrote: post #223
ravitation wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On nearly every metric that matters to power users software is worse. Citation needed.

Citation: myself and the other power users I have talked with. WTF is this, wikipedia?? Robot.

You worded your initial response like you were referencing actual stats about software. I'm sure you think you and your colleagues are reliable sources, but to the rest of the world, they aren't.
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