Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#91

Post by bagacrap » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

PostPost wrote: post #44

sonofaplum wrote: post #20

There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…

The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…

You can search along the route if you are navigating, however I agree it could be improved in that you don't get to see any details of a place or add it to saved places (you either add a stop or don't). I don't think Maps is bad for this reason but I agree it is possible to improve.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#92

Post by feanaro » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #59

Someone1234 wrote: post #10

This is a very hard rant to read. The examples either aren't factually true or are poorly explained and the "solution" is largely nebulous. I feel like this topic has merit and with a well written article with real examples (both 2019 and 83) it could be something special, but this isn't that. I'd be interested to know how many upvoted based on the title/what they expected this to be, rather than after having tried t…

I upvoted it, but I have mixed feelings about it. I agree with the overall sentiment that it's ludicrous how much slower everything feels on computers these days: we're able to do more complex things than ever, which is great, but it's hard to rationalize why even the simple things that we've been doing forever have become so sluggish. My first job out of college was to migrate an internal inventory management system…

I feel like a large part of the unintuitiveness of keyboard interfaces is not actually an intrinsic quality of keyboard interfaces since they're so often conflated with command-line or TUI interfaces. There might be an alternative but yet undiscovered paradigm which combines the best of both worlds: keyboard control and intuitive, beautiful, graphical widgets.

To motivate this with a somewhat blunt example, what if we had a typical GUI but named each control (button, field, etc) with a short code (1-2 letters), in the style of Vimperator/Tridactyl/Vimium? You lose none of the intuitiveness and discoverability, but suddenly you can select the control much more quickly and precisely than clumsily trying to point a mouse pointer onto it.

And that's just a silly example I came off the top of my head now. There may be much better keyboard-centric yet intuitive paradigms.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#93

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

PostPost wrote: post #44

sonofaplum wrote: post #20

There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…

The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…

[deleted]

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#94

Post by maliker » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #20

There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…

Google has an alternate interface to maps called "My Maps"[1] with the kind of editing and composition features the author misses. I use it all the time to make maps for road trips with lots of points of interest and complicated routes.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#95

Post by alexnewman » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

Thank G-d. I have been saying this for year. Code is:

- Getting less stable - Getting less speedy - Getting less efficient

I blame the fact that old programmers and young programmers do not have the appropriate relationship.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#96

Post by Diederich » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

> in 1998 if you were planning a trip you might have gotten out a paper road map and put marks on it for interesting locations along the way

In 1998, I used https://www.mapquest.com/ to plan a road trip a thousand miles from where I was living, and it was, at the time, an amazing experience, because I didn't need to find, order and have shipped to me a set of paper road maps.

In the 1970s, when I had a conversation with someone on the phone, the quality stayed the same throughout. We never 'lost signal'. It was an excellent technology that had existed for decades, and, in one particular way, was better than modern phones. But guess what? Both parties were tied to physical connections.

Google Maps is one product, and provides, for the time being, an excellent experience for the most common use cases.

> amber-screen library computer in 1998: type in two words and hit F3. search results appear instantly

So that's a nice, relatively static and local database lookup, cool.

I wrote 'green screen' apps in Cobol for a group of medical centers in the early and mid 90s. A lot of the immediate user interface was relatively quick, but most of the backend database lookups were extremely slow, simply because the amount of data was large, a lot of people were using it in parallel, and the data was constantly changing. Also: that user interface required quite a bit of training, including multi-modal function key overlays.

This article has a couple of narrow, good points, but is generally going in the wrong direction, either deliberately or because of ignorance.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#97

Post by hyperdeficit » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #53

PostPost wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…

Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?

I hadn't even thought of this specifically, but after it was mentioned in the initial post I realized just how much that is my use case most of the time and how often I am fighting with google maps to accomplish what are relatively simple tasks like adding an additional point along a route. If you are trying to add multiple additional points on a route it gets even worse.

This is all much worse on the Android app as well, where it makes the assumption that your use case is to get from where you are right now to somewhere else. Trying to get from point A to B, where neither is where you are now, is unnecessarily frustrating.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#98

Post by Pelam » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #15

java-man wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all they need is to create to a low rate channel with slowly updating snapshots of all the programs being transmitted. i don't know anyone who does that, but it is damn trivial. (former middleware engineer)

> all they need is to create to a low rate channel with slowly updating snapshots of all the programs being transmitted. > i don't know anyone who does that, but it is damn trivial. Getting this standardized in an international standard is far from trivial.

You may well be hitting a deeper point here.

Many of the strongest AND weakest consumer technology experiences are influenced by standards in some way.

Positive Examples: pluging in an usb headset, electrical sockets, sms.

Negative examples: Trying to hook up your laptop in a random conference room, transferring a large file locally between 2 devices from different vendors.

Maybe with ever increasing conplexity and capability the annoyances fall between industry actors and solutions would need first multiple parties acknowledging the problem followed by succesful coordination.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#99

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #72

I had an Atari ST in a closet, and decided to get rid of it a while back. I pulled it out to test it. The boot sequence, all the way to a desktop with a mouse that moves, takes less than one second. If you boot from a hard drive, maybe another second. For a while I just kept hitting the reset button, marveling at the speed at which the ST came up. Most machines I work with these days take minutes to get rolling. Okay…

[deleted]

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#100

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

When comparing to amber/green screen interfaces, hatred of the mouse is odd. Sure, for a simple search interface the text interface was fine-- search field, arrow down through results. But for anything more complex you end up having to tab between a dozen or more fields. ERP interfaces we're especially tedious in this regard, so the author's nostalgia for the "solved" problems of that age aren't completely warranted, and the mouse is at worst just as bad.