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

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

#201

Post by themagician »

ktm5j wrote: post #194

> one of the things that makes me steaming mad is how the entire field of web apps ignores 100% of learned lessons from desktop apps I can't agree with this enough. The whole of web development in general really grinds my gears these days. Stacking one half-baked technology on top of another, using at least 3 different languages to crap out a string of html that then gets rendered by a browser. Using some node module…

I’ve gone back to making simple HTML pages for all sorts of projects. Even trying to avoid CSS when possible.

It’s funny, in a way, because the “problem” with straight HTML is that it was straight hierarchical (and thus vertical) and so a lot of space was wasted on wide desktop displays. We used tables and the later CSS to align elements horizontally.

Now on phones straight html ends up being a very friendly and fast user experience. A simple paragraph tag with a bunch of text and a little padding works great.

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

#202

Post by coldtea »

asdfman123 wrote: post #125
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 appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. Most people are happy waiting for a few seconds for their webpage to load, if it means they can do it without learning anything new. Programming is a profession, and we design software for people who have other interests than software. Many of us would be better off if we got better at empath…

>I appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea.

Or anybody that has to deal with frequent input work -- anybody at a POS, a factory control center, an air traffic control tower, a ship, a library, and thousands of other such cases.

Those people would very much want to go back to keyboards if they used such an interface, and would very much would resist taking one from them for a mouse based interface.

And most of us are not that alike those people for many of our program uses, we just change between different programs, many of which could be modelled like the programs mentioned above (like TFA describes) and be far easier/faster to use.

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

#203

Post by tibbon »

dexen wrote: post #24
acheron wrote: post #12

One that got worse and then better again at least in my experience is boot up time. Old computers running MS-DOS I remember booting up very quickly (unless you waited for the full memory self test), then for quite a long time it took forever to get into Windows no matter what you did to try to speed it up. More recently things start up pretty quickly again; I think it's mainly hardware (solid-state disks being the ma…

>but I do think Windows seems to do a little better software-wise too Windows 10 does a little trick to speed up boot - when you perform a shutdown, Windows 10 saves a mini-hibernation image to the hibernation file. When you perform normal boot, it can start up quite fast[1]. This gives noticeably shorter boot time especially on spinning rust drives (i know, i know, $CURRENT_YEAR). However if you perform a "reboot" i…

I feel that (partially due to this hibernation file, partially due to SSDs) that Windows boots are actually faster than ever now. Even a reboot seems to take under 30 seconds. I remember just the RAM test on my Pentium 1 was several minutes, and the boot time was a few more often

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

#205

Post by maccard »

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…

> Most machines I work with these days take minutes to get rolling.

My current Windows 10 machine boots faster than my monitor turns on (<5 seconds from power on to login screen).

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

#206

Post by bobcostas55 »

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…

The latest AMD CPUs are particularly bad at this, I got a 3600 and for half a year now there are known problems with extremely slow booting. The latest BIOS update made them a bit better but it's still at completely unacceptable levels.

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

#207

Post by tom_ »

As somebody that actually uses a computer from 1983, i question the conclusion.

The speed of modern pcs is surprisingly bad, relatively speaking, but this mainly just means they aren't as much ridiculously quicker as they probably should be.

(The main issue cited is not meaningful, in my view, as computers from 1983 just couldn't do graphical maps at interactive frame rates at all.)

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

#209

Post by rubber_duck »

eitland wrote: post #143
thrower123 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance has also degraded disastrously. My phone is kind of a dinosaur at this point (Galaxy 7), but the lag when scrolling around the map is seconds, and elements delay-load so that misclicks are constant.

Changed to an iPhone XR a few weeks ago. The cheap model of iPhone and it still feels way faster than the my latest androids, including Samsung S7 edge and other flagship phones (and yes, I bought them new). I've stuck with Android until now, but now that I can replace the keyboard on iPhone I gave it a chance and I'm super happy with it.

You are comparing a 3 gen old device to the previous gen iPhone.

iPhone 7 I had is noticeably laggy with maps and other heavy apps.

Meanwhile my Samsung S10e (equivalent to the XR) has more than sufficient performance and has a better screen for a lower price.

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

#210

Post by gre »

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…

Have you ever booted an Amiga 500 from floppy disks? I don't know how long it takes, but it's one of the slowest things I can ever remember doing.
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