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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)

#291

Post by dang »

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #14
cabaalis wrote: post #8

What is this? Are these tweets? It's like reading a programming language where vast amounts of syntax is optional. This style of blogging is making the world worse.

This is a website that 'rolls up' tweets. Here's the original tweets: https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296

We've changed the URL to that from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/927593460642615296.html. The community is divided on which interface it prefers, so we usually break the tie by linking to the original source, which the site guidelines call for anyhow.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#292

Post by athenot »

criddell wrote: post #37
athenot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When working on digital settop boxes a decade or 2 ago, channel change latency was one of the toughest problems. Eventually we (collectively, the whole industry) gave up and settled for 1 second as acceptable. Channel surfing quietly went away. When your i-frame only comes so often, there's not a whole lot you can do. Nowadays, that problem is solved by reducing actual live content to a strict minimum; everything els…

These days they should be able to guess what 20 channels you might change to and start recording those in the background. I've always suspected the reason it's slow is because you press the remote button, the DVR sends that to the provider, the provider has to verify that you can do what you are asking it to do, then a response comes, then the change can start.

The slowness can also be because the channel you are trying to watch is not even there.

I'm not sure who all is using it now but I used to work on the setup for Switched Digital Video. If nobody in your neighborhood was watching a certain channel, it would stop getting broadcast. That freed up bandwith for other things like internet. Once you would tune to a channel, a request would go to the head-end, it would quicky figure out if the channel is being broadcast in your area. If not, a request would go to the content delivery system to start feeding it to the QAM and then obtain what frequency the channel was on, and finally relay that back to the settop box which would tune and start the decoding process.

Rather impressive tech but again, this would add a bit more latency to that particular channel switching.

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

#294

Post by ddingus »

wolfgke wrote: post #107
ddingus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It does placate users with some indication of activity. This can impact how someone feels about the change, but does nothing to solve the time to change problem. One thing it does do is confirm the change is in progress. That is a subset of the time to change problem. Many current UX on this do not give a very good, or any indicator of successful input. Quite a few people may see their feelings about the tim…

> Exactly. It does placate users with some indication of activity. [...] One thing it does do is confirm the change is in progress. A black screen is also a sign that a change is in progress. But this is exactly what my parent fortran77 complained about ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21835676 ).

There is no making all the people happy without just changing quick, eh?

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

#295

Post by mypalmike »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #253
mypalmike wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but even without getting into the details of UX tradeoffs, etc... Google Maps was science fiction in 1983. The whole thread misses the fact that the functionality we have in our pockets today would have absolutely blown our minds in 1983. How can it be called perceptually slower?

Simple. Because it got slower over time . All these threads about software being worse and "perceptually slower" than it used to are about regressions . Google Maps and other mentioned tools aren't pushing the envelope. They aren't bleeding edge. They were science fiction made manifest 10-15 years ago, and since then actually decayed in utility, ergonomics and performance. Meanwhile, all the money invested in all the…

While utility and ergonomics can be debated, I'd be surprised if performance of Google Maps in particular has regressed. Google keeps track of latency metrics for every one of its thousands (millions?) of services. If the services involved in Google Maps began to regress in latency, it would have been noticed and addressed. You can be sure that many performance improvements have been implemented, and if you had access to the 2005 and 2019 versions, you would be amazed at how capable and fast today's is compared to then.

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

#296

Post by notyourday »

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…

Several years ago I have done consulting for a large travel booking service that advertises on TV.

As strange as it might sound, there's a large artificial delay added between the time the service knows the answer to customer's search and the time the answer is sent to the customer's web browser.

The reason for that delay is that the without it the customers do not believe that the service performed an exhaustive search and do not complete the transaction!

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

#297

Post by TeMPOraL »

mypalmike wrote: post #295
TeMPOraL wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Because it got slower over time . All these threads about software being worse and "perceptually slower" than it used to are about regressions . Google Maps and other mentioned tools aren't pushing the envelope. They aren't bleeding edge. They were science fiction made manifest 10-15 years ago, and since then actually decayed in utility, ergonomics and performance. Meanwhile, all the money invested in all the…

While utility and ergonomics can be debated, I'd be surprised if performance of Google Maps in particular has regressed. Google keeps track of latency metrics for every one of its thousands (millions?) of services. If the services involved in Google Maps began to regress in latency, it would have been noticed and addressed. You can be sure that many performance improvements have been implemented, and if you had acces…

I don't have access to 2005 vs. 2019 versions to Google Maps to compare, but I really don't care about latency as much as I care about local performance. Google Maps is getting noticeably heavy over time.

What I have good memory about though is GMail. I've been using it for 10+ years now and that really keeps getting slower and heavier over time, while offering no extra functionality to compensate.

Google may track latency metrics for all their services, yet somehow, the stuff they do is one of the most bloated stuff out there. I guess they don't look at, or care, about those metrics.

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

#298

Post by cmrdporcupine »

kabdib wrote: post #232
zozbot234 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The boot sequence, all the way to a desktop with a mouse that moves, takes less than one second. That's an exceptional case though - the GUI OS was hardwired in ROM. The Amiga was an otherwise comparable machine that had to load much of the OS from disk, and it did take its time to boot to desktop.

Even when the OS was loaded off of a hard drive, the boot time was still about 2-3 seconds (I did measure this). Not really exceptional. It took maybe a minute to load off floppy disk. That is STILL shorter than the POST time for every machine I work with these days, with the possible exception of the Raspberry Pi in the closet.

All of Atari ST TOS is 192KB.

On a floppy that would take a while to load. Off a hard drive, sure, not too bad.

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

#299

Post by stevelosh »

sangnoir wrote: post #195
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…

> 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 Am I missing something - this use-case is already supported! You choose start & endpoints, then your start the trip (which "saves" them) - you can now search and add as many waypoints as you desire

I just recorded a two minute video me of me trying to do this. Maybe it will help you understand why people like Gravis (and myself) are frustrated. The video is at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.webm but it's a little blurry, so I'll narrate it.

(There's a less blurry mkv at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.mkv for those that want it.)

I go to `maps.google.com`. The page loads a search box, with my cursor focused inside it. Then it unfocuses the search box while some other boxes pop in. Then it refocuses the search box. Is it done thrashing? Can I type yet? I wait for a few seconds. I would have already entered in my query by now in 1983. I sigh. This bodes well.

I guess it's as done as it's ever gonna be. I search for "rochester ny to montreal qc". I wait for the screen to load. It finds me a route, which is actually good. Step one done.

Now I want to find a restaurant somewhere in the middle. Let's try just browsing around. I find somewhere roughly in the middle — Watertown seems like a good place to stop.

I zoom in on Watertown. I wait for the screen to load. I look around the map and see some restaurants, so I click one. Now I want to read the reviews, so I scroll down to find the "See All Reviews" link. My scroll wheel stops working after I scroll more than an inch or two at a time, until I move it out of the left hand pane and back inside it. I sigh, wiggle my mouse back and forth repeatedly to scroll down and click on the link.

A whirl of colors — suddenly the map zooms in on the location. Why does it do this? I wanted to read the reviews, not look more closely at the map! Now that the map is zoomed in, a hundred other points of interest are suddenly cluttering the map. I wanted to read reviews about this restaurant, and suddenly 3/4 of my screen is filled with text about other places. I sigh.

I ignore the garbage now cluttering most of my screen and read some reviews. This place seems fine. I click the back arrow, then click Add Stop to add it to the route. I wait for the screen to load. Suddenly my screen whirls with color and zooms out, losing my view of Watertown. I sigh.

My trip is now 8.5 hours instead of 5.5, because it added the new stop at the end. AlphaGo can win Go tournaments, but I guess it would be too much to ask for Google to somehow divine that when I add a stop in the middle of a 5.5 hour trip, I might want to visit it on the way by default. I sigh and manually reorder the stops.

Let's also find a gas station somewhere before Montreal, because I like to get gas before I get into the city so I don't have to deal with it once I'm in. Cornwall seems like a good place to stop.

I zoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I don't see any gas stations markers, but that's fine, there's a button that says "Gas stations" on the left! I click it and the screen goes blank. I wait for the screen to load. I've suddenly been whisked away to downtown Montreal instead of looking around where I'm currently centered on the map. Guess I should have read the heading above the buttons first. I sigh.

I click "back to directions". I wait for the screen to load. The map does not return to where I was previously, it just zooms to show the entire route, throwing out my zoomed-in application state. I think back to Gravis' tweet of "gmaps wildly thrashes the map around every time you do anything. Any time you search, almost any time you click on anything" and I sigh.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. The gas station button didn't work, but surely we can search, right? I don't see a search box on the screen, so I roll the dice and hit Add Destination. This gives me a text box, so I try searching for "gas stations" and pressing enter. This apparently didn't search, but just added one particular gas station to the route. It also zoomed me back out, throwing away my previous zoomed in view.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I notice the gas station it picked happens to be across the US/Canada border from the route. That clearly won't work. I sigh and remove the destination. This zooms me back out (I wait for the screen to load), throwing away my previous zoomed in view.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I click Add Destination again and this time notice that when my cursor is in the box, there's a magnifying glass icon — the universal icon for "search" — right next to the X icon (which will surely close the box). It even has a tooltip that says "Search"! Aha! That was well-hidden, UI designer, but I've surely defeated you. I click the magnifying glass icon and it… closes the input box. I… what? I sigh, loudly. It has also zoomed me out, throwing away my previous zoomed in view. I wait for the screen to load.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. Okay, apparently I can't search to try to find routes. I guess I'll resort to browsing around the map again. I notice what looks like a gas station called "Pioneer" and click on it. Cool. But then I realize this is on a bit of a side street. Surely I can find a gas station along the main road. Let me just cancel out of this location by pressing X.

My entire route is completely gone. All that time I just spent, flushed down the toilet. To add insult to injury: this is the one time that it didn't automatically zoom me out and lose my view of the map. It just threw away all of my other state.

Fuck this. I'm with Gravis.

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

#300

Post by cmrdporcupine »

AStellersSeaCow wrote: post #257

To call this rose-tinted glasses when considering how things worked in 1983 is a massive understatement. A counterexample: in 1983, enter two search terms, one of them slightly misspelled or misremembered, hit f3: "no results", spend 10 minutes trying to find the needle in the haystack, give up and physically search for the thing yourself. Enter two search terms slightly incorrectly now: no of the time it will know e…

Software in the 80s was: extremely low throughput but excellent latency.

We could really do better on the latter category here in the 21st century.

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