Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 388 posts

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

#141

Post by cgriswald »

113 wrote: post #56
RHSeeger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terminal response times are way slower than they used to be in the 80's. Do you have data / a citation to back up that statement? Most things seem faster to me. As long as the command line responds as faster as I can type, I don't care about it being faster. That being said, overall speed and what can be handled by the system certainly does matter in many cases, even if it is _just throughput_. I've recently been r…

> Do you have data / a citation to back up that statement? It's at the end of their comment.

That citation does not support the quoted claim.

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

#142

Post by simias »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

I'm not convinced by your argument because the examples you cite of things having improved since these times have hardly anything to do with having a text interface feeling sluggish. There's no contradiction here, you could have the best of both world (and if you eschew web technologies you generally get that nowadays).

Are these modern Electron apps chugging along using multi-GB of RAM and perceptible user input latency because they're auto-configuring my printer in the background? Can twitter.com justify making me wait several seconds while it's loading literally megabytes of assets to display a ~100byte text message because it's auto-configuring my graphic card IRQ for me?

No, these apps are bloated because of they're easier to program that way. Justifying that using user convenience is a dishonest cop-out. If you rewrote these apps with native, moderately optimized code there's nothing that would make them less user-friendly. On the other hand they'd use an order of magnitude less RAM and would probably be a few orders of magnitude faster.

It's fine to say that developer time is precious and it's fine to do it that way but justifying it citing printer drivers of all things is just absurd.

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

#143

Post by superdisk »

benrbray wrote: post #20
TomBombadildoze wrote: post #6

Almost everything on computers is perceptually more rich, useful, and intuitive than it was in 1983.

That may have been true circa 2010, but in the past decade we've seen rich settings menus and compact, information dense interfaces stripped away in favor of "mobile first" designs. Typically, whenever a website / program I use gets a UI update, the only change is that all padding on buttons, text, etc. has been increased by 50% meaning I need to scroll in order to see a 5-item list! Windows 10 control panel is an ex…

Damn do I hate this. One specific example that pops out in my head is when I upgraded from Sony movie studio 12 to 13, and the only difference between the versions was that every button and menu had been expanded in size to be enormous with tons of whitespace.

Why the fuck would they do that to a desktop program in 2014, it wasn't even for mobile.

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

#144

Post by reaperducer »

ncallaway wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

> It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map. It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-turn directions for people who know where they are and where they are going; As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world. Note also that for most smartphone users of Google Maps the use-case is actually much broader than that. The UI flow also totally…

As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world.

Your sentence starts out like you're stating a fact, but then peters out with "probably."

Do you have data on this?

I'd posit the opposite: That exploration is far more used in online maps.

Aside from Uber drivers, SV types, and wannabe road warrior squinters, nobody uses maps for their daily activities. People know where they're going and they go there without consulting technology. That's why we have traffic jams.

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

#145

Post by BlueTemplar »

Arnt wrote: post #98
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

What makes Google Maps bad? My computer in 1983 didn't have a map application at all, how can Google Maps possibly be bad compared to that? And if I had had a map application (I'm sure they existed) it would have taken several minutes to load from cassette tape. That's not faster than Google Maps, either perceptually or objectively.

It's worse than Google Earth.

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

#146

Post by tenebrisalietum »

shepardrtc wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

> Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. What are you talking about? How in the world is a DOS that can only run a single app at a time better than a system that can run…

> How in the world is a DOS that can only run a single app at a time better than a system that can run dozens of apps at once?

> How is non-multitasking a better experience?

If you only use the device for one task, such as a point-of-sale system, or menu display system, then multitasking support is not needed.

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

#147

Post by BlueTemplar »

fhood wrote: post #124
magduf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I also don't need to spend an entire weekend setting up a PC and a printer for my mom anymore either. You still have to waste a lot of time doing this crap. Last time I set up a printer for my mom, it was a PITA: I had to download drivers, install some giant pile of crap software, go through a bunch of screens of garbage, etc. Needless to say, her computer runs Windows 10. By contrast, when I wanted to print to…

Today basically every piece of external hardware is compatible with pretty much every computer. Better than that, they are plug and play for the most part. Thanks for reminding me to properly appreciate this.

Well, my USB 3 ports don't work because the motherboard maker can't be assed to make some Linux drivers...

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

#148

Post by exikyut »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #39
dayvid wrote: post #12

I remember turning on the computer and waiting for the motherboard company logo to finish flashing. After that was the Windows logo. I also remember waiting for the dial-up modem to connect to the internet and waiting hours for a video to download. Heck, last week I played a game streaming on GeForceNow and I was surprised by how seamless the whole experience was. Maybe some web apps are inconvenient, but you can eas…

The BIOS POST message is still there btw even on eg Thinkpads (Phoenix BIOS), you just have to enable it in the ... BIOS.

Unfortunately enabling this means everybody within a 15 meter radius knows when my laptop has rebooted because this option also enables a BEEEEP that cannot be disabled or turned down. :(

Can disable the low-battery beeping; cannot disable the POST beep unless you switch to vendor logo mode.

(It's your standard old-style beep - just rendered through stereo speakers that have uncannily decent audio reproduction at that particular frequency for some reason. In a serene, quiet room.)

404 sense not found; please check the garbled and try again

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

#149

Post by gruez »

magduf wrote: post #62
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

>But I also don't need to spend an entire weekend setting up a PC and a printer for my mom anymore either. You still have to waste a lot of time doing this crap. Last time I set up a printer for my mom, it was a PITA: I had to download drivers, install some giant pile of crap software, go through a bunch of screens of garbage, etc. Needless to say, her computer runs Windows 10. By contrast, when I wanted to print to…

>Last time I set up a printer for my mom, it was a PITA: I had to download drivers, install some giant pile of crap software, go through a bunch of screens of garbage, etc. Needless to say, her computer runs Windows 10.

Weird. Printer drivers usually auto-install for me on Windows 10.

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

#150

Post by kungtotte »

Arnt wrote: post #113
TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains all the ways that make Google Maps' UI bad. Your paper map or driver's atlas in 1983 offered better xref functionality. As they do in 2020, if you can still find them. Sure, hardware progressed in the past 40 years. CPUs are faster, storage is larger, we have a global network. But it's all irrelevant to the point that Google Maps UI is optimized for being a point-by-point nav/ad delivery tool, no…

I have several atlases and IMO they have considerable advantages over Google Maps. As does Google Maps over them. But none of that is relevant to the matter at hand: "Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than in 1983".

Thus far in this thread nobody has offered any counterpoint to the speed argument.

The first PC we bought at home was a 133MHz Pentium.

My current box is a Ryzen 3700 at 16*3.6GHz.

It doesn't feel like I have that much more power at my disposal doing everyday things. Web browsers aren't 400 times faster today than Internet Explorer was in 1995.

They should be. Even if you account for all the extra stuff that's going on today things should be at least 50 times faster. Why aren't they?

Post reply on HN