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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 kungtotte »

Santosh83 wrote: post #187
kungtotte wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With browsers the network latency caps the speed ultimately, no matter how fast a CPU you have. Also HDD/SSDs are very slow compared to the CPU caches. Granted PCs of the previous era also had the same limitation but their processors were not fast enough to run a browser 400 times faster if only the HDD wasn't there. But other simpler programs should be very much faster. That they perceptually aren't is because (IMO)…

Main memory speeds haven't increased like CPU speeds have but it's nowhere close to where it was in 1995. You can get CPUs today with larger cache than I had RAM back then, as well.

I know that CPU speed isn't everything and so a 400x speedup is not reasonable to expect. That's why I hedged and said 50x.

Every part of my computer is a lot faster than it was back then and I can barely tell unless I'm using software originating from that era because they wrote their code to run on constrained hardware which means it's flying right now.

It's like we've all gone from driving 80 MPH in an old beater Datsun to driving 30 MPH in a Porsche and just shrug because this is what driving is like now.

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

#292

Post by mirimir »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #133
ncallaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There's a very subtle point the Twitter thread was making here. This use case may be most popular not because it's what the people want, but because it's all that they can easily do . The tools you use shape how you work, and what you can work on. FWIW, I learned to pay attention when the machine doesn't help me do what I want (it's…

> ... I do want a map that works like a map - something I can explore and annotate.

You can do that with Google maps, if you're logged in. You can create a custom map, with multiple places marked, and with annotations. You get a URL for it. And looking at it later, you can zoom in as needed.

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

#293

Post by kungtotte »

Arnt wrote: post #220
kungtotte wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are other bottlenecks. RAM bandwidth and speed, network latency, display sound like the most important. If that 133MHz pentium rendered a web page, it did so at 640×400 pixels, right? 16 colours? Or just in text? So it had to process about 4k (if text) or 128k (if graphics). Your current display involves a little more data. RAM access takes about 10ns now, it took longer back then but not very much longer. Your…

My current display does include a lot more data.

It's also driven by a graphics card with more RAM than I had HDD space back in the day with a dedicated CPU that's also a whole lot faster than 133MHz.

Every piece of hardware is better but software has bloated up to remove those speed gains, except when it comes to things like AAA games where they're still pushing the envelope. That's the only place you can actually tell you've got hot new hardware, because they're the only ones caring enough about performance.

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

#294

Post by II2II »

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…

Yes, it is a rant. Yes, the examples are terrible and there are plenty of counter examples. Yet there is also some truth to what is being said.

There is clearly going to be added complexity to address what we expect of modern computers. It is going to have a negative performance impact. If it isn't carefully planned, it is going to have a negative impact on UX.

Yet there is also a reasonable expectations for things to improve. The extra overhead in hardware and software should, in most cases, be more than compensated by the increase in performance of hardware. The UX should improve as we learn from the past and adapt for the future.

In many cases, we do see tremendous improvements. When a limitation is treated as a problem that needs to be addressed, we have seen vast improvements in hardware and software performance. Arguably, the same applies to UX. (Arguably, because measuring UX is much more opinionated than quantitative.)

Yet so much of what we get is driven by other motivations. If inadquate consideration is given to performance or UX, then the experience will be degraded.

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

#295

Post by gcpwnd »

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…

Pick a web app that can render without JS. Then remove all JS and they will render 5x faster.

Some aspects of computers got better, sure. But the web is at an super shitty state. I mean were here posting on a website that has bare mininum design and features. Why is that? Twitter and reddit are absolutely horrible in terms of usability and performance. If you know that they could do better makes tham even worse. It is an attack on humanity. You can try to find excuses in unrelated things like noted, but that wont change anything.

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

#297

Post by 6510 »

ncallaway wrote: post #214
TeMPOraL wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world. There's a very subtle point the Twitter thread was making here. This use case may be most popular not because it's what the people want, but because it's all that they can easily do . The tools you use shape how you work, and what you can work on. FWIW, I learned to pay attention when the machine doesn't help me do what I want (it's…

> so I've noticed that I do want a map that works like a map - something I can explore and annotate. I don't doubt that there are use cases for a map that works this way. Even if Google Maps covers 80-90% of the use-cases for mapping, mapping is an absolutely massive domain. 10-20% of use-cases still represents a huge volume. But it doesn't have to be Google Maps. It actually seems worse to be for one "maps" app try…

pretty much all games in the early 80's had [so called] pixel perfect scrolling. Each frame showed exactly what was required.

Today it is entirely acceptable for a map to be a jerky stuttering pile of crap. The same goes for the infinite scroll implementations. Its preposterous to start loading things after they are needed.

There is a good analogy with making things in the physical world. The professional doesn't start a job before he has everything he needs to do it, the amateur obtains what he needs after he needs them.

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

#298

Post by simion314 »

danShumway wrote: post #211
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…

> These posts fondly remember just the speed, but always seem to forget the frustrations, or re-imagine them to be something we treasured. More to the point, I grew up with early Windows XP computers and early 90s Internet, and I don't remember the speed. Maybe I'm just too young and things were magically faster in the 80s? Maybe I was born just slightly before everything took a giant nosedive and became crap? There…

>I also did library searches, and they were insanely slow, and prone to the exact same "don't click while it loads"

Not the person you asked, but around 2002 at my university library the computers were running a DOS like application, on the top part of the screen there were printed the commands and you can put your search and hit enter, after a few years it was replaced with a Win98 like GUI, you had to open the app if someone else closed it, then use the mouse to find the right dropdowns and select the options then input the search term then click Search. Before you would type something like "a=John Smith" hit enter and it would show all the books of that author.

The problem with us developers is that most of the time we are not heavy users of the applications we create, we create since test projects and simple test to check the application but our users might use the application many hours a day and all the little issues would add up.

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