Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst is when I see someone using vim or Emacs over SSH. If you think Electron apps are bad, imagine adding a network round trip between every keystroke!
Gui Emacs via tramp+ssh is awesome. Terminal Emacs over ssh is, well, just like anything else in a terminal over ssh. Can't say I notice the latency unless the datacenter is on the other side of the country.
Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
21–30 of 104 posts
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#22Thinking back, the first time I noticed input lag was on a Mac LCIII running Word in the mid-90s. Then for a long long time I didn't come across any particularly noticeable latency, except on really crappy websites and in really crappy Java apps. Then Microsoft bought Skype and started working their magic on it, and this seemed to open some kind of floodgate of high-latency crap. That's not even a decade ago.
After that, little by little, everything seemed to slow down noticeably. We've now reached a level when this is seemingly normal. Even programmer colleagues who are my age and older are looking at me like I'm curious when I complain about the latency. I'd say something toxic about Electron here, but it's prevalent in native programs as well.
Have things really gotten so much more complex since 2010 that we can no longer put a character on screen in a timely fashion?
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#23The companion article at https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares. It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger devel…
I also can't be the only one annoyed by the input lag in the windows login screen and start menu search. Somehow both of them seem to think it's fine to just ignore keypresses for half a second before doing anything. Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. There seems to b…
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#24The companion article at https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares. It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger devel…
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also can't be the only one annoyed by the input lag in the windows login screen and start menu search. Somehow both of them seem to think it's fine to just ignore keypresses for half a second before doing anything. Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. There seems to b…
> Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. If you try running a screen reader, such as Narrator (built into Windows; edit: turn it on and off with Ctrl+Win+Enter, even on the logon screen), you should find that even if the focus somehow gets away from the Password field, yo…
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#26The companion article at https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares. It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger devel…
I also can't be the only one annoyed by the input lag in the windows login screen and start menu search. Somehow both of them seem to think it's fine to just ignore keypresses for half a second before doing anything. Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. There seems to b…
(The older versions of Windows had a native dialog box: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/startupshutdown/log... )
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#27The companion article at https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares. It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger devel…
I actually don't think that developers who use things like VSCode are simply naive. Personally, I am a young person and I frequently do use vim in a low-latency terminal emulator (xterm, mlterm) without a compositor. Yes, I enjoy the fact that it is very fast. However, I still use VSCode when I'm making more complicated edits primarily because of the plugin ecosystem. Plugins "just work", are easy to configure, and a…
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. If you try running a screen reader, such as Narrator (built into Windows; edit: turn it on and off with Ctrl+Win+Enter, even on the logon screen), you should find that even if the focus somehow gets away from the Password field, yo…
Fair enough, but on a screen who's sole purpose is to let me type in my password I really shouldn't require a Narrator to find the one and only input field. It's nice that the problem has a solution, but it shouldn't have been a problem to begin with.
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#29The companion article at https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares. It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger devel…
I was curious so I did some tests:
Re: Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The difference between Sublime Text responding in 11.4ms average and Atom responding in 28.4ms average is difference of almost exactly 1 frame of latency for a typical 60Hz monitor That is looking at the average latency for Atom. If you look at the max latency Atom, it is 60ms compared to 15 ms for Sublime text. That is basically 3 frames of latency difference on a 60Hz monitor, and would definitely be notable for t…
> That is basically 3 frames of latency difference on a 60Hz monitor, and would definitely be notable for the average person. Having done some UX work in this area, I can say that people greatly overestimate the effects of latency on text entry when they're just looking at the numbers. End-to-end lag is more obvious in situations like dragging objects, but even then people manage to work around it. Typing isn't perfo…
I've experimented with video games with various amounts of display lag or dropped frames; nothing blinded or anything (although, setting up a blind test sounds fun), and there's clearly an increase in difficulty the farther you get between input and response. Writing code is clearly not Mario Brothers, but small delays can add up.