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Test your product on a crappy laptop

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Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#111

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

To those who test their work on crappy laptops,

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Craptop user

All work I do is tested on crappy low-powered computer because that is what I use to do work. If it is not fast on these underpowered computers, then it is not usable (for me). That means on anything better than a craptop, generally, performance can only improve. Similar principle applies with shell scripts. I prefer to use the ("crappy") scripting shell as the interactive shell. That means scripts generally run fast under all conditions and I never have to worry about scripts not working due to use of interactive shell, e.g., Bash, features.

Target the lowest common denominator. That's how I work. No overpowereed workstation with multiple monitors, or expensive "developer" laptop.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#112

Post by urthor »

nirui wrote: post #91

However, there maybe another darkside of the story. Almost a decades back I talked a game dev, asking him why the game that they released demands such high hardware requirements. The two reasons that he offered was: 1) It costs money to produce & maintain content such as Level of Detail assets to enable support for low end devices, and 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the ga…

I imagine the problem with game development is that, for 99.95% of the game development cycle, you are creating only internal builds for fellow developers on workstations.

And this is game development, the industry famous for over-scoping everything because it's a winner take all economy. Followed by death-marches to implement said over-scopes.

Doing anything special for quartile 1 of the standard distribution goes out the window.

Realistically I just think this pattern is true of every domain.

95% of software is made up of throwaway prototypes, where thoroughly thought out engineering isn't necessary because the business case demands minimum viable product for very good reasons.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#113

Post by tommek4077 »

alkot89 wrote: post #109
watersb wrote: post #93

Oh God yes. Back in the 20th Century, I was on a team for a major web browser. They were attempting to extend web browser technologies to crawl and cache web sites. The idea was to enable complex web experiences in a time when Internet service was analog telephone, 9600 baud. We worked for months on that. At the office. In Silicon Valley. On $6000 Compaq computers. When I returned home via my two-hour commute, I woul…

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the point you are trying to make here either with regards to the original topic or even how the second part of your story relates to the first.

Devs are lazy and wont give up there luxury macs, even for testing.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#114

Post by DennisAleynikov »

watersb wrote: post #100

There are lots of good options for sub-$200 laptops at Wal Mart right now. ChromeBooks or little Windows machines. Every web dev should use one. I am fascinated by the low end options, you learn a lot about a system when it's pushed to its limits. Or maybe you learn even more about your pain threshold... I've heard it said that it's more difficult to make a $10,000 car than it is to make a $1,000,000 car. I don't rec…

I have been fascinated by this question ever since seeing an all apple school employ macbooks as a minimum bar. using Samsung dex, and now budget arm chromebooks I have found most websites do work on even mediatek and qualcomm chips, and design my own experiences to work there accordingly. The lenovo Duet is an incredible device, its sad how poorly optimized some of the heavier websites are and you can't do anything about it.

I find the bias towards powerful desktops as the only place any apps are written and tested ridiculous and something we can work to correct long term with progressive web.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#115

Post by vanviegen »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #12
eatonphil wrote: post #3

Any recommendations for a solid, representative crappy laptop? $100 xSomething Thinkpad off Ebay? Or is there something more representative of today.

Just go to Walmart or Best Buy or your local equivalent and buy a cheap laptop, something that’s $600 tops and feels like the plastic is just barely held together.

That would get you a reasonably fast processor and probably at least 8GB of RAM. That's not as low-end as many of your customers may be using.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#116

Post by scns »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #105

It's not just developers, and it's not just about speed, it's also designers / UX bods who need to heed this. My decently powered work laptop from job 1 has a fairly rubbish screen, which means that a lot of the subtle hover effects, 1 pixel light grey on lighter grey divisions and skinny fonts either aren't visible or are incredibly difficult to see. A good trick if you're working on a large, hi res screen is to hav…

This is done quite often in audio production.

The Auratones mimicking real world consumer equipment, ie mono, low bass and a rolloff at the top, had a revival because of that.

Another company offers speakers the correlate to the ones in TVs, for audio engineers in the movie industry. The body is made from the same material as TVs are and they have no parallel walls.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#117

Post by lowwave »

Most people in large cities in US and European countries are not aware that many people don't connect to the internet regularly nor do they use fast laptops. Always make software that works without internet or fast process. That way if it works on crapy laptop and slow connection or no connection, to me those are only software I'll use or buy.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#118

Post by alkot89 »

tommek4077 wrote: post #113
alkot89 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the point you are trying to make here either with regards to the original topic or even how the second part of your story relates to the first.

Devs are lazy and wont give up there luxury macs, even for testing.

That's like 10% of the comment - I feel like some point was trying to be made with the dialup caching product but it went over my head.

Also back then, Macs weren't so much a luxury like they are today (this is pre Jobs) -- they were just defacto standard in the creative fields. DTP and Photoshop were strictly better on the Mac up until about that point and it would be a number of years for PCs to erode the entrenched Apple dominance in that field. Much like UNIX workstations still had a lock on CAD/CAM/engineering in those days that was rapidly eroding to NT PCs. $8000 was the price for a well-equipped workstation whether it was Wintel, Apple, or UNIX (well a bit more for those). As alluded, the big issue with Internet publishing was taking into account a 56K dialup vs a corporate T1 rather than hardware differences.

Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop

#120

Post by pmontra »

watersb wrote: post #93

Oh God yes. Back in the 20th Century, I was on a team for a major web browser. They were attempting to extend web browser technologies to crawl and cache web sites. The idea was to enable complex web experiences in a time when Internet service was analog telephone, 9600 baud. We worked for months on that. At the office. In Silicon Valley. On $6000 Compaq computers. When I returned home via my two-hour commute, I woul…

1999. I had 10 Mb/s at work and 56 kB/s at home which is about 200 times slower, same difference between a 1 GB/s fiber and a 5.6 Mb/s ADSL.

I used the same laptop and had very different experiences. Sites like the current HN worked much better at home. Large images didn't load fast there. Of course developers didn't create very large JPEGs or 10 MB JavaScript files back then but we had the same kind of problems, scaled down to smaller sizes.

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