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Splash screens == sloth

asserttrue.blogspot.com

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Re: Splash screens == sloth

#91

Post by kamjam »

podman wrote: post #22

Photoshop CS5 took roughly 4 seconds to start on my MBA. Is this guy seriously complaining about 4 seconds? Several popular iOS (and I'm sure there are some on Android as well) take longer than that to load...

Agreed, about the same on my machine. It's kind of expected. On my old machine I would just start Photoshop and go make a cup of tea. Or switch windows and carry on with something else. But I rarely use Photoshop... If you are doing this day in, day out then I think it justifies more RAM and/or an SSD.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#92

Post by pre »

tintin wrote: post #36
JS_startup wrote: post #25

I don't understand what he's angry about. Photoshop, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, these are all enormously complicated programs that require resources to load. That doesn't make them bloatware and it doesn't make the programmers lazy. His proposed solution sucks too. Show the UI while it's loading so the user can impotently click around waiting for the program to "turn on". Windows does this when it boots up and it…

You are wrong. Everytime I start Blender (3D content creation suite) I'm blown away by the time it takes to start. Less than 2 seconds! Ready to use! Do I call Blender a complicates program? Yes I do. The feature list can compete with the one of 3ds Max.

Blender's startup speed astounds me when compared to just about everything else I use. It starts faster than Vim half the time!

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#93

Post by bobbyi »

Jasber wrote: post #41

About loading screens, I've always wondered why games don't try to get rid of these (maybe they do?). Anyone familiar with why you have to have loading screens in games? Would it be possible to pre-load a level while you're playing?

They can't follow the article's suggestion of giving you a mini-game to play during the load screen because that would violate Namco's patent 5,718,632 which covers exactly that:

http://www.google.com/patents/US5718632

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#94

Post by luser001 »

I ranted about this a few days ago. My favorite idiocy on Windows is their background "optimization" of .Net binaries.

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidnotario/archive/2005/04/27/412...

This service appears to perform a large number of I/O requests (probably reading/writing a large number of small files). It will totally consume the disk seek capacity, massively slowing down every other program that is also doing disk I/O (e.g., freezing Firefox awesomebar searches).

The programmers at the linked blog congratulate themselves on how this mayhem lasts only 10 minutes on a typical computer.

Note: I do not have an SSD. :( This and other idiocies will force me to get one next time.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#95

Post by karolist »

I don't think I've even seen a splash screen since SSDs became affordable in the past 2 years. Also I'm a "give credit where it's due" type of guy and surnames of people that made the great project I'm launching don't bother me.

This whole blog post reminds me of the "first world problems" meme.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#96

Post by kamjam »

I await his next blog post "I got fired for throwing all my toys out the pram" with great anticipation, where he explains how throwing a massive hissy fit and not taking his (some good) points up with the team and management.

I don't agree with this faking rubbish though, if it's not usable then I don't care. There's plenty of bloatware to get rid of in these programs, I doubt the splash screen is the biggest of worries!

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#97

Post by gt384u »

tintin wrote: post #84
talmand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's unfair for you to call him wrong, what's wrong with what he said in the context of what he was saying? I remember Blender loading fast as well. But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? Because I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lazy loading going on. Maybe some things finish loading in the background so they are not available right away or ma…

Of course Blender is lazy loading as you like to call it. Why load features the user is not using atm? The base of the program is just way better than lets say Photoshop. Ever checked an online Photo editor? ( http://pixlr.com/editor/ for example after a quick Google). Open the page and there it is: your interface ready to use.

To clarify, "lazy" isn't a pejorative in this case. It's just the technical term for deferring work until it needs to be done. "Eager" would be the term for doing everything right away.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#98

Post by gavanwoolery »

Photoshop really is not that complex - you could write a photoshop clone that would load in under a second, easily. But it loads all sorts of stuff you do not need up front - many fonts, textures, drivers for scanners, cameras, and so forth. I think the real problem is that Adobe seems to keep patching an already bloated code base - I think if they started fresh they could redesign it more efficiently...just my humble opinion...

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#99

Post by jsavimbi »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #31
jsavimbi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is addressing a very real issue. He adressed nothing beyond his hate for the splash screen, which has seen its time imo, but nonetheless has nothing on many of the other features and tools that Adobe puts out when it comes to bloat. If Adobe really cared about the user, they don't because they own the brand name synonymous with image manipulation, they would at least make an attempt to tailor the application to…

I'm not sure how they would "tailor the application to the specific user's needs" as it would be clearly impractical to develop different versions for each of their millions of customers. Photoshop (for example) is pretty extensible and has support for plugins as well as scripting capabilities etc, not sure what else you want? Also part of the reason that adobe is the industry standard is that their applications are…

> up to speed in a new environment

are you assuming that every time a developer switches job, he or she has to learn a new IDE. Life isn't like that.

It's not impractical to assume that a user will use a specific subset of all of the tool offerings and doesn't need or use all of what the application has to offer. The app should be able to develop a profile based on what the user actually does with it instead of forcing all of the functionality onto them.

But Adobe makes a lot of money with their product, has no competitors of note and therefore doesn't have to change the way they do business because even if their subsequent releases fail to impress their user base, they're still going to sell licenses.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#100

Post by mikeash »

talmand wrote: post #51
tintin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. Everytime I start Blender (3D content creation suite) I'm blown away by the time it takes to start. Less than 2 seconds! Ready to use! Do I call Blender a complicates program? Yes I do. The feature list can compete with the one of 3ds Max.

I think it's unfair for you to call him wrong, what's wrong with what he said in the context of what he was saying? I remember Blender loading fast as well. But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? Because I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lazy loading going on. Maybe some things finish loading in the background so they are not available right away or ma…

Loading on demand is a vast improvement over loading everything up front, though. Loading on demand means you never pay the price for functionality that isn't used, and if your load time is divided into little pieces, it's far more likely to slip into spaces where the user is otherwise preoccupied, thus becoming essentially free. Lazy loading is a way to truly reduce loading time, not just a way to hide it as you seem to imply.
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