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Fast

catherinejue.com

51–60 of 450 posts

Re: Fast

#51

Only sorta related, but it’s crazy that to me how much our standards have dropped for speed/responsiveness in some areas. I used to play games on N64 with three friends. I didn’t even have a concept of input lag back then. Control inputs were just instantly respected by the game. Meanwhile today, if I want to play rocket league with three friends on my Xbox series S (the latest gen, but the less powerful version), I…

How about you enable game mode on the TV you're using

Re: Fast

#53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fast is easily left behind when looking for frameworks. Nah. React, for example, only garnered attention because it said "Look how much faster the virtual DOM is!". We could go on all day. > People want features, people want compatibility Yes, but under the assumption that it is already built to be as "fast" as possible. "Fast" is assumed. That's why "faster" is such a great marketing trick, as it tunes people into…

"Look how quickly it can render the component 50 times!"

"Look, it can render the whole app really quickly every time the user presses a key!"

Re: Fast

#54
I always have to remind myself of the bank transfer situation in the US whenever I read an article complaining about it. Here in the UK, bank transfers are quick and simple (the money appears to move virtually instantly). Feel free to enlighten me to why they're so slow in the US.

Re: Fast

#55

Only sorta related, but it’s crazy that to me how much our standards have dropped for speed/responsiveness in some areas. I used to play games on N64 with three friends. I didn’t even have a concept of input lag back then. Control inputs were just instantly respected by the game. Meanwhile today, if I want to play rocket league with three friends on my Xbox series S (the latest gen, but the less powerful version), I…

> I have to deal with VERY noticeable input lag. Like maybe a quarter of a second. It’s pretty much unplayable Your experience is not normal. If you’re seeing that much lag, the most likely explanation is your display. Many TVs have high latency for various processing steps that doesn’t matter when you’re watching a movie or TV, but becomes painful when you’re playing games.

Luckily newer TVs and console can negotiate a low-latency mode automatically. It's called ALLM (Auto-Low Latency Mode).

Re: Fast

#56
post #12

> Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” They don't explicitly ask for it, but they won't take you seriously if you don't at least pretend to be. "Fast" is assumed. Imagine if Rust had shown up, identical in every other way, but said "However, it is slower than Ruby". Nobody would have given it the time of day. The only reason it was able to gain attention was because it claimed to be "Faster than C++". Watch…

And yet we live in a world of (especially web) apps that are incredibly slow, in the sense that an update in response to user input might take multiple seconds.

Yes, fast wins people over. And yet we live in a world where the actual experience of every day computing is often slow as molasses.

Re: Fast

#57
This is a great blog post. I have seen internal studies at software companies that demonstrate this, i.e. reducing UI latency encourages more software use by users. (Though a quick search suggests none are published.)

Re: Fast

#58
post #6

Highly Agree. Speed of all kinds is incredibly important. Give me all of it. - Fast developers - Fast test suites - Fast feedback loops - Fast experimentation Someone (Napoleon?) is credited with saying "quantity has a quality all its own", in software it is "velocity has a quality all its own". As long as there is some rigor and you aren't shipping complete slop, consistently moving very quickly fixes almost every o…

> Someone (Napoleon?) is credited with saying "quantity has a quality all its own"

Joe Stalin, I believe. It's a grim metaphor regarding the USSR's army tactics in WW2.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/795954-quantity-has-a-quali...

Re: Fast

#59
I feel like this should have some kind of "promotional" or "ad" label. I agree wholeheartedly with the words here, but I also note that the author is selling the fast developer tools she laments the dearth of: https://www.catherinejue.com/kernel

Again, no ill will intended at all, but I think it straddles the promotional angle here a bit and maybe people weren't aware

Re: Fast

#60
Fun story time!

Early in my career as a software engineer, I developed a reputation for speeding things up. This was back in the day where algorithm knowledge was just as important as the ability to examine the output of a compiler, every new Intel processor was met with a ton of anticipation, and Carmak and Abrash were rapidly becoming famous.

Anyway, the 22 year old me unexpectedly gets invited to a customer meeting with a large multinational. I go there not knowing what to expect. Turns out, they were not happy with the speed of our product.

Their VP of whatever said, quoting: "every saved second here adds $1M to our yearly profit". I was absolutely floored. Prior to that moment I couldn't even dream of someone placing a dollar amount on speed, and so directly. Now 20+ years later it still counts as one of the top 5 highlights of my career.

P.S. Mentioning as a reaction to the first sentence in the blog post. But the author is correct when she states that this happens rarely.

P.P.S. There was another engineer in the room, who had the nerve to jokingly ask the VP: "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?". They didn't laugh, although I thought it was quite funny. Hey, Doug! :)

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