Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The alternative that exists today that I can buy and all the apps I need for work will actually exist and function correctly is called…
Fairphone 4.
Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
151–160 of 515 posts
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#152Wait, is it true? Did you encounter a bug? or browser extensions issues? It may not be as efficient as native, but I downloaded some sample files and repeated them until hit Google Docs limits. It is about 450 pages with some images. It is smooth and usable. There's zero delay. (and only 1000MB ram usage with many broswer extensions enabled. I think it's fair...)
Who knows how exactly that word looks. Might be Features from word which it is badly emulating.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#153Where in that stack is the biggest loss of performance? DOM? Javascript? Browser? Or is it because everything needs to sync to the cloud as you edit it?
>Where in that stack is the biggest loss of performance
Exclusively the minds of developers and the stance of management.
It is of course possible to built responsive, high quality and performance websites. But that is hard, much, much harder than to make something work, which maybe takes a few seconds to load, sometimes doesn't work quite right and can be a bit tedious to use.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#154There is perhaps some irony in the fact that this blog was posted to Medium, which serves 10.88 MB for a 265-word article.
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Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#155Again and again people complain about this. But it remains a fact that essentially nobody actually wants this. Developers certainly like to have their completely integrated, connected and universal computing platform (the web). And users do not seem to particularly care about performance as long as it is good enough . And that is exactly the standard that is set, software is allowed to be so bad that it doesn't reall…
Do we really though?
Web developers do of course, but I've hardly touched web development myself. Web interfaces etc., are a choice, but I think it's driven by commercial needs-- a desire for subscription revenue instead of one-time sales, etc.
Much of the modern cloud-based or half-online world is quite unnatural from a user perspective, and where there is no need for monetisation-- for example with OpenOffice, the software can expected to remain a desktop application.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#156In my MacOS Passwords I have ±3400 entries. A roughly 341KB CSV. Searching in that list in the preference panel or Keychain app is dog-slow on my M1 Pro Studio or on my M3 MacBook Air. How??
It seems obvious how you could make it slow. Just naively iterate over the entire series of objects looking up the name for each.
This is the obvious low effort, low complexity solution. Of course you could make it fast, but that would take time and effort for a feature most people won't notice.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#157Google Docs is pretty efficient. It loads incredibly fast and you never have to manually update it. But, it clear has limits… 30MB Word files.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#158Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#159Again and again people complain about this. But it remains a fact that essentially nobody actually wants this. Developers certainly like to have their completely integrated, connected and universal computing platform (the web). And users do not seem to particularly care about performance as long as it is good enough . And that is exactly the standard that is set, software is allowed to be so bad that it doesn't reall…
Do we really though? Web developers do of course, but I've hardly touched web development myself. Web interfaces etc., are a choice, but I think it's driven by commercial needs-- a desire for subscription revenue instead of one-time sales, etc. Much of the modern cloud-based or half-online world is quite unnatural from a user perspective, and where there is no need for monetisation-- for example with OpenOffice, the…
Certainly there has been almost no pushback. I don't think most users really care for native applications, what they like to see is clicking on something and having it work instantly, web apps deliver that.
Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?
#160I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.
The native world also refuses to create a standard UI API, making everyone use either Qt or Electron because sorry writing it over again for each platform is a hard “no.” Not even big companies do that anymore.
Why would platform maintainers want to encourage the lowest common denominator apps that such an API would undoubtedly result in (as a standardized UI API by definition cannot leverage platform strengths)?
Apps like that get made anyway but as it stands at least there’s a healthy crop of smaller/indie native alternatives which often best the behemoths in UI/UX. That would likely disappear with the addition of a standardized UI API, as it would probably also come with the abandonment of the old specialized APIs.