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Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

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Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#181
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone assuming that just because someone works for Google has to be competent? Solving algorithmic puzzles is not an indicator or actual technical skills. To me, it looks like a work of incompetent developers led by incompetent technical managers upon requirements of clueless and ignorant product managers.

Coding for Android has taught me that is definitely not the case. They managed to make a mess worse than JEE, the native layer took 10 years to finally use Android Modules, they keep fixing the header files, still don't have proper C++ bindings and force everyone to write JNI boilerplate by hand.

The Android base wasn't written by Google. Google bought the company that made Android 2 years after it was written. That's a lot of time to create a base system and a lot of time to create cruft.

By now, it's too late to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, hence a new OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#182
post #152

I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally both the creator of the browser (Chrome), the framework (Angular) and the web-app (GCP) we use and still, this mess is the best they can give us. They have direct access to the creators of Chrome and Angular, in some sense they are the owners of the internet an…

Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The answer is that Google’s frameworks suck, and have for many years. I can’t comment on whether things are equally a mess in their proprietary code, but I don’t see any reason to think they’re not. This is a problem with Google, and their slide into mediocrity.

Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there.

The parent isn't saying no one can do better. They're saying Google's engineers can't do better. It's sarcasm, but at the same time there could be a grain of truth to it - it would be unfair to believe Google's engineers aren't doing the best work they can. Most people do try their best. Perhaps it's actually fair to assume Google's engineers just aren't very capable when it comes to frontend dev work.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#183

I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally both the creator of the browser (Chrome), the framework (Angular) and the web-app (GCP) we use and still, this mess is the best they can give us. They have direct access to the creators of Chrome and Angular, in some sense they are the owners of the internet an…

How is it that Microsoft's Electron apps are so snappy and performant? You would never know Visual Studio Code was Electron by how it performs. I'm not a user of their cloud apps, but are they similarly snappy, or is it just that Microsoft's Dev Tools team is way out in front?

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#184

I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally both the creator of the browser (Chrome), the framework (Angular) and the web-app (GCP) we use and still, this mess is the best they can give us. They have direct access to the creators of Chrome and Angular, in some sense they are the owners of the internet an…

After working with graduates from "the best university", I doubt it is "the best". After using "the best" search engine, and finding what I needed on Bing instead, I started doubting it was "the best". Perception is different than reality. I genuinely wonder if these are "the best", or if these employees were merely the ones willing to move their lives to a new city for a high paying job. But I'm sure FAANG and FAANG…

while i agree with you, there's a lot more going into performance and usability of a product than whether the employees are "the best"

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#185

I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally both the creator of the browser (Chrome), the framework (Angular) and the web-app (GCP) we use and still, this mess is the best they can give us. They have direct access to the creators of Chrome and Angular, in some sense they are the owners of the internet an…

I don't think I agree with you here. Make Cloud UI fast is probably not their priority. This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. They will wait. Integrity/Security would be much higher on the list than UI loading speed. Not surprising at all.

I must say after using Microsoft Teams...

M$ is back, baby. I would invest in them if I invested in huge-market-cap companies.

After IBM, Microsoft became the company selling Windows and Office for businesses. Huge cash cow. They lost that for a while due to the iPhone and Google and stuff moving to the Web and mobile.

Now they’re back.

The fonts and aesthetics remind me of using Windows apps 20 years ago. This ain’t Google. Small, crisp verdana, tahoma or whatever.

Meetings done right. Office - Word, Excel - integrated. Tons of plugin support.

Compared to Slack, this is way better. And compared to Google Suite, well... Teams is faster and actually feels like a product teams would live in day-in and day-out. No need for slack, zoom, gmail and a hodgepodge of other things.

Microsoft also has a huge cache of businesses who would literally onboard their entire company and pay monthly recurring revenues. They have successfully gotten back into the Microsoft Office business.

Except this time it’s recurring revenues and on the mobile too. Even if Microsoft doesn’t sell mobile devices. They are going to eclipse Google with businesses if Google keeps doing its cute slow Web based interfaces, imho.

And I say this as a person who has not used Windows for 15 years, who hardly ever used Office or Office 360 until literally trying Teams as part of a consulting gig.

It’s amazing. And it’s very Microsoft.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Github and Amazon's main site to be pretty reasonable in comparison.

As someone who regularly uses other e-commerce front ends, I find Amazon to be quite cluttered and messy. Also it‘s surprisingly difficult to quickly find a specific product.

I am simply happy that Amazon has not embraced the ridiculous trend of low-information density with large amounts of whitespace.

Give me a cluttered UI that has everything available any day.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#187
There's something poetic about using Google's own tools to demonstrate why their own frontend code is slow. Maybe the author can suggest they use Lighthouse CI next to track which commits improve/degrade UX (but I'm guessing that's a competing product with their own).

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#188
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree with you here. Make Cloud UI fast is probably not their priority. This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. They will wait. Integrity/Security would be much higher on the list than UI loading speed. Not surprising at all.

I must say after using Microsoft Teams... M$ is back, baby. I would invest in them if I invested in huge-market-cap companies. After IBM, Microsoft became the company selling Windows and Office for businesses. Huge cash cow. They lost that for a while due to the iPhone and Google and stuff moving to the Web and mobile. Now they’re back. The fonts and aesthetics remind me of using Windows apps 20 years ago. This ain’t…

[deleted]

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#190
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The answer is that Google’s frameworks suck, and have for many years. I can’t comment on whether things are equally a mess in their proprietary code, but I don’t see any reason to think they’re not. This is a problem with Google, and their slide into mediocrity.

Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The parent isn't saying no one can do better. They're saying Google's engineers can't do better. It's sarcasm, but at the same time there could be a grain of truth to it - it would be unfair to believe Google's engineers aren't doing the best work they can. Most people do try their best…

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, but I prefer the sarcastic interpretation.
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