Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#201

Post by lunias » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

Computers of the past were undoubtably slower on average; both in terms of physical performance as well as their UX. The software of now, when compared to the software of then, is slow relative to the hardware that it runs on. Before we used to strive to do more with less. Today we strive to do more with more. In an attempt to do more, faster and easier; we've made trade offs.

I wish we would circle back and remember the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy.

Not every app needs every feature rolled out by FAANG in the last decade.

JavaScript is not the best choice for every part of every application stack.

It seems important to me that programs become focused and composable again.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#202

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #101

TremendousJudge wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last printer I had to configure on my Linux machine required finding a downloading a hidden mystery bash script from the manufacturer's website and running it with root permissions. Not exactly "plug and play" or "safe"

Then you got the wrong printer. Some manufacturers do a good job of supporting Linux (HP is probably the best actually; their drivers all ship standard in most distros), others don't bother.

"I had some trouble with Linux on this hardware"

"You chose the wrong hardware bro!"

This is why people don't like Linux Evangelists.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#203

Post by rahuldottech » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

rsecora wrote: post #171

The experience of the 80s was really slowness, things were so slow that now It's unimaginable now. So unimaginable that we don’t remember any more common actions by 1983. The experience was so slow, that you can play another game while loading [1]. Namco even patented "playing games during load” by 1987 [2]. As an example, I have fond memories of my C64 tape loading Hunchback [3] ... while watching "V". A single tape…

Links formatted as code sorta defeat the point, right?

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#204

Post by mrweasel » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #99

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

I do wish shortcuts on web apps would be more universally implemented and more universally discoverable. I wish browsers had a common hotkey that would show available shortcuts, for example. The biggest problem with his argument is that, done correctly, a mouse augments the keyboard and does not replace it. If you've ever seen a good print production artist, that person can absolutely FLY around a very visual program…

Webapp need to stop implementing some shortcuts, if not most. It annoys me to no end when a site hijacks ctrl+f and presents their own crappy sesrch rather than just letting me search the page with Firefoxs built in search, which actually works.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#205

Post by rahuldottech » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

zwaps wrote: post #198

This may be related to my bad hardware (which is, albeit, not bad on paper). However, there used to be a time when websites were fast. Like HN is now. Now, most "apps" and websites are slow. Some are downright sluggish and unusable. Maybe I am doing something wrong.

I wish all websites were as lightweight and fast as HN.

I sorta want to use New Reddit (because I like having smaller windows for multitasking and responsiveness makes that much more convenient) but boy is it painfully slow even on a 100+ mbps connection

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#206

Post by RHSeeger » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

113 wrote: post #56

RHSeeger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terminal response times are way slower than they used to be in the 80's. Do you have data / a citation to back up that statement? Most things seem faster to me. As long as the command line responds as faster as I can type, I don't care about it being faster. That being said, overall speed and what can be handled by the system certainly does matter in many cases, even if it is _just throughput_. I've recently been r…

> Do you have data / a citation to back up that statement? It's at the end of their comment.

The page in question discusses latency in terminals, not how it compares to performance of previous generations.

That being said, it also seems to have to pull in the 99th percentile behavior in order for the timings to be an issue, and even then it's not horrible; it doesn't get actually "bad" until you consider the worst performance (99.9th percentile) of the worst performer (st). It seems overly picky to me.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#207

Post by Arnt » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #184

welly wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try running Google Maps on your 133Mhz Pentium.

I am sure that Microsoft Autoroute was available for that era. It probably was also faster then Google Maps is today.

Apparently Microsoft Autoroute was first released in 1988, covered several dozen countries, and could be obtained by ordering it. Thus using it for the first time would involve a delay or at least a day in order to order, receive and install the program. After that, starting it should be quick, but I can't tell whether it required inserting the CD into the drive. Even if the appliocation is already installed on the PC and not copy-protected, looking something up doesn't sound obviously faster than opening a web page, typing the name of the location into the search box, and waiting for the result.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#208

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #174

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

> Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. I know of an ERP system that somehow manages to take about 15 seconds to search an inventory of ~100k items. If you export all t…

I see you work in enterprise! I’m sure that all of this absolutely cannot be changed because all the functionality is needed for ‘something’.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#209

Post by dragonsh » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

Google maps is a bad example in tours rant. Used it to explore many cities, not only turn by turn direction. It worked get although personally like openstreet maps, because I feel one company s shouldn’t control so many aspects of life and like open source nature of it.

Indeed able to discover a onsen built by community in Hokkaido. That’s based on a lake I saw by just zoom in out of the map to do exploration and saw it built by Ainu community living there. In that turn by turn map helped quite a lot to reach there subsequently just by click and dropping a pin there. Submitted a text describing it and subsequently visited by many people.

Took a journey through treacherous mountain and went up to 2500 meters high and crossed it via a tiny off-road designed for motorcycles. That too did based on exploration of map on phone.

Paper maps didn’t provide such convenience. Yes POS is slow, but then it has different expectations today. Try integrating old POS with 10 payment network working under milliseconds to authorise transactions. Worked enough since 1990 with dos based POS and also wrote IBM MQ C++ code for integration. Don’t want to go back there.

I think today is a step forward. Like always there will be good and bad as it was in 1980 or 1990. But largely today we do much more with computers than we ever did in those days.

So not everything is perceptually slow on computers. Apple Watch, iphone, androids are responsive and usually fast. Windows 10 for certain tasks might be slow but then overall it’s not that bad either.

As far as exploration goes you can do the same or even more today than before. I can discover planets. Built3D model in physical form, use CNC on desktop, do laser cutting in my home.

Built a computer like BBC micro, raspberry pi, fly a computer using fly by wire and test it using real physical model plane. Can do farming on a small scale using hydroponics at home. Can just go on and on about it. All possible thanks to advancement in speed and reduction of size in computing devices and peripherals.

So I feel it’s not slow, just the work we do with old computers is very different from what we do with modern one’s.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#210

Post by tartoran » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #99

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

I do wish shortcuts on web apps would be more universally implemented and more universally discoverable. I wish browsers had a common hotkey that would show available shortcuts, for example. The biggest problem with his argument is that, done correctly, a mouse augments the keyboard and does not replace it. If you've ever seen a good print production artist, that person can absolutely FLY around a very visual program…

I second this. Once one learns the keyboard shortcuts and builds the habit to learn shortcuts in general they won't be encumbered by small visual tasks like aiming lots of boxes like in menus and sub menus. These interactions micro-dent the flow. When I use the keyboard to navigate I'm not even consciously thinking what shortcuts to press, it happens naturally. I also noticed that I don't even know the shortcuts and have to think a bit before telling someone what shor-cut i use, my fingers remember them. All this said, the software has to have a good shortcut flow in mind. Not all software offers this benefit.