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Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

craigmod.com

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Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#31

Post by titanomachy »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #21

> Google Maps has gotten so slow When it comes to navigating (except public transit), hiking, and route building, Organic Maps[1] is very good. OSM data and offline-first is the way forward for detailed and _fast_ map experience. For cycling route building I have to mention BRouter[2], which allows you to write a custom cost function that is used to tweak your route preferences. [1]: https://organicmaps.app/ [2]: htt…

Cool! I'm guessing no traffic data in organic maps? I'd still install it to use as a backup.

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#32

Post by aetherspawn »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #11
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is from 2019.

The slop is breaching temporal containment!

Mr. Robertson: That's the way it has to be. That's the way it's always been. You should understand that better than anyone.

Temporal GPT: The snake that trains on its own tail, forever and ever?

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#33

Post by coldblues »

rossant wrote: post #10

I fully agree. I loathe slow software. I hate bloat. I love fast software. As a developer, I'm completely, even irrationally, obsessed with speed, performance optimization, and profiling. I wish more developers felt the same way.

Irrational how? What higher values does it undermine for you to make fast software?

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#35

Post by giovannibonetti »

Shout-out to PowerSync for making it easier to develop fast offline-first mobile apps. It pushes data from Postgres/MySQL/SQL Server subscriptions to a SQLite into the user's mobile device, avoiding the need for many loading animations when the data is there ahead of time. My company is a customer and we recommend it.

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

titanomachy wrote: post #31
ivanjermakov wrote: post #21

> Google Maps has gotten so slow When it comes to navigating (except public transit), hiking, and route building, Organic Maps[1] is very good. OSM data and offline-first is the way forward for detailed and _fast_ map experience. For cycling route building I have to mention BRouter[2], which allows you to write a custom cost function that is used to tweak your route preferences. [1]: https://organicmaps.app/ [2]: htt…

Cool! I'm guessing no traffic data in organic maps? I'd still install it to use as a backup.

[deleted]

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#37

Post by didgetmaster »

coldblues wrote: post #33
rossant wrote: post #10

I fully agree. I loathe slow software. I hate bloat. I love fast software. As a developer, I'm completely, even irrationally, obsessed with speed, performance optimization, and profiling. I wish more developers felt the same way.

Irrational how? What higher values does it undermine for you to make fast software?

OP is probably referring to many engineering managers who think it is irrational to spend an hour in order to speed up a computing task that only shaves a few milliseconds off.

Even when that software is widely used so the few milliseconds add up to thousands of hours in collective time savings. 'We don't pay for user's time, only your's', is the attitude. Again 'irrational'.

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#38

Post by archargelod »

countWSS wrote: post #34

The neglected part here is latency, speed itself can be masked by progress bars/animations, but having visible lag ruins the idea of speed and users treat it as slow vs animated loading bar.

Maybe it's me who's weird, but I find animations as much worse - it's basically pointless and wastes slightly more time (even when program is fast enough!).

The interface without animations feels snappier even if sometimes it takes a second to load. I disable any and all animations in software that I can - particularly in Android (via developer settings) and Linux (i3+vim vs something like KDE+VScode).

Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)

#39

Post by MomsAVoxell »

Yes, there are so many examples of this .. a recent one for me, is iStatMenu .. it just got to the point that waiting for it to start, alone, was sufficiently boring enough that I sought an alternative .. and of course, I realized, there's no reason not to use the Linux tooling I'm accustomed to, and so I have btop where iStatMenu used to live, kinda. btop doesn't get in the way, doesn't phone home, doesn't check a registration key, isn't harvesting key clicks, and .. so on .. its just small, light, and fast.

Well, with the encumbrance of it living in a terminal window, but I also live in the terminal window even on MacOS, so its a feature not a bug.

Point is, I wouldn't have this to say about it if iStatMenu had just been a little more discrete about its loading times ..

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