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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?

#381

Post by harpratap »

freediver wrote: post #373
geekster777 wrote: post #371

Former front-end dev of this UI here. This article makes the assumption that Google's primary goal is performance/page load. It's not. Feature parity and dev speed is. With a gigantic app like Cloud with hundreds of developers, there are massive technical hurdles surrounding things like independent releases, split bundles, and technical debt. Google's business model for Cloud is b2b. The bottom line for getting b2b c…

Google seems to fail to realize that cloud b2b starts with b2developer. A one single developer. Create an environment that developers love, and these developers will find ways to make b2b happen. Sell bottom up. (and in case anyone from gcp is reading, not only the interface is atrociously slow - which makes me doubt the quality of engineering on the infrastructure side of things that I am supposed to be paying for -…

Not sure which awesome company you work at, but in most organizations infra is a cost center, and thus the decisions related to it are mostly done by managers, not developers. And this is why AWS sells and not Heroku.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#382

Post by graderjs »

BadInformatics wrote: post #169
graderjs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slow and clunky I referenced don't have "loading semantics" issues, they all show loaders, action statuses, and many indicate connectivity and save progress for multipage sagas. But you are right that slow and clunky can be unreliable, but so can slick and snappy. Tho, neither of them have to be. In some domains, slick and snappy can feel insubstantial and off-key. It's interesting that the pages you reference ar…

I have never seen anyone in government or big corporate (including management and HR) put down a site for being too fast to load or react. I've seen plenty of instances where they've railed on one for being sluggish or unresponsive...certainly aesthetics are important for a subset of enterprise users (namely those who have to drink/act like they've drunk the kool-aid), but most folks aren't idiots and can definitely…

I get if you feel that aesthetics are a deliberate adoption only of those kool aid drinkers and "idiots", but that viewpoint probably just contributes to how you can't see that aesthetics and medium are a thing, that people expect but are unaware of. Because you wouldn't want to see yourself as a kool aid drinker or idiot, right. Meaning you're blind to it's effects, which I'm not saying makes you say idiot. This dynamic happens everywhere. It's similar to how people choose familiarity, over what "objectively" is better. What you said matches what I'm saying about it. People can tell when something is slow and clunky, or slick and snappy, and while they may praise, or rail, it doesn't mean they will think slick and snappy works better, or feel more comfortable using it. This is why those big softwares don't violate your implicit expectations that they are slow and clunky.

Another thing is just because people complain (about their enterprise software, or country, or house, or romantic partner) does not mean they would switch. And just because they praise your slick and snappy startup enterprise app doesn't mean it will solve their problem better, doesn't mean they'll feel more comfortable using it, and doesn't mean they'll buy it.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#383

Post by exikyut »

shadowgovt wrote: post #219
StillBored wrote: post #216

Actually, looking at this I'm surprised that the mainstream browsers are still caching javascript, but not some pre-parsed/compiled version of the code.

It'd be glorious if there were a protocol to ship something closer to "machine code" from server directly to browser, but it doesn't exist. JS is the only language one can assume the browser can actually interpret.

I wonder how many real-world pieces need to fall into place for WASM to become a realistically viable option.

Obviously browser support is one fairly big component. (I've long wondered how much of Chrome's ~65% is straight-from-dl.google.com evergreen, but I guess that's just commentary).

Then there's tooling... heh. That'll be its own eternal September just like JS has been I guess.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#384

Post by ernsheong »

Personally, the Google Cloud Console UI is an engineering marvel. The amount of complexity is, to my imagination, mind-boggling. That is just works most of the time is amazing. Complex workflows that other require you to visit 10 pages to complete a thing is seamlessly executed for you with sidebar UIs, etc.

I'm sure the performance bit of it would catch up soon. But who is using it anyway, and surely these people have pretty good internet. Not vindicating, but I'm sure the optimization will come later.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#385

Post by runawaybottle »

option_greek wrote: post #47

I guess stuff like amp is good only to preach others. This garbage has been slow for ages. Also they keep throwing links to new stuff in their side bar without any rhyme or rhythm making navigation as annoying as possible.

That’s kind of the woah factor here. Talk about glass houses.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#386

Post by runawaybottle »

I’ll just say as a meta comment that this thread is some of the most beginning-to-end Google frontend development ingenuity and organizational imperatives bashing I’ve ever read here.

There’s not a single poster here that didn’t throw a rock.

In defense of large orgs, faangs and non faangs, from my experience I can tell you that some talented developers on teams will notice exactly what is wrong with a product (frontend or backend). They might know parts of the UI need to be trimmed and made performant, api calls need to be restructured to be made performant, and so on, but don’t speak up.

There’s a variety of reasons here and it mostly has to do with the old adage ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. On teams there are egos, and you will bring out unwanted peer pushback (who do you think you are with your fancy ideas all the time, you don’t think the rest of us thought of this too?) when you take up some of these mantles. This is a dynamic that is coupled with general management issues that come from the product/project management, where your great idea might not be seen as worthwhile. On a team, socially and professionally, it’s better to not rock the boat here because the reward is not fair, and if it were outsized, it could be taken bad by coworkers as grandstanding.

Why bother? Which leads to the manifestation of the phenomenon: death-by-a-thousand-cuts. This is where professionally team members look like people with a self absorbed agenda. Now no one ever takes up reducing the bleeding, and finally, a world class company, with world class talent, builds laughably bad end results.

The only solution to this is for the egos to restructure the direction of their energy into a monomaniacal focus on ‘the final product is all there is’, where a good idea is a good idea. The ego has to be abstracted into the final output, where everyone involved derives their self worth from how good the thing they shipped is, and nothing else matters.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#387

Post by runawaybottle »

cmckn wrote: post #281
graderjs wrote: post #53

The medium is the message. In some domains, slow and clunky feels like gravitas and reliability. Enterprise software. Enterprise recruiting software. AWS has a pretty slow, and clunky dashboard. AdSense is clunky. A lot of the biggest companies' flagship apps have a very bland "bureaucratic" look and feel. You may find it hard to believe, but Zuck wanted facebook to look like a government database for a long time, wh…

I don’t know if I agree with you, but I think an example of what you’re describing is the TurboTax web UI. You’re shown multiple “loading screens” where things like “We’re looking everything over!” are said to the user. The user is given the impression that some kind of heavy lifting is happening, when that probably isn’t the case. For Intuit, it’s a marketing thing. I don’t think that is GCP’s problem, though.

TurboTax is a marvel of user experience. Taxes are dreaded, and their app literally psychologically calms you down, deliberately tries to ease you.

Those are people that get what problem they are solving.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#388

Post by zzleeper »

runawaybottle wrote: post #387
cmckn wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if I agree with you, but I think an example of what you’re describing is the TurboTax web UI. You’re shown multiple “loading screens” where things like “We’re looking everything over!” are said to the user. The user is given the impression that some kind of heavy lifting is happening, when that probably isn’t the case. For Intuit, it’s a marketing thing. I don’t think that is GCP’s problem, though.

TurboTax is a marvel of user experience. Taxes are dreaded, and their app literally psychologically calms you down, deliberately tries to ease you. Those are people that get what problem they are solving.

Turbotax created the problem they are solving. Filing taxes in other countries is much less stressful and a lot simpler.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#389

Post by Traubenfuchs »

mszcz wrote: post #253
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the web from the bottom of my heart. I love Javascript, I love Typescript, I love Angular. Develop once, run everywhere, no client side updating required. I love rest(ful) APIs. I consider working with Angular a joy. I am serious here.

Kinda funny that after all you said you felt the need to add a I am serious here ;)

I am simply aware that there is a very vocal amount of developers disgusted by Angular and in love with react. But coming from a Spring backend background, Angular 2+ felt just right to me. Meanwhile I hated react every time I tried.

Re: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?

#390

Post by xuhu »

bentcorner wrote: post #352
hamandcheese wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and be willing to take a whole-page refresh when the user transitions from one page to another. This should be the default! What a world we live in.

I prefer sites like this. Also give me plain links that I can middle click on to open new tabs. Let my browser manage my workspace, please don't make a window manager inside my browser window.

I wish Wireshark also had tabs that you could clone with middle-click.
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