A typical problem with software is that development continues after the software has already reached its peak. Instead of making it better, new features and changes gradually make it worse. Eventually, enough users leave that it is no longer worth paying a team to keep working on it. And then the cycle starts again.
Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
81–90 of 93 posts
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#82https://medium.com/luminasticity/on-premature-optimization-i...
wanders a bit around the premature optimization history, but later has
>Nowadays almost all development is for things that are not necessary. Pretty much all modern development is for things that are entertainment....The difference between things that are necessary and entertainment is that you will wait however long it takes to do the necessary thing
in the reductive view of the article everything that is not necessary is termed entertainment.
But I have noticed this. I often drop useful things because it just isn't worth it to wait. So the argument really is, in today's world, speed is almost always the most important factor anything accessed through the computer can have.
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#83Pretty proud that after six years fastcomments is still only about 30kb
I should probably work again on getting that down some :)
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#84The best software is correct and safe software. Rating "fast" more important than that is what started all this "worse is better" mess in the first place. Just not enshittifying and not using Electron should be fast enough if you don't write dumb code.
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#85Yes, 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 r…
Stats is the open source version I use
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Some tiny amount of animation is needed to show that the system has responded. I regularly use a website in which a submit button does not change state in any way. It is indistinguishable from the click having gone to /dev/null. And the completion of the action takes a copule of seconds. It's literally, "no response ... few seconds ... oh, done!" If the button simply responded in the usual way, like 3d poppin in and…
> I regularly use a website in which a submit button does not change state in any way. It is indistinguishable from the click having gone to /dev/null. And the completion of the action takes a copule of seconds.
In the good old days, you'd have the request sent by that button reveal a small, transient status bar showing the target URL at the bottom, plus the "Refresh" button in the browser toolbar would change to "Stop" instead; both effects lasted for the duration of the network roundtrip. It was enough of an indicator, and since it was not controlled by the website, it wouldn't break or lie to you.
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#87I run headless Alpine Linux (a minimal distro) in my homelab and it’s fast AF. The lag in Windows Explorer is sad when something like cd folder/folder is instant in Linux.
I really don't understand how you can even create software that feels as bad to use as Windows Explorer. It's like it's barely attached to reality. There's this weird floaty delay in everything. You copy a file, or did you? You're not sure. It hasn't updated yet. Oh, now the copy dialog appears with this progress bar that isn't showing progress. The dialog just sits there. Is something happening? I don't know. Many s…
The new Windows Explorer uses WinRT/WinUI, with its AddRef/Release all over the place.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/microsofts-window...
And yes, it sucks,
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/discussions/1...
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, cd folder/folder is also instant in a command line in Windows, it's just the GUI aspects that are slow. Comparing Windows Explorer to a terminal is comparing apples to oranges.
I don't think so. Windows is a GUI first OS, and Linux is a CLI first (or even CLI native) OS. You can't open a command line window in Windows without loading more than half of the desktop stack. In that sense, when a terminal (running on a desktop environment) in Linux is faster than Windows Explorer, it's a shame. When a big file explorer like Dolphin drives circles around native file explorer of Windows, that's a…
Explorer used to be fast, when it was a pure Win32/COM application.
Then came the rewrite to adopt WinUI elements, and WinRT as well,.....
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#89I am mulling the idea that we need a day of fast software software to spread the [culture?] of loving fast low-latency software.
Like a programmers day or sysadmin day.
That is a special celebration of fast software. To celebrate one should find faster alternative to some of his usual tools, try to switch and spread the word. Or maybe avoid opening Jira for a day at $job.
Re: Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think so. Windows is a GUI first OS, and Linux is a CLI first (or even CLI native) OS. You can't open a command line window in Windows without loading more than half of the desktop stack. In that sense, when a terminal (running on a desktop environment) in Linux is faster than Windows Explorer, it's a shame. When a big file explorer like Dolphin drives circles around native file explorer of Windows, that's a…
Explorer used to be fast, when it was a pure Win32/COM application. Then came the rewrite to adopt WinUI elements, and WinRT as well,.....
I know. I used to spend countless nights on older Windows versions, you know, when I was young(er).
Now I know better and don't use that thing as a daily driver for... 20 years now? :D