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The 49MB web page

thatshubham.com

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Re: The 49MB web page

#91

Post by toast0 »

sublinear wrote: post #54
hobs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of the devs, they have a responsibility for saying something literally wont fly anywhere, ever, saying the business is responsible for every bad decision is a complete abrogation of your responsibilities.

Why don't you tell your boss or team something like that and see how well that flies. The responsibility of the devs is to deliver what was asked. They can and probably do make notes of the results. So does QA. So do the other stakeholders. On their respective teams they get the same BS from everyone who isn't pleased with the outcome. Ultimately things are on a deadline and the devs must meet requirements where the…

> The responsibility of the devs is to deliver what was asked.

Software development isn't factory work. And factory workers are expected to notice problems and escalate them.

Anyway, they're paying me far too much to have me turn off my brain and just check the boxes they want checked in all situations. Sometimes, checking boxes because they need to be checked is the thing to do, but usually it's not.

Re: The 49MB web page

#92

Post by solarkraft »

KronisLV wrote: post #86
vunderba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA for those who aren’t aware: Chromium/Firefox-based browsers have a Network tab in the developer tools where you can dial down your bandwidth to simulate a slower 3G or 4G connection. Combined with CPU throttling, it's a decent sanity check to see how well your site will perform on more modest setups.

I once spent around an hour optimizing a feature because it felt slow - turns out that the slower simulated connection had just stayed enabled after a restart (can’t remember if it was just the browser or the OS, but I previously needed it and then later just forgot to turn it off). Good times, useful feature though!

Working as intended!

Re: The 49MB web page

#93

Post by KronisLV »

sublinear wrote: post #61
xigoi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please stop blaming the devs. You're laundering blame. Almost no detail of a web site or app is ever up to the devs alone. If a bridge engineer is asked to build a bridge that would collapse under its own weight, they will refuse. Why should it be different for software engineers?

It's a website and not a bridge. Based on the description given, it's not a critical website either. If it was, the requirements would have specified it must be built differently. You're not even arguing with me BTW. You're arguing against the entire premise of running a business. Priorities are not going to necessarily be what you value most.

> If it was, the requirements would have specified it must be built differently.

I’ve seen a lot of times where “business people” ask for a feature that sounds good but isn’t technically viable for any number of reasons. The devs not doing pushback would lead to similarly non-functional/broken stuff getting shipped.

The pushback doesn’t even need to be adversarial, just do some requirements engineering, figure out what they want and go “Okay, to implement X in the best possible way, we should do Y and avoid Z because of W.”

In the bridge analogy, the people who are asking for a specific design might not know that it’d collapse under its own weight and the engineers should look for the best solution.

There are environments where devs can't do that sort of requirements engineering and those are generally pretty dysfunctional - obviously you don't need that for every feature request, but it's nice to have that ability be available when needed.

Re: The 49MB web page

#94

Post by bombcar »

tom1337 wrote: post #71
mananaysiempre wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Craptop duty”[1]. (Third time in three years I’m posting an essentially identical comment, hah.) [1] https://css-tricks.com/test-your-product-on-a-crappy-laptop/

I now wonder if it'd be a good idea to move our end to end tests to a pretty slow vm instead of beefy 8 core 32gb ram machine and check which timeouts will be triggered because our app may have been unoptimized for slower environments...

It’s worth doing at least sometimes; schedule an over The Weekend-to-Weekend test on slow hardware and log the issues.

Even if you don’t fix them, knowing where the weak points are is valuable for when they do snap in production.

Re: The 49MB web page

#95

Post by monkey_monkey »

jiggawatts wrote: post #85
sublinear wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a suggestion how else to handle the situation I described?

There’s a magic word that can be used in scenarios like this: “No.” Failing that, interpret the requirements. Nobody can watch a bunch of videos at once that don’t even show up until you scroll! That’s a nonsense requirement and the dev’s failure to push back or redirect in a more viable direction is a sign of their incompetence, not that of the non-technical manager that saw YouTube’s interface and assumes that that…

It's not a sign of their incompetence, it's a sign of the realities of many corporate environments.

But hey, if you want to rail against incompetent developers who exist in a make-believe world where they hold all the power are simply too lazy and incompetent to 'do the right thing' then go ahead!

Re: The 49MB web page

#96

Post by KaiMagnus »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #37
ceejayoz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for fancy computers. Dev on a fast one if you like, but test things out on a Chromebook.

“Craptop duty”[1]. (Third time in three years I’m posting an essentially identical comment, hah.) [1] https://css-tricks.com/test-your-product-on-a-crappy-laptop/

Gonna bookmark that article for tomorrow, craptop duty is such a funny way to put it.

Similarly, a colleague I had before insisted on using a crappy screen. Helped a lot to make sure things stay visible on customers’ low contrast screens with horrible viewing angles, which are still surprisingly common.

Re: The 49MB web page

#98

Post by monkey_monkey »

hobs wrote: post #88
sublinear wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you tell your boss or team something like that and see how well that flies. The responsibility of the devs is to deliver what was asked. They can and probably do make notes of the results. So does QA. So do the other stakeholders. On their respective teams they get the same BS from everyone who isn't pleased with the outcome. Ultimately things are on a deadline and the devs must meet requirements where the…

I didn't say anything about their development abilities, what I am pointing to is their professional responsibility. If a doctor is asked by a client to cut off their arm and they say no, and the client fires them, did the doctor err? (No) This doesn't comment on their ability to do surgery.

So just to check, instead of doing something you were told to, that you know is a stupid idea (after telling all concerned it's a dumb idea and being told to go ahead anyway, eg adding a crapton of video to a page), you would just resign, to protect your personal integrity?

Re: The 49MB web page

#99

Post by ivanjermakov »

cjs_ac wrote: post #47

My family's first broadband internet connection, circa 2005, came with a monthly data quota of 400 MB. The fundamental problem of journalism is that the economics no longer works out. Historically, the price of a copy of a newspaper barely covered the cost of printing; the rest of the cost was covered by advertising. And there was an awful lot of advertising: everything was advertised in newspapers. Facebook Marketpl…

I remember getting punishment from parents for downloading 120MB World of Tanks update over metered home internet. Our monthly quota was 250MB. It was not that long ago, 2010.

Re: The 49MB web page

#100

Post by Bratmon »

pocksuppet wrote: post #97
Bratmon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can think of any, then congratulations! You've saved journalism! You should probably tell someone so the knowledge doesn't die with you.

48MB

Which MB should they cut out?

Bear in mind that any cut that reduces their CPM or rate of conversation to paid will have to also include an equivalent reduction in their staff.

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