Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Anthropy :verified_dragon:

Occasionally I see videos of people rapidly doing things, like doing work, sorting stuff, chopping/building/crafting things, using calculators/devices, and I realized one thing is absent there

Computers. Anything that runs a full operating system.

Why?

Because they SUCK, developers all massively assume that it's okay for an animation to take sometimes even SECONDS, that it's fine to not preload things because "humans aReN't fAsT eNoUgH", etc.

We need more programs that aren't SLOW as dogshit

10 comments
wakame

@gameplayervent @anthropy

Granted. But Inkscape is a terrible example (and I honestly don't know what you have to do to make a software that slow).
Speed category: Outlook

adam

@anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz An important part of making fast programs is local-first design. It's just not possible to make a program fast if it has to query a remote server every two seconds to function. Too bad most companies seem to ignore this.

Anthropy :verified_dragon:

I should say it's not even specifically developers, it's just a broad assumption in the industry that people want things "fancy", that animations and loading and switching and so forth can take longer than .5 seconds because "people don't notice".
Every company developing apps only thinks about themselves and the OS they interact with, at most they'll include some share function, but OS-native theming? Multitasking performance?

The result is a slow piece of shit, that looks like a circus tent๐ŸŽช

I should say it's not even specifically developers, it's just a broad assumption in the industry that people want things "fancy", that animations and loading and switching and so forth can take longer than .5 seconds because "people don't notice".
Every company developing apps only thinks about themselves and the OS they interact with, at most they'll include some share function, but OS-native theming? Multitasking performance?

jackson

@anthropy speaking of rapidly doing things, i very rapidly switch tabs sometimes. faster than other people can understand (actually that might include me but whatever).

i can do things pretty fast. i can type pretty fast (100 wpm). yet, sometimes things are just... stupidly slow for no reason.

i have animations disabled on my android phone. it's certainly something to get used to. but without animations, it's not really too distracting. (except for the apps which reinvent animation, which i think includes trail sense, keyoxide (worst offender of animations), and simplex (it respects my options, the problem is with the no animation fallbacks are bad))

when i choose date and time for something like a due date, i tap here tap there and tap ok. done. probably did that in less than a second.

on an iphone though, i probably had to deal with a whole ordeal with scrolling to the right times. oh, and if you go to control center > wireless settings clump > wifi list > settings for wifi, the individual closing animations will play one after the other, and it will take longer than it takes to switch to the settings app, and there's nothing you can do about it until it finished playing.

also, there's no way you could disable animations on any apple device. only reduce the motion, but you'll still haven't disabled the animation.

in terms of slow, element (or schildichat) takes the reward for being slow as fuck. seriously, i'm already trying to scroll to the bottom of the room list while the app is displaying a black screen because it hasn't even finished launching.

@anthropy speaking of rapidly doing things, i very rapidly switch tabs sometimes. faster than other people can understand (actually that might include me but whatever).

i can do things pretty fast. i can type pretty fast (100 wpm). yet, sometimes things are just... stupidly slow for no reason.

i have animations disabled on my android phone. it's certainly something to get used to. but without animations, it's not really too distracting. (except for the apps which reinvent animation, which i think...

DELETED

@anthropy I need to make such video some time. I don't see any animation ever in most software I use (disabled them all).

ะ“ั€ะธะณะพั€ะธะน ะšะปัŽัˆะฝะธะบะพะฒ

I have seen people use computers fast, except in all cases it was some kind of specialized software and no mice. Mostly in retail.

One example stuck in my head in particular is the information system in a chain of hardware stores in my city. The thing runs in text mode and is fully controllable with a keyboard. It must be fast-usable because there's no feedback required at all โ€” after you've used this system for a while, you develop a mental model of its states and how it transitions between them. You don't need to constantly look at the screen to make sure the program is in the state you expect. You just enter the sequence of keystrokes that are required to get it from its current state to your desired one, without paying attention to the intermediate states.

Various kinds of forms work like that too. You build a mental model of the form and then you tab through the fields without looking at the screen.

And POS systems. Cashiers and waiters are often extremely fast at ringing up orders. It's often touchscreens these days but muscle memory works with touchscreens too.

I have seen people use computers fast, except in all cases it was some kind of specialized software and no mice. Mostly in retail.

One example stuck in my head in particular is the information system in a chain of hardware stores in my city. The thing runs in text mode and is fully controllable with a keyboard. It must be fast-usable because there's no feedback required at all โ€” after you've used this system for a while, you develop a mental model of its states and how it transitions between them....

Alexander Yell
@anthropy except for the start of the program krita seems instant
LisPi
@anthropy @a1ba A lot of those videos involve RTOSes.

I also don't make any of my software like that unless I'm paid to mutilate it in such a way.
Go Up