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.
> 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.
Cool! I'm guessing no traffic data in organic maps? I'd still install it to use as a backup.
I 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 seconds later the dialog closes. But it hasn't showed up in the window yet... oh, now it did!
How is that even possible, especially with modern hardware? Like you'd almost have to build the file explorer around like a sqlite-based message queue with a 1500ms poll interval to get performance characteristics like this. Absolutely insane feats of architecture astronautism are no doubt required for this to happen.
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 I’ve ever noticed a difference in speed on the terminal between distros. Shells (or more accurately, plugins / frameworks - I recently gave up oh-my-zsh in favor of zimfw for that reason), yes, but not the terminal itself.
I think it's the different feeling you get from using an end-to-end streaming service (compute, not videos) versus the one that does a lot of intermittent buffering. It's quite subtle actually. Using a vanilla language model can feel like that if it's also sufficiently small but they are going towards the opposite direction very rapidly now because cloud.
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?
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
No way I wanna chat with my oven
Got any burning questions today?
No, no software is the best software.
BTW, the title should say "(2019)".
No code is faster than no code
Faster at doing nothing?
Best solution is no software, or as little code as possible. But that the best software is no software isn't very practical or actionable :)
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Fast and efficient software varies depending on the local context, but for me, I think I'd be fine with something slower as long as it's convenient enough. After all, once it passes a certain threshold, I can barely even notice the speed difference anyway.
I wonder what OP's thinks of IDEs like VSCode. Would they see it as heavy and not great because it's Electron-based? But I find IDEs convenient.
Simple tasks being barely fast enough alone is not fast enough, as they could unexpectedly slow down to a halt if you run a moderately heavy load alongside them.
Speed enables more features and also simpler architectures and algorithms, since you can rely more on brute force in higher-level code.
Honestly, I'm in partially disagree camp. What matters is how much time it saves.
A good WYSIWYG editor will run circles around the fastest text editor. Even if WYSIWYG is a bit slower to open.
It would be preferable for software to be more focused and faster over time, but that doesn't attract people to it.
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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?
Can’t think of a less sloppy writer than Craig Mod…
I think the author has a certain writing style that you apparently dislike, which is fine, but it’s hardly slop. I agree that the comparison between Sketch being somewhat unreliable but fast undercuts the claim that speed and reliability often go hand-in-hand — though one could argue that the modifier “often” saves it.
I’ve found that writers who self-profess to have ADHD often write in this way, with multiple, seemingly disparate points being made that can tie together if you squint. As an ADHD person who enjoys writing, it makes sense, and at least in my head, these points always connect; I’m just not great at demonstrating how they connect. I’ve no idea if the author is neurodivergent, but it’s one possible explanation.
> EDIT: I didn't say _AI_ slop
Ahahaha holy cope
This is definitely not slop. I’ve followed Craig Mod’s work for a long time and he’s a prolific, talented, and very human writer.
What makes you think it is slop? The emdash?
Slop or not, I enjoyed reading it. And could relate.
Previous discussion in 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20517144