Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha...
by jws on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @11:10AM
(#22366776)
Consider a VT100. It could only go up to 19200 baud…
The VMS manuals suggested that system administrators may want to keep the hard wired terminals down to 2400 buad and hide the fact from users by turning on "smooth scroll" (which only scrolled about that fast anyway) in order to keep the interrupt load down on the Vax. Something about batching of interrupts on the multiport serial cards.
Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha...
by GekkePrutser on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @12:54PM
(#22368047)
Yes there was that but it also just couldn't handle the full speed continuously. It depended a lot what kind of commands were sent. Full text was fairly OK but drawing commands took a while as far as I remember. In any case, flow control was a must-have in those days. Either CTS/RTS or at least XON/XOFF
Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha...
by ralusek on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @11:44AM
(#22367207)
There's no reason there should be loading spinners in this day and age...when spinners are almost exclusively used in web apps in order to denote that the web browser is yet to receive the necessary data over YOUR internet connection.
Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha...
by kokx on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @12:42PM
(#22367883)
Tell that to my former boss. They wanted me to delay sending responses from the backend, because they liked showing off their custom spinner. The spinner would not be seen at all during normal operation, without the delay in sending responses.
Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha...
by GekkePrutser on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @12:56PM
(#22368070)
Then why do I still see them with my verified 600/600 connection :)
The problem is just that there's too much javascript running in the browser and it's too poorly written (loading each post individually in Reddit by example instead of batching them). Reddit's redesign in particular is really really bad. At least they offer the old site but it looks so bad. I'd love to have something looking more modern but without the javascript overload.
Consider a VT100. It could only go up to 19200 baud, and couldn't actually handle constant streams at that speed.
However I do agree with the general message of the article. Current UX is a mess, websites are overblown by tons of javascript. There's no reason there should be loading spinners in this day and age with the power we have at our fingertips.