Ask HN: Why don't progress bars ever work properly?

Re:Ask HN: Why don't progress bars ever work properly? by byandyphillips on Thursday December 18, 2014 @10:23AM (#8767620)

But isn't there a way you can trick the visual of the progress bar to be smooth and consistent instead of jumping around or is this an impossible development task?

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't progress bars ever work properly? by MichaelCrawford on Thursday December 18, 2014 @04:12PM (#8769624)

Yes, there are all kinds of ways to do that.

But typically you see stuff like:

for ( i = 1; i < 10; ++i ){ DoSomethingUseful( i ); DeterminateProgress( i, 10 ); }

So each iteration of the loop, the bar advances by one-tenth its maximum length, without regard to what DoSomethingUseful actually does.

Chalk it up to lazy coders and tight-fisted bean counters.

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