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Slow Software

inkandswitch.com · 4,002 words · saved by 1 readers

You spend lots of time waiting on your computer. You pause while apps start and web pages load. Spinner icons are everywhere. Hardware gets faster, but software still feels slow. What gives? If you use your computer to do important work, you deserve fast software. Too much of today’s software falls short. At the Ink & Switch research lab we’ve researched why that is, so that we can do better. This article shares we’ve learned. We welcome your feedback: @inkandswitch or hello@inkandswitch.com. What feels “slow” to users? We all have a sense for when software annoys us with delays. But to get a better handle on this problem, we’ll complement these intuitions with academic research that answers the question rigorously. Perceived speed is all about latency. Comparing the “what feels slow” findings from academia with measurements of real-world app latency tells us just how bad things really are. When discussing software performance, we often hear about throughput. E.g. “this web server can

What feels slow What feels “slow” to users? We all have a sense for when software annoys us with delays. But to get a better handle on this problem, we’ll complement these intuitions with academic research that answers the question rigorously. Perceived speed is all about latency. Comparing the “what feels slow” findings from academia with measurements of real-world app latency tells us just how bad things really are. Latency not throughput When discussing software performance, we often hear about throughput . E.g. “this web server can do 10,000 requests / second.” But that’s not how users per

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