Yes, the average software runs much less efficient. But is efficiency what the user want? No. It is not.
How many people will tell you that they stick to windows instead of switching to linux because linux is all terminal? And terminal is quicker, more efficient for most things. But the user wants a gui.
And if we compare modern gui to old gui… I don’t think modern us 15x worse.
There isn’t anything fundamentally slower about using a GUI vs just text in a console. There’s more to draw but it scales linearly. The drawing things on the screen part isn’t the slow bit for slow programs. Well, it can be if it’s coded inefficiently, but there are plenty of programs with GUIs that are snappy… Like games, which generally draw even more complex things than your average GUI app.
Slow apps are more likely because of an inefficient framework (like running in a web browser with heavy reliance on scripts rather than native code), inefficient algorithms that scale poorly, poor resource use, bad organization that results in doing the same operation more times than necessary, etc.
E.g. From the terminal, I open a known file far more quickly then through an gui. Even if I want to use a gui for the file, issuing the opening command is quicker in the terminal.
GUIs often require the user to scan the interface to find the relevant information as the developer didn’t know what you are actually searching.
With a terminal, the user can be much more precise in what they seeking and consequently, less information is provided and less information needs to be scanned by the user.
The average user doesn’t want to remember and type a specific phrase to do something though. Even if it is “faster” and more “efficient”, the user want to be guided towards the information. The user wants a good user experience, not a fast/efficient one.
Pretty and guided, that is what the average user wants. Modern software is pretty and guided, not efficient and fast. Yes, developer became lazy in optimisation and like to use some big framework to save dev time. But the user also wanted it that way by wanting pretty GUIs because that is easier with the big frameworks.
Ah, that’s efficiency of use and depends more on how familiar you are with the software as well as the design and task. Like editing an image or video is going to be a lot easier with a gui than a command line interface (other than generating slop I guess).
When people talk about how efficient software is, it’s usually referring more to the amount of resources it uses (including time) to run its processes.
Eg an electron app is running a browser that is manipulating and rendering html elements running JavaScript (or other scripts/semi-compiled code). There is an interpreter that needs to process whatever code it is to do the manipulation and then an html renderer to turn that into an image to display on the screen. The interpreter and renderer run as machine code on the CPU, interacting with the window manager and the kernel.
A native app doesn’t bother with the interpreter and html renderer and itself runs as machine code on the CPU and interacts with the window manager and kernel. This saves a bunch of memory, since there isn’t an intermediate html state that needs to be stored, and time by cutting out the interpreter and html render steps.
I know. That is why I started my statement by stating that I don’t like the framing. It treats “efficiency” as the point of software. As the thing, that we should care about when judging software.
But it isn’t. It is user experience. And yes, efficiency is part of that. Both, efficiency in execution and efficiency of use.
And the user experience has improved a lot (ignoring intentional anti patterns to exploit the user that are fairly common, but i think we can agree to ignore that for the sake of the conversation)
Technically true, but there’s a threshold on responsiveness. If both user interfaces respond in milliseconds, it doesn’t matter if one is more efficient
It does because it highlights that instead of being excited to “have to use the terminal” as it is more “efficient” but instead they prefer the “slower” prettier gui. The user want the stupid animations and the flashy nonsense. The user doesn’t want quick software. They want pretty software.
Firstly, plenty of Linux instances have GUI. I installed Mint precisely because I wanted to keep the Windows/Mac desktop experience I was familiar with. GUIs add latency, sure. But we’ve had smooth GUI experiences since Apple’s 1980s OS. This isn’t the primary load on the system.
Secondly, as the Windows OS tries to do more and more online interfacing, the bottleneck that used to be CPU or open Memory or even Graphics is increasingly internet latency. Even just going to the start menu means making calls out online. Querying your local file system has built in calls to OneDrive. Your system usage is being constantly polled and tracked and monitored as part of the Microsoft imitative to feed their AI platforms. And because all of these off-platform calls create external vulnerabilities, the (abhorrently designed) antivirus and firewall systems are constantly getting invoked to protect you from the online traffic you didn’t ask for.
We’ve deprecated a lot of the old TV/radio signal bandwidth in order to convert it to cellphone signal service.
But, on the flip side, digital antennae can hold a lot more information than the old analog signals. So now I’ve got a TV with a mini-antennae that gets 500 channels (virtually none of which I watch). My toddler son has figured out how to flip the channel to the continuous broadcast of Baby Einstein videos. And he periodically hijacks the TV for that purpose, when we leave the remote where he can reach.
So there’s at least one person I can name who likes the current state of affairs.
I dislike a lot the framing of this.
Yes, the average software runs much less efficient. But is efficiency what the user want? No. It is not.
How many people will tell you that they stick to windows instead of switching to linux because linux is all terminal? And terminal is quicker, more efficient for most things. But the user wants a gui.
And if we compare modern gui to old gui… I don’t think modern us 15x worse.
There isn’t anything fundamentally slower about using a GUI vs just text in a console. There’s more to draw but it scales linearly. The drawing things on the screen part isn’t the slow bit for slow programs. Well, it can be if it’s coded inefficiently, but there are plenty of programs with GUIs that are snappy… Like games, which generally draw even more complex things than your average GUI app.
Slow apps are more likely because of an inefficient framework (like running in a web browser with heavy reliance on scripts rather than native code), inefficient algorithms that scale poorly, poor resource use, bad organization that results in doing the same operation more times than necessary, etc.
The terminal is quicker. Not because of the image is drawn more quickly but because it is more efficient to do anything.
Can you elaborate on that? I disagree but would like to understand why you think that. Maybe you’re referring to something I wouldn’t disagree with.
E.g. From the terminal, I open a known file far more quickly then through an gui. Even if I want to use a gui for the file, issuing the opening command is quicker in the terminal.
GUIs often require the user to scan the interface to find the relevant information as the developer didn’t know what you are actually searching.
With a terminal, the user can be much more precise in what they seeking and consequently, less information is provided and less information needs to be scanned by the user.
The average user doesn’t want to remember and type a specific phrase to do something though. Even if it is “faster” and more “efficient”, the user want to be guided towards the information. The user wants a good user experience, not a fast/efficient one.
Pretty and guided, that is what the average user wants. Modern software is pretty and guided, not efficient and fast. Yes, developer became lazy in optimisation and like to use some big framework to save dev time. But the user also wanted it that way by wanting pretty GUIs because that is easier with the big frameworks.
Ah, that’s efficiency of use and depends more on how familiar you are with the software as well as the design and task. Like editing an image or video is going to be a lot easier with a gui than a command line interface (other than generating slop I guess).
When people talk about how efficient software is, it’s usually referring more to the amount of resources it uses (including time) to run its processes.
Eg an electron app is running a browser that is manipulating and rendering html elements running JavaScript (or other scripts/semi-compiled code). There is an interpreter that needs to process whatever code it is to do the manipulation and then an html renderer to turn that into an image to display on the screen. The interpreter and renderer run as machine code on the CPU, interacting with the window manager and the kernel.
A native app doesn’t bother with the interpreter and html renderer and itself runs as machine code on the CPU and interacts with the window manager and kernel. This saves a bunch of memory, since there isn’t an intermediate html state that needs to be stored, and time by cutting out the interpreter and html render steps.
I know. That is why I started my statement by stating that I don’t like the framing. It treats “efficiency” as the point of software. As the thing, that we should care about when judging software.
But it isn’t. It is user experience. And yes, efficiency is part of that. Both, efficiency in execution and efficiency of use.
And the user experience has improved a lot (ignoring intentional anti patterns to exploit the user that are fairly common, but i think we can agree to ignore that for the sake of the conversation)
Technically true, but there’s a threshold on responsiveness. If both user interfaces respond in milliseconds, it doesn’t matter if one is more efficient
It does because it highlights that instead of being excited to “have to use the terminal” as it is more “efficient” but instead they prefer the “slower” prettier gui. The user want the stupid animations and the flashy nonsense. The user doesn’t want quick software. They want pretty software.
Firstly, plenty of Linux instances have GUI. I installed Mint precisely because I wanted to keep the Windows/Mac desktop experience I was familiar with. GUIs add latency, sure. But we’ve had smooth GUI experiences since Apple’s 1980s OS. This isn’t the primary load on the system.
Secondly, as the Windows OS tries to do more and more online interfacing, the bottleneck that used to be CPU or open Memory or even Graphics is increasingly internet latency. Even just going to the start menu means making calls out online. Querying your local file system has built in calls to OneDrive. Your system usage is being constantly polled and tracked and monitored as part of the Microsoft imitative to feed their AI platforms. And because all of these off-platform calls create external vulnerabilities, the (abhorrently designed) antivirus and firewall systems are constantly getting invoked to protect you from the online traffic you didn’t ask for.
It’s a black hole of bloatware.
TVs became SmartTVs and now need the internet to turn on. The TVs need an OS now to internet to do TV.
Antennae broadcast TV seems like an ancient magic.
We’ve deprecated a lot of the old TV/radio signal bandwidth in order to convert it to cellphone signal service.
But, on the flip side, digital antennae can hold a lot more information than the old analog signals. So now I’ve got a TV with a mini-antennae that gets 500 channels (virtually none of which I watch). My toddler son has figured out how to flip the channel to the continuous broadcast of Baby Einstein videos. And he periodically hijacks the TV for that purpose, when we leave the remote where he can reach.
So there’s at least one person I can name who likes the current state of affairs.
I always have to remind myself being able to stream audio from a cellphone while driving across a city is also a pretty crazy development.
I am not saying linux is terminal. I am saying that people tell you that linux is all terminal and that they want a gui.
Linux gui is much prettier than Windows anyway.