Vincent Gable’s Blog

December 18, 2008

Fast Enough or Not Enough Fast?

Filed under: Quotes,Usability | , ,
― Vincent Gable on December 18, 2008

…people are now willing to make trade-offs against performance. For the entire history of the PC industry, computers have been too slow, so trade-offs were made in favor of faster CPUs: higher prices and heavier laptops. But today, for many common tasks, the type of CPU you get when you build a $400 lightweight laptop is fast enough. That’s (a) breakthrough.

—John Gruber

Cynically I also wonder if this is because “more cores” isn’t as compelling as faster. As Hank Williams says,

The problem of multi-core computing is really very simple. As most of us have experienced, every problem *can’t* be solved better or faster with more people. Some problems can be solved faster by adding a few people, but most problems cannot. In truth, most problems can best, or only be solved by one person at a time. And so it is with computing. The vast majority of problems can only be solved by one logic thread at a time. The reason is obvious. For most process-oriented work, step B is based on the results of step A. And step C is based on the results of step B, and so on.

December 8, 2008

Optimize CPU Usage of Your Website

Filed under: Programming,Quotes,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on December 8, 2008

The thing is, web developers should test their pages for CPU usage the same as app developers do. And anytime a page is idle, CPU usage should be at 0%. Same as with any other app.

—Brent Simmons

Last quarter notebooks outsold desktops for the first time. Netbooks, and iPhones have been exploding in popularity as well. That means a significant number of your website’s visitors will be running off a battery, and since battery life decreases proportionally with CPU load, you really do owe it to your users to do this. The internet shouldn’t be something you have to be plugged into a power outlet to use.

December 6, 2008

The Most Memorable Thing a CS Professor Ever Told Me About Software Engineering

Filed under: Programming,Quotes | , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on December 6, 2008

The first semester of my sophomore year, I took CS 337: Theory in Programming Practice from Jaydev Misra. On the last day of class, he talked about computer science in general, took questions, and let us out early. And on thing he said really made an impression on me. I’m quoting from what I remember today, I didn’t write the exact quote down, so this could very well be embellished or incorrect in some detail,

Even if we had the fast computers we have today in the 1960’s, and even if we had the internet, we could not have built a modern web-browser, because we did not understand enough about building programs of that complexity.

It’s amazing how young software development is as a discipline.

December 4, 2008

Optimize People’s Time Not The Machine’s Time

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― Vincent Gable on December 4, 2008

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini gives the best example I’ve seen of optimizing a person’s time, not a machine’s time

People cost a lot more money than machines, and while it might appear that increasing machine productivity must result in increasing human productivity, the opposite is often true. In judging the efficiency of a system, look beyond just the efficiency of the machine.

For example, which of the following takes less time? Heating water in a microwave for one minute and ten seconds or heating it for one minute and eleven seconds?

From the standpoint of the microwave, one minute and ten seconds is the obviously correct answer. From the standpoint of the user of the microwave, one minute and eleven seconds is faster. Why? Because in the first case, the user must press the one key twice, then visually locate the zero key, move the finger into place over it, and press it once. In the second case, the user just presses the same key–the one key–three times. It typically takes more than one second to acquire the zero key. Hence, the water is heated faster when it is “cooked” longer.

Other factors beyond speed make the 111 solution more efficient. Seeking out a different key not only takes time, it requires a fairly high level of cognitive processing. While the processing is underway, the main task the user was involved with–cooking their meal–must be set aside. The longer it is set aside, the longer it will take to reacquire it.

You also need to consider actual performance vr perceived performance, when optimizing a user’s time.

November 24, 2008

How To Space Your Code For Maximal Interoperability

Filed under: Design,Programming,Quotes,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on November 24, 2008

The new rule for indentation and alignment: use tabs for achieving an indentation level, spaces for character alignment within an indentation level.

Christopher Bowns (and independently Peter Hosey)

The arguments make total sense to me. Here’s hoping for better IDE support in the future. Unfortunately, (though interestingly), according to Steve Yegge, indentation is very hard:

I would have been publishing this article at least a month ago if it weren’t for indentation. No, six weeks, mininum.

See, I thought that since I had gone to all the thousands of lines of effort to produce a strongly-typed AST (abstract syntax tree) for JavaScript, it should therefore be really easy to do indentation. The AST tells me exactly what the syntax is at any given point in the buffer, so how hard could it be?

It turns out to be, oh, about fifty times harder than incremental parsing. Surprise!

Here’s a forward-looking (somewhat contrary) opinion,

Soft-wrapped code (leaving a long line long, and letting the IDE handle the spacing) also appears to be the direction that Apple are heading and they tend to drag a lot of Mac programmers along in their wake.

— Matt Gallagher

I For One Welcome Our Vector Overlords

Filed under: Design,Quotes | , ,
― Vincent Gable on November 24, 2008

The pixel will never go away entirely, but its finite universe of digital watches and winking highway signs is contracting fast. It’s likely that the pixel’s final and most enduring role will be a shabby one, serving as an out-of-touch visual cliché to connote “the digital age”

—JH

I’ve written before about trends in resolution independence, and why it matters.

November 6, 2008

Alan Kay on Why Computer-Based Teaching Fails

Filed under: Accessibility,Quotes | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on November 6, 2008

Here’s a lightly-edited transcription of Alan Kay, explaining why computer-aided instruction so often fails (from “Doing with Images makes Symbols”, 1987),

After the experience I’ve had with working with both children and adults with computers (and at least dabbling in the areas of learning and education), I think that one of the best ways of thinking of a computer is very similar to thinking of what a piano means when teaching music.

The piano can amplify musical impulse. We can only sing with one voice. If we want to play a four-part fugue, we have to use something mechanical, like a piano to do it. And it can be done very beautifully.

But for most people the piano has been the biggest thing that turns millions of people away from music for the rest of their lives. And I think the best way to sum it up is just to say that all musicians know that the music is not inside the piano…

So, in any situation where education and learning is involved, you first have to develop a curriculum based on ideas, not on media. Media can be an amplifier of those ideas, but you have to have the ideas first.

And I think the reason computers have failed is that almost everybody, no matter which way they have tried to use computers, have wanted the computer to to be some sort of magic ointment over the suppurating wound of bad concepts. … But first you have to have the ideas.

This was exactly my experience as a student. I am dysgraphic — I have trouble writing legibly by hand, and spelling. So I took a laptop to all my classes, from 8th grade (1997) through college. The laptop solved a particular problem for me. But outside of that, it did not enhance my education; in some cases it got in the way. (One professor found students using laptops the most during class did 11% worse on tests compared to the rest of the class). If I wasn’t dysgraphic, I would have been better-off with a Moleskine.

October 24, 2008

50 Customers

Filed under: Quotes | , ,
― Vincent Gable on October 24, 2008

In the early 1950’s, we took a hard look at the future for business computer systems.

Our best estimate, at the time, was a potential of 50 new customers.

—IBM Advertisement From the 1980’s (via Modern Mechanix)

October 14, 2008

A Bag of Hurt

Filed under: Quotes | , ,
― Vincent Gable on October 14, 2008

Blu-ray is a bag of hurt. I don’t mean from the consumer point of view. It’s great to watch movies, but the licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing.

–Steve Jobs, explaining why the laptops he announced today do not have Blu-ray.

October 11, 2008

Steve Ballmer Admits Microsoft Office For Mac Is Shitty

Filed under: MacOSX,Quotes | , ,
― Vincent Gable on October 11, 2008

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently admitted Office 2008 for Mac is stunted

can you find the applications you want on the Mac? Well, you don’t really get full Microsoft Office (on the Mac).”

I doubt this surprises anyone, but boy would I be depressed if I worked in the Mac BU (Business Unit), and the CEO came out and poo-pooed my work. That’s not doing right by your people.

I’ve written before about how I dislike using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and how its high sales figures are in spite of it’s quality, not because of it.

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