Frigging everybody has a 3Ghz multi core CPU in their back pocket now and people still need ways to not to “feel lag while typing.”
This is the world we have made
Trying to imagine going back to 1985 and telling someone their computer would eventually have eight multi-gigahertz cores, and yet the cursor would still lag behind you while you type
“great for heavy web apps like Gmail!” how did we get to a place where an instantly recognizable example of crushingly computationally complex software is an EMAIL CLIENT
To be fair on Gmail, you need quite a powerful computer to not experience keyboard buffer lag. You'd need at least 16K of RAM... maybe even 48K!
@natecull @jalefkowit But… but… I thought 640K was enough for anybody?
@pete
What do you want?
Internet is a trend that will pass anyway…
@natecull @jalefkowit
@RyunoKi @natecull @jalefkowit I want Web 1.0 back, so much simpler and friendlier back then. 😉
.@pete A lot of people feel that way and I think it's not wrong to call it a trend that more and more people prefer and create websites similar in style and simplicity to what was usually found on the web in certain time periods. Apart from the fact that most content is still and will continue to be made with an appalling lack of awareness for the need to save resources and user's nerves, the main issue in my opinion is that people don't agree on how to serve "The Small Web", which is a … 1/2
.@pete … term that is often used to describe a web of simple, non-commercial, user-created websites, or whether and how to separate it from the modern web or whether to use HTTPS for it at all. Gopher, Gemini and other, less known protocols aren't the only way to create a simpler web again. I'm all for creating and demanding websites accessible, simple, ad-free websites. I can exist beside the commercial web. JS, cookies, forms, etc. aren't inherently evil, either. They need to be used less. 2/2
@steeph Absolutely agreed, the small web is the ideal that more people should be trying to capture. Just because we have more computing power available, doesn’t mean we should be aiming to make the web more complicated in response.
@jalefkowit this is clearly some modified, two-decade old definition of "fully functional"...
@kauer oh no. I had the Handspring Visor, which had a slot for expansion cards. One card I had for it was a dial-up modem. And the software was a real POP/IMAP client. It’d probably still work with any email service that hasn’t moved to OAuth for authentication
@jalefkowit *cough* I still use Claws :D
Maybe not quite as svelte as my palm pilot email app was, but it is handling 22 years of email and using 30MB of RAM to do it
@Longplay_Games brb, gotta go find the 3.5” disk that has my copy of Pegasus Mail on it
@jalefkowit I remember pmail! They still have a site :D
http://www.pmail.com/
@jalefkowit Claws is quite pretty and has a proper dark mode unlike gmail LOL
@Longplay_Games
I go even a step further and _recommend_ it.
So many clients can't handle tens of thousands of emails…
@jalefkowit
@jalefkowit This feels extra painful when you can't afford or your parents won't buy you a new and modern PC. You're doomed to have lagging apps, and it only gets worse with time.
Computing power wastefulness is
a yet another cause of social inequalities.
@mikolaj Agreed! CPU power to the people ✊
@mikolaj (I was stuck with a 4.77MHz IBM PC until well into the early '90s, so I really feel this)
@jalefkowit
i would rather say: "Properly developed efficient #software to the people!" and we can run on old #hardware for years to come and avoid tons of unnecessary electronic #waste. and be not as much affected by the current chip shortage that, as far as i know will get worse and worse the further we push the #climatedesaster
@mikolaj
@glowl @jalefkowit @mikolaj I agree. While it's not something I pay much attention to when I write software, I do wish people who write software that is used my many other people would take this more serious.
@mikolaj @jalefkowit I have to agree with you there.
My opinion is that if the software can't run on a low-end computer (4 gigs of RAM and a 4-core CPU, literally bare-fucking-minimum today) at
a resonable pace, it's objectively bad.
Not saying ALL software has to run on low-end systems, 3D rendering and gaming of course need extra computing power. Web browsing, word processing, and emailing shouldn't need a damn super computer.
@jalefkowit I was using IRC on a 16MHz 386 with 4mb ram and did just fine, but my quad-core 3GHz PC with 24gb ram is really not able to deal with Discord very well
@jalefkowit Hasn't there been e-mail clients on computers with processors on the KILOHERTZ?
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised that GMail users have more lag regarding typing than me typing in the mutt session of my VPS.
Otherwise I would use a local email client (with lag on browsing email folders instead…) more.
@jalefkowit you can still run gmail without JavaScript then it’s not too heavy
@jalefkowit i hate everything being webpages. i started using thunderbird relatively recently and i cannot live without it
I had a fully functional email client on my frigging Palm Pilot. It had 8 megabytes of RAM and a 16 megahertz processor.
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