Where Have All The Cycles Gone?

Mai writes "Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. This article takes a look at where all the precious processor time and memory are going."

Comments

On complexity, code bloat and user interface

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Seebach points out that "computers are, in fact, doing more than they used to. A lot of the things computers do are fairly subtle, happening beneath the radar of a user's perception. Many functions are automatic and, as discussed in last month's column, you could probably do without some of them."

This recalls an analogy drawn by a recent Economist article. Unlike most automobile analogies popular among Slashbots, this one is actually rather appropriate: "By the 1930s, ... the car had become more user-friendly and ready for the mass market. ... [T]he makers' increasing skill at hiding the technology from drivers ... meant that cars got hugely more complex on the inside, because most of the tasks that had previously been carried out by drivers now had to be done automatically. This presented drivers with a radically simplified surface, or 'interface' in today's jargon."

Given this lesson drawn from history, I disagree with Seebach's conclusion that "the worst is probably over" in terms of code bloat and complexity. Computers still have a long way to go before they can approach the ease of use and stability we demand of every other consumer appliance in our lives.

The aforementioned article requires a paid subscription to view, so in the interests of convenience, I'll reproduce it here.

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SURVEY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Now you see it, now you don't

Oct 28th 2004
From The Economist print edition

[Image]

To be truly successful, a complex technology needs to "disappear"

THERE has never been anything quite like information technology before, but there have certainly been other complex technologies that needed simplifying. Joe Corn, a history professor at Stanford University, believes that the first example of a complex consumer technology was clocks, which arrived in the 1820s. Clocks were sold with user manuals, which featured entries such as "How to erect and regulate your device". When sewing machines appeared in the 1840s, they came with 40-page manuals full of detailed instructions. Discouragingly, it took two generations until a trade publication was able to declare in the 1880s that "every woman now knows how to use one."

At about the same time, the increase in technological complexity gathered pace. With electricity came new appliances, such as the phonograph, invented in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison. According to Mr Norman, the computer-design guru, despite Mr Edison's genius for engineering he was a marketing moron, and his first phonograph was all but unusable (in fact, initially he had no particular uses in mind for it). For decades, Mr Edison fiddled with his technology, always going for the most impressive engineering solution. For instance, he chose cylinders over discs as the recording medium. It took a generation and the entry of a new rival, Emile Berliner, to prepare the phonograph for the mass market by making it easier to use (introducing discs instead of cylinders) and giving it a purpose (playing music). Mr Edison's companies foundered whereas Mr Berliner's thrived, and phonographs became ubiquitous, first as "gramophones" or "Victrolas", the name of Mr Berliner's model, and ultimately as "record players".

Another complex technology, with an even bigger impact, was the car. The first cars, in the early 1900s, were "mostly a burden and a challenge", says Mr Corn. Driving one required skill in lubricating various moving parts, sending oil manually to the transmission, adjusting the spark plug, setting the choke, opening the throttle, wielding the crank and knowing what to do when the car broke down, which it invariably did. People at the time hired chauffeurs, says Mr Corn, mostly because they needed to have a mechanic at hand to fix the car, just as firms today need IT staff and

A few things

[macklin01]

Some good things that have eaten more memory and cycles (all of which have improved the user experience, as opposed to what the summary states):

1 Programs that check your work as you go (e.g.: autocalculate on spreadsheets)

2 More help dialogs, things watching for cameras, and whatnot to smooth the user experience.

3 More use of IM and other software in the background much of the time.

4 Services running so that it's faster to sort and search files, open your favorite programs, etc.

In short, lots of stuff running to make your experience smoother, even if it doesn't look like it's doing much more.

Some bad things:

1 More viruses, etc.

2 The mandantory virus scanner that has to run in the background all the time because of (1)

3 All the crap adware that installed more than it used to be.

These are just a few of the trends I can think of . -- Paul