This is what I and many other programmers have done (not the removal, but fake delays), because it improves user experience, actually:
1.When the user clicks a button that should take long in their mind (like uncompressing a zip file etc) but is actually fast, it might seem like something is wrong and it didn’t work
2.When the user transitions between layouts of the application, if it loads everything too fast it will look too abrupt, a fake delay will be made here if a transition animation is not possible/doesn’t fit
I was working on an enterprise web application, there was a legacy system that everyone hated and we replaced it with a more modern one.
We got a ticket from our PO to introduce a 30 sec delay to one of our buttons. It sounded insane, but he explained that L1 support got too many calls and emails where users thought said button was broken.
It wasn’t, they were just used to having to wait up to 5 minutes for it to finish doing its thing, so they didn’t notice when it did it instantly.
We gradually removed that delay, 10 seconds each month, and our users were very happy.
next, you’ll tell people the door close button in elevators doesn’t actually work.
I’m pretty sure it’s either a myth (that it doesn’t work) or some US-centric thing, because when I worked as a delivery guy, I used to go through probably hundreds of different elevators in high-density residential buildings, and most of them have doors that stay open very long to allow baby strollers and heavy appliances to be placed inside, and on pretty much all of these the door closing button works, immediately closing the door
Most elevators I’ve seen in the US have a minimum time for the doors to be open. Hitting the closed button won’t do anything, unless you had hit the open door button to keep them open past that time. So if you hit the open door button right before the doors closed to let someone in and they tell you they are actually going down, you can hit the close button and it’ll immediately close.
It’s entirely configurable, and up to the building management. While there is likely a “local default” that doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.
The door close button does nothing in Canada but in the middle east it actually works immediately. I was shocked when I tried in the middle east I used to just do it for fun in Canada.
In Germany it also works as expected. I remember that we always pressed it like crazy in university when the elevator was already very full, so it didn’t even open when it stopped before the ground level.
Works in 90% of the elevators I take in Canada 🤷♂️
Maybe I’m unlucky
They work in Canada but not America
Is there a secret flag to disable the delays? Would be kinda awesome to have for “thosa in the know”
Most probably not, at least in my programs I’ve never made a flag, because my delays are usually no more than 3 seconds anyway
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Buys Ryzen 9
“Damn! Why is it so fast?”
The CPU, working tirelessly to ensure your queries completed in just under 100 million cycles (assuming 1 thread and 4Ghz):
“Am I a joke to you?”
There was a financial calculator from HP that they made for decades. The newer ones were so fast doing large mortgage calculations that the users didn’t trust it, so they intentionally slowed down the results.
First reason is just poor UI design. I’m sure there are billion ways to indicate a successful action even if it was immediate.
Imagine asking a person a math question like what 2 times 3 times 7 is (without you knowing the answer). If that person immediately goes like „42“ you‘ll most likely think that it’s a joke response and the person doesn’t take your question seriously. If however that person takes a few seconds to think you are much more likely to believe the answer.
With your overly simple example I would totally believe that person. With harder problems perhaps. Besides, machines are not human.
My kid got a job at some place and was browsing through an update script for a customer. There were a bunch of random-seeming
sleepandprintfstatements. He couldn’t make sense of it, so asked one of the more senior techs what was the deal. It was as you said. They had updated software/hardware at a customer’s site and the backups were going so quick that the customer was getting pissed because “There is NO way this is doing in 10 seconds what should take several minutes.” OK, the customer gets what they want. A judicious sprinkling of delays and meaningless messages. The 10 second update now takes a little over 4 minutes and the customer was happy again.Oops we fixed it
the customer was getting pissed because “There is NO way this is doing in 10 seconds what should take several minutes.”
Shouldn’t they have access to the backup location as well so that they can verify that it’s fine?
They the customer? I think you’re overly optimistic about people. They the company my kid works for? Yeah, they have remote access to everything.
As CS major, 1 bothers me so much.
I see it all the time especially on calculator sites.
Used to work with a guy who would put 3 second sleeps after every line in our Jenkins file. He would then say how he’s so busy because he has no time when he’s always waiting for builds to run.
Chris, everyone knows what you were doing.
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This is an old strategy described in this article from 2008: The Speedup Loop
I was just about to share that article. Definitely worth the read for anyone wondering!
“That is genius” - Elon Musk
uh oh you need to buy the new iphone because the current update makes your old iphone too slow to use.😉
You have to create your database without any indexes, then you can add them later for a speed boost
Users hate this one weird trick.
The trick is to have users in the first place if your new tool sucks due to slowness.
yeah, oldest trick in the book
For even better payoff reduce the sleep by 100-500 per major update
Who needs to add Sleep calls when you can just do your shitty every day naive implementation and let your future colleagues fix your mess.
