Nitter thread from Julio Merino on application responsiveness in early 2000’s Windows computers versus modern Windows computers. Videos available in linked thread.
Please remind me how we are moving forward. In this video, a machine from the year ~2000 (600MHz, 128MB RAM, spinning-rust hard disk) running Windows NT 3.51. Note how incredibly snappy opening apps is.
Now look at opening the same apps on Windows 11 on a Surface Go 2 (quad-core i5 processor at 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, SSD). Everything is super sluggish.
For those thinking that the comparison was unfair, here is Windows 2000 on the same 600MHz machine. Both are from the same year, 1999. Note how the immediacy is still exactly the same and hadn’t been ruined yet.
I remember a Mastodon thread where this same issue was brought to the table. The thread talked about how before there were classes of bugs that would mess up RAM. Today, we eliminated a whole class of bugs by checking RAM. That is why our software is less snappy.
I wonder to what extent zero abstraction languages like Rust could make software much snappier by minimizing memory-related problems at compilation time rather than run time.