On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 7:21 PM, Gary C Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Sure, but rather than a useful tool, I would call measuring as the > > only possible base on which decide actual work that needs to be done. > > We could be refactoring and recoding for years and don't get any > > noticeable improvement, if we don't measure. > > Not that I want to start a CS grad war here, but with more than one foot in > the UI camp, I just wanted to request that more than just 'clock watching' > is done when selecting/implementing optomisations – though 'clock watching' > is a very good place to start. > > http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001058.html > > Catering for subjective human response is tricky, but once you've passed > some minimum threshold for utility** you can often win more hearts and minds > going for the subjective. A concrete example I'd point to is smooth > animation; activity switching with no nasty redraw flicker; pulsing icons > with no visible strobe; and frame/notification transitions that glide > smoothly onto the display giving the illusion of effortlessness.
I agree with this. We need to choose which code paths need to be optimized based on (subjective) user reports. But once we know there's a point where we are not giving enough feedback or where things just should be done faster, we should measure in order to set goals and choose the best approach. I don't think we have enough resources to rewrite things and find out later that we haven't improved user experience at all. > **how many hours must I have spent as a kid, excitedly waiting for some > software to load up off a magnetic tape, only to have it fail a fair portion > of the time and have to start the tape over again... and some folks here > moan about a ~6sec launch time for an activity. Though it's true to argue > that those old machines did have instant on, even if you were left to ponder > a BASIC prompt and spend the next 5min trying to tune your TV in to get a > clear signal :-) ;) Thanks, Tomeu _______________________________________________ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar