On Tue, 22 Oct 2013 23:20:52 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > Considering that rapiding took about 1200ms (ish - again, cold cache) > previously, adding even just 250ms is noticeable.
Please excuse my skepticism, but in my experience, that would probably mean in practice: ... rapiding took about 1200ms, plus or minus 200ms, plus 500ms if the system is under load, plus 800ms if the developer vagued out for a moment, plus 1900ms if he happened to be scratching an itch, plus 2700ms if the anti-virus happened to be scanning something, plus 4100ms if the dev decided this was a good time to take a sip of coffee, plus 437000ms if he needed to make the coffee first, plus 72000000ms if he was just taking a moment to check something on Reddit or answer an email... I don't have a lot of sympathy for this sort of micro-optimization of interactive software, where the random variation from run to run is often larger than the time being optimized, and where the human element is usually one or two orders of magnitude greater still. Yes, developers complain when they have to wait for the computer for half a second, or at least the one time in thirty that they *notice* that they're waiting. The other 29 times the computer is actually waiting for them. Still, I'm probably no better. Only instead of optimizing code, I tend to "optimize" travel time with "short cuts" that are guaranteed[1] to shave off a minute from a journey that takes thirty minutes, plus or minus six minutes. Show me a way to avoid waiting at traffic lights for 30s, and I'll take it, even if it means waiting for a break in the traffic at a Give Way sign for three minutes. So I shouldn't mock too much :-) You're right, of course, that 1/4 second is noticeable. I just find it hard to credit that it's *significant* in the circumstances you're describing. But I could be wrong. [1] Guarantee void in the presence of rain, fog, heavy winds, light winds, police radar traps, industrial action, civil protests, riots, wars, earthquakes, acts of God, or other cars. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
