Stupid Slow: The Perceived Speed of Computers
愚蠢的慢：计算机的感知速度
Summer 2024 2024 年夏季
Computers today are faster than ever. They are faster at crunching numbers, they can handle more I/O and they can produce better quality graphics than anything previously produced. Even a dirt cheap modern microcontroller will run in circles around the home computers I grew up with. And yet, computers today often feel slow.
如今的计算机速度比以往任何时候都要快。它们在处理数字方面更快，能够处理更多的输入/输出，并且能够产生比以往任何时候都更好的图形质量。即使是价格低廉的现代微控制器，也会在我成长过程中使用的家用计算机周围运行得更快。然而，今天的计算机经常感觉很慢。
There's recently been some discussion about why computers feel slow today. Discussions like these return with regular intervals. Sometimes the focus is on bloat and resource glut, sometimes on the fact that despite ample hardware resources, software still runs slowly. The discussion has been going on for a while. One of its most famous installments is Niklaus Wirth's A Plea for Lean Software.
最近有一些关于为什么今天的计算机感觉慢的讨论。像这样的讨论定期出现。有时焦点是膨胀和资源过剩，有时是尽管硬件资源充足，软件仍然运行缓慢。这种讨论已经进行了一段时间。其中最著名的一次是尼古拉斯·维尔特的《为精简软件的呼吁》。
I agree with most of the critique and could easily write a very long and very bitter essay about the state of modern software. But I also think that abstraction is both too useful and too profitable to go away anytime soon. The key is balance, but balance is problematic in itself, because it isn't an absolute. One person's necessity is another person's bloat.
我同意大部分批评，并且可以轻松地写出一篇非常长且非常苦涩的关于现代软件状况的文章。但我也认为，抽象既太有用也太有利可图，不会很快消失。关键是平衡，但平衡本身是有问题的，因为它不是绝对的。一个人的必需品可能是另一个人的冗余。
Without delving further into the depths of this discussion - which is much more complex than one might think - I'd like to explore an argument often made about how computers used to feel much faster. That doesn't mean that a Commodore 64 can mine bitcoin at speeds comparable to a modern GPU, but rather that for proportional workloads, computers used to be perceived as much snappier than they presently are.
不深入探讨这个讨论的深层次——它比人们想象的要复杂得多——我想探讨一个经常提出的论点，即计算机过去感觉要快得多。这并不意味着 Commodore 64 可以以与现代 GPU 相当的速度挖掘比特币，而是说对于成比例的工作量，计算机过去被感知为比现在要快得多。
First of all, is this a reasonable claim? I personally think so. Most of the time computers are faster and better than ever. Most of the time. Sometimes they're very slow, and the problem is that they're stupid slow: there's no rhyme or reason to why they're so abysmal at certain things when they're so fast at others.
首先，这是一个合理的主张吗？我个人认为是这样的。大多数时候，计算机的速度比以往任何时候都要快，而且更好。大多数时候是这样。有时候它们非常慢，问题在于它们是愚蠢的慢：当它们在某些事情上非常快的时候，为什么在其他事情上却如此糟糕，这没有任何规律或理由。
Microsoft Teams, for example, will toss around sound and video for massive online meetings like there's no tomorrow, but feels like glue when switching between two different text chats. I can search for messages sent by a multitude of users across a span of several years, but when browsing the results, the UI is like treacle.
例如，Microsoft Teams 在进行大规模在线会议时，声音和视频的传输就像没有明天一样流畅，但在两个不同的文本聊天之间切换时却感觉像胶水一样粘滞。我可以搜索多个用户在几年间发送的消息，但在浏览结果时，用户界面就像糖浆一样粘稠。
Though it might be particularly prevalent in business software from megacorps, stupid slow is everywhere - such as in modern terminal emulators suffering from a capped frame rate. As a software developer, I can of course come up with a number of rationalizations for why things are the way they are. As a user, I'm just perpetually annoyed.
尽管这种情况在大型企业的商业软件中可能特别普遍，但“愚蠢的慢”无处不在——比如在现代终端仿真器中，由于帧率被限制而受到影响。作为一名软件开发者，我当然可以想出许多合理的理由来解释事情为何会是这样。但作为一名用户，我只是永远感到烦恼。
This feeling of perpetual annoyance comes from somewhere, and I believe it's increased over time. Input lag, for example, was something I hardly ever experienced during the 1990s, but it seems to have crept in everywhere since then.
这种持续不断的烦躁感来自某个地方，我相信它随着时间的推移而增加。例如，输入延迟是我在 20 世纪 90 年代几乎从未经历过的，但自那以后似乎无处不在。
So, are computers less snappy today?
那么，今天的电脑反应是不是变慢了？
Windows 95: Your Mileage May Vary
Windows 95：您的体验可能有所不同
Wirth wrote his plea for lean software in February of 1995, a couple of months before Microsoft released Windows 95. At this time, Microsoft had a solid position on the business software market, but their dominance was in no way as certain back then as it is now. In many ways, the roaring success of Windows 95 - along with ever-cheaper PC hardware - was what truly cemented Microsoft as the de facto monopoly in both business and home computing.
Wirth 在 1995 年 2 月撰写了他关于精简软件的呼吁，几个月后微软发布了 Windows 95。当时，微软在商业软件市场上有着稳固的地位，但他们的主导地位远没有现在那么确定。在很多方面，Windows 95 的巨大成功——以及日益便宜的个人电脑硬件——真正巩固了微软在商业和家庭计算领域的事实上的垄断地位。
I consider Windows 95 to be a watershed moment in more ways than one. It is, to me, what truly introduced the concept of bloat and poor performance to the world of consumer and small business software. Much business computing was, at this time, still taking place in DOS. A single tasking system, virtually unchanged since the early 1980s and mostly running text mode applications, will of course feel snappy - especially on a 486 machine.
我认为 Windows 95 在多个方面都是一个分水岭时刻。对我来说，它真正地将膨胀和性能不佳的概念引入了消费者和小型企业软件的世界。在这个时候，许多商业计算仍然在 DOS 中进行。一个自 20 世纪 80 年代初以来几乎没有变化的单任务系统，主要运行文本模式应用程序，当然会感觉反应迅速——尤其是在一台 486 机器上。
Windows 95 was a stark contrast to this. Above all, it's prone to swapping, which is catastrophic on an old mechanical IDE drive. MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari and other older systems never swapped, because they couldn't swap: you either had enough memory, or you didn't.
Windows 95 与此形成了鲜明对比。首先，它容易出现交换，这在旧的机械式 IDE 硬盘上是灾难性的。MS-DOS、Amiga、Atari 和其他旧系统从不交换，因为它们不能交换：你要么有足够的内存，要么没有。
It's hard to give a fair and unified assessment of the 1990s Windows experience. Many Windows 95 users have fond memories of it. For others, it will probably trigger a desire to assume fetal position and start sobbing uncontrollably. In hindsight, it was a decent desktop environment with a clear and coherent interface design. It was also a massive resource hog. Microsoft themselves recommended a 486 computer with 8 megabytes of RAM, but in reality, even this was a bit optimistic. Just a couple of years later, when Windows 98 was released, the average consumer machine was much better matched to the actual hardware requirements. The same can, honestly, be said for Linux paired with an ever so modest X11 window manager.
很难对 1990 年代的 Windows 体验给出一个公正和统一的评价。许多 Windows 95 用户对它有着美好的回忆。对其他人来说，它可能会引发一种想要蜷缩成胎儿姿势并开始无法控制地哭泣的欲望。事后看来，它是一个拥有清晰连贯界面设计的体面的桌面环境。它也是一个巨大的资源消耗者。微软自己推荐使用 486 计算机配备 8 兆字节的 RAM，但实际上，即使这样也有点过于乐观。就在几年后，当 Windows 98 发布时，普通消费级机器与实际硬件需求更加匹配。老实说，同样的情况也可以用于 Linux 搭配一个非常谦虚的 X11 窗口管理器。
Coming from the Amiga, Windows 95 felt like a bad joke even on a Pentium: slow, janky and constantly tormenting the hard drive with page file access. On the other hand, I was very fond of Windows NT 4 on my 333 MHz Pentium II with 64 megs of RAM: with a little bit of know-how and decent hardware specs, it was capable of producing a smooth and snappy experience. Once it had finished booting, of course.
来自 Amiga，即使在 Pentium 上，Windows 95 给人的感觉就像是一个糟糕的笑话：慢，不稳定，并且不断地用页面文件访问来折磨硬盘。另一方面，我非常喜欢我的 333 MHz Pentium II 上运行的 Windows NT 4，拥有 64 兆的 RAM：只要有一点知识并且硬件规格不错，它能够提供流畅和迅速的体验。当然，这是在它完成启动之后。
Das Boot 潜艇
Boot speed is one area where people often point to recent improvements. Indeed, both Windows and most desktop Linux systems have traditionally been slow booters, a trend that continued until relatively recently. It wasn't uncommon to have to wait several minutes for a Windows 95 PC to present a usable desktop.
启动速度是人们经常指出近期有所改进的一个领域。确实，无论是 Windows 还是大多数桌面 Linux 系统，传统上都是启动速度较慢的，这种趋势一直持续到相对较近的时期。对于一台 Windows 95 的电脑来说，通常需要等待几分钟才能呈现一个可用的桌面，这并不罕见。
In preparation for writing this text, I timed the boot process on two of my Linux PCs. One is a Thinkpad from 2022, with an Intel i7 CPU, 32 gigs of RAM and an SSD disk. It takes about 32 seconds to boot Ubuntu not to a usable desktop, but to the graphical login screen. The other is an Ideapad from 2012, with an Intel i5 CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and an SSD disk. It needs 25 seconds to boot Debian, again to the graphical login prompt. That's not bad, especially not considering that the same Ideapad took at least a minute to boot when it was running Windows 8 from a mechanical hard drive.
在准备写这篇文章之前，我计时了两台我的 Linux 个人电脑的启动过程。一台是 2022 年的 Thinkpad，配备了 Intel i7 处理器、32GB 的 RAM 和 SSD 硬盘。它启动 Ubuntu 到图形登录屏幕大约需要 32 秒，而不是一个可用的桌面。另一台是 2012 年的 IdeaPad，配备了 Intel i5 处理器、8GB 的 RAM 和 SSD 硬盘。它启动 Debian 到图形登录提示需要 25 秒。这已经不错了，特别是考虑到当这台 IdeaPad 运行 Windows 8 并使用机械硬盘时，至少需要一分钟才能启动。
On the other hand, I also timed my Amiga 600. It's got a 7 MHz 68000 CPU, 2 megs of RAM and a Compact Flash card acting as an IDE hard drive. It takes 17 seconds to cold boot into a fully functional desktop environment. A few seconds may have to be added for this to reflect a mechanical hard drive, but not many - the drive itself usually isn't the bottleneck, but rather the speed of the bus it's sitting on. I still remember timing my 14 MHz A1200 with a spinning IDE drive in 1994. It took around 20 seconds to boot - and that was with a lot of third party utilities being loaded.
另一方面，我也给我的 Amiga 600 计了时。它配备了一个 7 兆赫的 68000 CPU，2 兆的 RAM，以及一个作为 IDE 硬盘使用的 Compact Flash 卡。它需要 17 秒才能冷启动进入一个完全功能的桌面环境。可能需要再加上几秒钟来反映一个机械硬盘，但不会很多——硬盘本身通常不是瓶颈，而是它所连接的总线速度。我还记得在 1994 年给我的 14 兆赫 A1200 计时，它配备了一个旋转的 IDE 硬盘。它需要大约 20 秒才能启动——那还是加载了很多第三方实用程序的情况下。
Many Amigas were churned around from floppy, which warrants a comparison with this media as well. When using my own custom boot floppy (one with Deluxe Paint and a few other goodies), the Amiga 600 boots to a scaled down but functional desktop in around 30 seconds - still faster than the i7 Thinkpad. Similarly, an old IBM PC/AT cold boots to a DOS prompt in about 30 seconds, including spinning up the old 5.25" hard drive and doing a memory test. (Ironically, it thus boots slower the more RAM you've got.)
许多 Amigas 都是通过软盘启动的，这也使得有必要将其与这种媒介进行比较。使用我自己的定制启动软盘（一个带有 Deluxe Paint 和其他一些好东西的软盘），Amiga 600 在大约 30 秒内启动到一个缩小但功能齐全的桌面——仍然比 i7 Thinkpad 快。类似地，一台旧的 IBM PC/AT 在大约 30 秒内冷启动到 DOS 提示符，包括启动旧的 5.25 英寸硬盘并进行内存测试。（讽刺的是，因此它拥有的 RAM 越多，启动就越慢。）
I could time my Commodore 64 as well, but that would be rather pointless. Old 8-bit home computers will present a Basic prompt almost immediately after being switched on. Users of Atari's ST line of computers will have a similar experience: their whole OS resided in ROM.
我也可以给我的 Commodore 64 计时，但那将毫无意义。旧的 8 位家用计算机在开机后几乎立即会显示一个 BASIC 提示符。使用 Atari 的 ST 系列计算机的用户会有类似的体验：他们的整个操作系统都位于 ROM 中。
Is it unfair to compare an 8-bit machine or Atari with the system in ROM to a modern computer loading a large and complex OS from disk? Perhaps - but such distinctions don't matter from a user perspective. A modern PC is roughly about a bajillion times faster in every possible way, and they still boot slower than an old home computer.
将 8 位机器或雅达利与 ROM 中的系统与现代计算机从磁盘加载大型复杂操作系统进行比较是否不公平？也许——但这些区别从用户的角度来看并不重要。现代个人电脑在各个方面的速度大约快了十亿倍，但它们启动速度仍然比旧家用电脑慢。
The Gaming Pitfall 游戏陷阱
I'm not a gamer, and certainly not a modern one. My experience with games released after roughly 1995 consists mostly of casual PS3 gaming, short snippets seen on Youtube and brief glances over the shoulder of gamer friends. One thing I've noticed, though, is that my memory of game performance are wildly distorted by time. Chances are that if you played Sim City on the Amiga 500, Elite II on the Amiga 1200 or Doom on a 486SX machine, you're going to remember it as being much faster than it actually was. A mix of tempered expectations and excitement about something new has likely erased the low framerate from your mind - at least this has, time and time again, turned out to be the case for me.
我不是游戏玩家，当然也不是现代的游戏玩家。我对 1995 年之后发布游戏的经验主要来自于偶尔的 PS3 休闲游戏、在 YouTube 上看到的短片段以及偶尔瞥见的游戏朋友的游戏画面。不过，我注意到，我对游戏性能的记忆被时间严重扭曲了。如果你在 Amiga 500 上玩过《模拟城市》，在 Amiga 1200 上玩过《精英 II》，或者在 486SX 机器上玩过《毁灭战士》，你可能会记得它比实际运行速度快得多。混合了对新事物的期待和兴奋，可能已经从你的记忆中抹去了低帧率——至少对我来说，这种情况一次又一次地发生了。
Try to find some Youtube footage of 1990s games being played on original hardware. Chances are you'll be unpleasantly surprised. When it comes to pure gaming performance, modern machines are leagues ahead of whatever we grew up with.
尝试找一些在原始硬件上玩的 1990 年代游戏的 YouTube 视频。你可能会不愉快地感到惊讶。当涉及到纯粹的游戏性能时，现代机器远远超过了我们成长时所使用的设备。
Serious Software 严肃软件
Another area where modern computers shine is loading native programs. Even on my 2019 Acer Swift 1 with a Celeron CPU, Gimp, Abiword, GNumeric and Firefox start in, at most, a matter of seconds.
现代计算机在加载原生程序方面同样表现出色。即使在我 2019 年的 Acer Swift 1 笔记本电脑上，配备赛扬处理器，Gimp、Abiword、GNumeric 和 Firefox 这些程序最多只需几秒钟就能启动。
On my Amiga 600, Deluxe Paint takes roughly 12 seconds to load from hard drive. The wait is of course even longer when loading it from floppy. It's not in any way unbearable - but it's a clear win for modern machines.
在我的 Amiga 600 上，Deluxe Paint 从硬盘加载大约需要 12 秒。当然，从软盘加载时等待时间会更长。这并不是无法忍受的——但这显然是现代机器的明显优势。
As for program usage, a machine as cheap as a Raspberry Pi 3B will tackle workloads completely unimaginable on the Amiga. Though it pains me to admit it, even proportional workloads on the Amiga can at times feel sluggish. Deluxe Paint, for example, will happily spend seconds when flood filling a large, complex shape. Working with large brushes can at times feel sticky and cumbersome. Navigating large directories in Workbench - the Amiga's desktop environment - can be excruciatingly slow. Even scrolling text can be a bit of a bore, depending on the program - unlike old PCs, the Amiga doesn't have a hardware text mode. This, however, changes drastically on my Amiga 1200, sporting a 14 MHz 68020 CPU. Unsurprisingly, the roughly doubled speed offers a much smoother experience, which is also why it's my preferred workstation for retro tasks.
至于程序使用，像树莓派 3B 这样便宜的机器能够处理在 Amiga 上完全无法想象的工作量。虽然承认这一点让我感到痛苦，但即使是 Amiga 上成比例的工作量有时也会感觉迟钝。例如，Deluxe Paint 在填充一个大型复杂形状时，会愉快地花费几秒钟。使用大画笔有时感觉粘滞且笨重。在 Amiga 的工作台——Amiga 的桌面环境中——导航大型目录可能会极其缓慢。根据程序的不同，滚动文本甚至可能有点乏味——与旧 PC 不同，Amiga 没有硬件文本模式。然而，在我的 Amiga 1200 上，这种情况发生了巨大的变化，它配备了 14 MHz 的 68020 CPU。毫不奇怪，速度大约翻倍提供了更加流畅的体验，这也是它成为我进行复古任务的首选工作站的原因。
One thing that always feels fast, including on the Amiga 600, is task switching and user input. I've never experienced input lag frustration on the Amiga. Multitasking between several complex full screen applications is instantaneous - even when simultaneously replaying a funky tune with large sound samples, including vocals.
有一件事情总是感觉很快，包括在 Amiga 600 上，那就是任务切换和用户输入。我从未在 Amiga 上体验过输入延迟的挫败感。在几个复杂的全屏应用程序之间进行多任务处理是即时的——即使同时重放包含大型声音样本（包括人声）的时髦曲调。
Gimp on my Swift 1 does feel snappy, at least for my typical tasks of cropping, scaling and retouching. And Grafx 2, a pixel painter inspired by Deluxe Paint, positively flies. Of course, you'd expect an Amiga-sized workload on a modern PC to be, as my old chemistry teacher was fond of saying when pouring something toxic down the sink, "a fart in outer space".
在我的 Swift 1 上使用 Gimp 感觉非常迅速，至少对于我典型的任务，如裁剪、缩放和修饰来说是这样的。而 Grafx 2，一个受 Deluxe Paint 启发的像素画家，运行得非常流畅。当然，你会期望在现代 PC 上运行 Amiga 级别的工作量，就像我老化学老师在倒有毒物质进下水道时喜欢说的，“在太空中放屁”。
For my very modest word processing and spreadsheet needs, the Amiga is perfectly comparable to native software on a modern PC. Alas, a lot of PC software today isn't native. Few popular sites or "web apps" (Youtube, Discord, Slack, Twitch, Netflix) feel even remotely snappy on my Swift 1. Many are slow even on the i7 Thinkpad, including ones running locally as Electron incarnations. They often fall into the category of stupid slow, too: It's not video replay that's troublesome on Netflix - it's browsing for something to watch that delivers a janky, choppy, frustrating experience on my Swift 1. Similarly, Slack - a chat program - often makes the Thinkpad's fan spin up when all of three people are having a vigorous plaintext conversation.
对于我非常有限的文字处理和电子表格需求，Amiga 与现代 PC 上的原生软件完全可比。唉，今天许多 PC 软件并不是原生的。许多流行网站或“网络应用”（YouTube、Discord、Slack、Twitch、Netflix）在我的 Swift 1 上感觉甚至远非流畅。许多应用即使在 i7 Thinkpad 上运行也很缓慢，包括作为 Electron 化身运行的本地应用。它们通常属于愚蠢的慢：在 Netflix 上，麻烦的不是视频回放，而是浏览要看的内容，这在我的 Swift 1 上提供了一个不稳定、断断续续、令人沮丧的体验。同样，Slack——一个聊天程序——经常在三个人进行激烈的纯文本对话时让 Thinkpad 的风扇转动起来。
It's the Speed, Stupid
速度才是关键，笨蛋
Most of the time though, an entry-level laptop from ten years ago can do video editing, 3D graphics, compilation, text processing and everything else we use computers for much faster and much better than any old home computer ever could. It'd be strange if this wasn't the case - clock speeds and memory sizes have increased a hundred- or thousandfold depending on what systems we're comparing.
尽管如此，大多数时候，十年前的入门级笔记本电脑可以进行视频编辑、3D 图形处理、编译、文本处理以及我们使用计算机进行的所有其他工作，速度更快，效果也比任何旧家用电脑都要好得多。如果不是这样，那将很奇怪——时钟速度和内存大小根据我们比较的系统增加了一百倍或一千倍。
The big difference, I think, is that home computers never felt stupid slow. Desktop Publishing on an Amiga 600? Please God, no! I've actually tried it. Text reflows are like Chinese water torture. Even handling scalable vector typefaces is such a tedium that Commodore included a tool in AmigaOS for converting them to fixed size bitmap fonts. Loading a modestly-sized JPEG image? Maybe go grab a cup of coffee.
我认为，最大的不同是家用电脑从未感觉过愚蠢的慢。在 Amiga 600 上进行桌面出版？请上帝，不要！我实际上已经尝试过了。文本重新流动就像中国的水刑。即使是处理可缩放的矢量字体也是如此乏味，以至于 Commodore 在 AmigaOS 中包含了一个工具，用于将它们转换为固定大小的位图字体。加载一个中等大小的 JPEG 图像？也许去拿杯咖啡吧。
There's no surprise here, though. These are computationally intensive activities which will really stretch the capacity of a 7 MHz CPU. And while waiting for that JPEG file to load or a large archive to decompress, I could pass the time by playing a few levels of Sokoban on the same machine. The (admittedly primitive) game still felt responsive, because the Amiga wasn't stupid slow.
这里没有什么可惊讶的。这些是计算密集型活动，将真正考验一个 7 兆赫 CPU 的处理能力。而在等待 JPEG 文件加载或大型归档文件解压时，我可以在同一台机器上玩几关 Sokoban 游戏来打发时间。这款游戏（虽然确实原始）仍然感觉反应灵敏，因为 Amiga 并不慢得愚蠢。
While Windows 95 surely had the capacity for being slow, it was typically consistently slow. If your computer wasn't up to the task of running it, it was a magnificent dumpster fire. But at least it was a dumpster fire all the time: a not-so-subtle way of telling you to upgrade your machine.
尽管 Windows 95 确实有运行缓慢的能力，但它通常总是保持一致的慢速。如果你的计算机不足以运行它，那它就是一个壮观的垃圾堆火灾。但至少它总是一个垃圾堆火灾：一种不太微妙的方式告诉你需要升级你的机器。
Indeed, why is Teams so slow when switching between two text chats? Why can't my Thinkpad handle a bit of Slack flooding when similar activity was perfectly performant in IRC on my old Amiga 1200? Why is Netflix so crappy at browsing titles when it can replay video perfectly fine even on an aging Celeron machine? Why is a contemporary terminal emulator sluggish and capped at 40 FPS? Why is Youtube slow at loading a list of videos when the actual replay is perfectly fine, and why is text input lagging behind in so many programs?
确实，为什么在两个文本聊天之间切换时 Teams 这么慢？为什么我的 Thinkpad 在 Slack 上遇到大量信息时处理不了，而在我旧的 Amiga 1200 上使用 IRC 时却表现得非常流畅？为什么 Netflix 在浏览标题时表现得如此糟糕，即使在一台老旧的赛扬机器上也能完美地重播视频？为什么现代的终端仿真器反应迟钝，而且帧率被限制在 40 FPS？为什么 YouTube 在加载视频列表时速度慢，而实际播放却完全没问题，以及为什么在这么多程序中文本输入会落后？
The answer is, in short, that we're running a lot of bad software. That's frustrating in its own right. What's even more frustrating is that we all know, deep down, that our machines are capable of something else.
简而言之，答案是我们运行了很多糟糕的软件。这本身就令人沮丧。更令人沮丧的是，我们内心深处都知道，我们的机器有能力做到别的。
Our old home computers felt faster because they were only slow at the things we'd expect them to be slow at. Today, it seems to be other way around.
我们的旧家用电脑感觉更快，因为它们只在我们预期它们会慢的事情上慢。今天，情况似乎正好相反。