[blarghyblarg]

so, I can't reply to your latest message because it's too far down but...

Let me just hop on my wifi and browse the web. Lets do it on a computer from 1999. 2000. 2001. 2002. 2003. 2004. 2005. 2006. 2007. 2008... etc, etc.

Why is it that every couple years from 2012 onwards, doing the same thing keeps taking longer, even with new hardware, without the same revolutions in quality and experience that came with that new software previously?

[blarghyblarg]

... you completely missed the relevant part with the "1999" part. The relevant part is the "2012" part. Things used to get better, do more, and faster. The last 15 years, the "do more" part has been less and less useful, and the "faster" part has turned into "slower" in a number of ways. Software engineers are relying on an increase in hardware performance to pick up their slack, and that line is running out quickly, and there will be many years ahead where we're cleaning up over a decade of laziness.

[vel0city]

> Things used to get better, do more, and faster.

I bought a newer PC because my older one from 2012 legit wasn't fast enough for what I wanted to do. It couldn't handle the VR applications I wanted to run, as its PCIe and RAM performance just wouldn't be up to the task to run the resolutions, texture qualities, and latencies I wanted. The newer one is miles ahead of the older hardware, and the applications I use are significantly better because of it.

But even then, from the other perspective of continuing to run similar-ish workloads using newer software, a lot of the other things continue to run the same experience-wise with slightly better features than when the software was new. When I first built that 2012 machine I installed the then brand-new Windows 8 on it. These days its running Windows 10. From a UX perspective it definitely feels faster than the OS it shipped with. Things like the new Terminal app are way better functionally than the old cmd.exe that used to be on it. I do demand more still from using VSCode with more plugins and what not than before while previously I used things like PyCharm more. I videochat, watch more streaming content on it than when I first had it, and it consumes far more animated GIFs and what not than it used to.

But in the end even with software supposedly getting more bloated and what not, its at least as snappy if not more than it was when it was brand new in 2012, other than the fact there's a whole new class of application I demand from my hardware.

So yeah, even today things are still getting better, doing more, and getting faster. Its not the extreme doubling or quadrupling of stuff like the 80s and 90s where things literally went from only text interfaces to GUIs to 3D apps, but there's still bleeding edge stuff that legit just takes more oomph than a box from 2012.

[vel0city]

Your 1999 computer supports WPA-2 out of the box? TLS 1.3?

> doing the same thing keeps taking longer

But I'm not doing the same things anymore. I'm doing a lot more. Things that aren't supported in that 1999 OS at all.