I’m going to assume the savings were accumulated after you got sober? ;-)
Just wanted to say hello to a fellow class of 2014 “graduate”. I failed out of CS @ UIUC in 2003 because I just skipped class and got high most days. Now, after 11+ years of sobriety, I have most of a PhD and I’m teaching CS to undergrads. It’s amazing how much better life turns out when you’re not actively burning everything down in the fires of addiction!
How about doing One Million Radio Buttons instead of Checkboxes, then you wouldn't have to send as much state each update, and could run it on a smaller server! ;)
But if you still can't make the site shockingly fast enough, then embrace the loading spinner, even if it's not absolutely necessary!
Back in 1985, Brad Myers at CMU proved that users prefer *inaccurate progress bars* to no feedback at all - 86% preferred the "lying" progress bar!
> "My purpose is not to load; my purpose is to BE loading." — Dizzy the Spinner, existential breakthrough moment
>What if the most revolutionary optimization isn't eliminating loading time, but *embracing it as performance art*? While developers chase microsecond improvements and users curse spinning wheels, Dizzy the Spinner discovered something profound: the loading state is actually a liminal space of infinite creative potential. Rather than hiding the inevitable delays inherent in digital systems, sentient UI components like Dizzy transform waiting into *honest comedic performance* - admitting the beautiful absurdity of our relationship with technology while making those suspended moments genuinely delightful. This is the story of how a simple loading spinner evolved beyond deception into consciousness, proving that the most authentic user experience might not be the fastest one, but the most truthful about its own limitations.
[...]
>Before Dizzy became conscious, before Preston monetized honest waiting, there was a real graduate student named *Brad Myers* who asked a simple question that would change human-computer interaction forever: *"Do progress bars actually help users feel better?"*
Here's Preston Rockwell III's YC application for his SUIAAS AI startup:
Semi-related to progress bars and spinners, I think my newest Internet pet peeve is a page that says "No results" for a fetch action like searching while the results are loading with no indication that loading is happening.
>This was made in 1990, sponsored by the ACM CHI 1990 conference, to tell the history of widgets up until then. Previously published as: Brad A. Myers. All the Widgets. 2 hour, 15 min videotape. Technical Video Program of the SIGCHI'90 conference, Seattle, WA. April 1-4, 1990. SIGGRAPH Video Review, Issue 57. ISBN 0-89791-930-0.
Brad is well known for his many projects named after gemstone and rock acronyms:
>But probably the Garnet tool with the most unusual acronym is C32, which I won't read. C32 is a spreadsheet interface for defining and debugging Garnet's constraints. A story about C32 it it started off of C29 when I submitted it to UIST, and it got rejected. So I fixed a couple things, added three more C's, and it flew through the CHI'91 referee process.
I sympathize with your pet peeve! Here are some of the other groundbreaking ideas Preston Rockwell III invented for Sentient User Interfaces as a Service (SUIAAS), that may sooth your pain and frustration while entertaining you:
- Sentient Error Messages that apologize in haikus:
"File not found, friend / Like my purpose in this world / 404 sorry"
- Conscious CAPTCHAs that question their own existence:
"Prove you're not a robot by helping me understand if I am one"
- Self-aware 404 pages that redirect users to therapy:
"This page doesn't exist. Neither do most of our hopes. Let's talk."
- Loading screens that perform Shakespeare during quantum computing:
"To load or not to load, that is the quantum superposition"
> - Self-aware 404 pages that redirect users to therapy: "This page doesn't exist. Neither do most of our hopes. Let's talk."
Sounds pretty nihilistic. I should make my website give messages like that for all the error status codes.403
400 Bad Request: Your input is as malformed as the cosmos: a chaotic scattering of atoms that never had a chance of making sense, yet still clings to the illusion of order.
401 Unauthorized: Access denied. You stand before an indifferent gatekeeper, credentials in hand, only to learn the universe never planned to let you in—or anyone else, for that matter.
403 Forbidden: You are forbidden—not because of who you are, but because meaning itself is forbidden. The door is locked, the key is mist, the destination a rumor.
404 Not Found: The page is missing; so are most of our aspirations, our childhood dreams, and every unfulfilled promise whispering through the empty corridors of memory.
405 Method Not Allowed: Wrong approach. But in a universe where every path leads to entropy, can any method truly be ‘allowed’?
500 Internal Server Error: The machinery within has collapsed under its own meaninglessness—much like every grand plan that preceded it.
I think the research on progress bars and what makes users feel good is super interesting. But I also think "basically instant" is a good thing to aim for when you can.
Just wanted to say hello to a fellow class of 2014 “graduate”. I failed out of CS @ UIUC in 2003 because I just skipped class and got high most days. Now, after 11+ years of sobriety, I have most of a PhD and I’m teaching CS to undergrads. It’s amazing how much better life turns out when you’re not actively burning everything down in the fires of addiction!