[rkomorn]

I find it hard to disagree with this (sadly).

I do feels things in general are more "snappy" at the OS level, but once you get into apps (local or web), things don't feel much better than 30 years ago.

The two big exceptions for me are video and gaming.

I wonder how people who work in CAD, media editing, or other "heavy" workloads etc, feel.

[throwup238]

> I wonder how people who work in CAD, media editing, or other "heavy" workloads etc, feel.

I’d let you know how I feel but I’m too busy restarting Solidworks after its third crash of the day. I pay thousands a year for the privilege.

[rkomorn]

Well that's sad to hear. Also kinda makes me glad I didn't wander down the path of learning Solidworks during the pandemic.

[throwup238]

It's usually pretty stable for a while. It's when you get into very complex parts and assembles that it starts to really show problems. (You'll still see some crashes learning though).

[ikr678]

Moving data for 'heavy' workflows into the cloud is the most common performance bottleneck I see.

[co_king_3]

> I wonder how people who work in CAD, media editing, or other "heavy" workloads etc, feel.

I would assume (generally speaking) that CAD and video editing applications are carefully designed for efficiency because it's an important differentiator between different applications in the same class.

In my experience, these applications are some of the most exciting to use, because I feel like I'm actually able to leverage the power of my hardware.

IMO the real issue are bloated desktop apps like Slack, Discord, Spotify, or Claude's TUI, which consume massive amounts of resources without doing much beyond displaying text or streaming audio files.

[upboundspiral]

The problem with CAD is that mechanical engineering is still deeply proprietary, especially up and including the software stacks.

There is basically no "open source" in mechanical engineering. So you are relegated to super heavy legacy applications that coast by through their integrations with other proprietary tools. Solidworks is much heavier then FreeCAD but FreeCAD didn't have integrations with simulation tools, with CAM software, used a different geometry engine than industry standard, etc, so when a company tried to turn FreeCAD into a product they failed.

The only open source one sees in mechanical engineering comes out of academia, which while interesting, faces the problem that once the research funds dry up or the project finishes the software is dumped into the open in hard to find places, and is not further developed.

I remain hopeful in the potential for open source, I believe that to have a truly accessible and innovative industry a greater level of openness is needed, but it is yet coming.

I think CAD is a good place to start, as it is not a space where lots of hidden and closely guarded tricks are needed like in Finite Element Analysis. For personal uses FreeCAD is getting there. Snappier than Solidworks, but the workflow layout needs some work.

I am also looking at projects such as https://zoo.dev. In mapping the design 1to1 to code (while keeping gui workflow as well) I think they have a real chance of offering enough value that new companies will be interested in trying out their approach. It opens the doors to automation analysis, and generation that while possible with something like Solidworks is cumbersome and not well documented.