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Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?

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752 points dceddia | 3 comments | 23 Jun 23 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.641s | source
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realo ◴[23 Jun 23 15:28 UTC] No.36448198[source]▶
At the speed of light, photons travel about 1 foot per nanosecond.

In other words, a modern 2 GHz processor would have time to execute at least one instruction between the time photons leave the screen, and the moment they reach your retina. Probably more than one, with multicore pipelined processors.

And yet today we wait and wait and wait for Windows to open a simple program.

Indeed... what happened?

replies(2): >>36449152 #>>36489235 #
1. masswerk ◴[23 Jun 23 16:31 UTC] No.36449152[source]▶
Let's assume, 10 milliseconds = 1 CPU year. (If dogs can have their own years, why not CPUs, as well?) So, there you sit, waiting hundreds and hundreds of years…
replies(1): >>36449885 #
2. okwhateverdude ◴[23 Jun 23 17:31 UTC] No.36449885[source]▶
I already struggle with waiting for the rube goldberg-esque build-deploy-to-dev loop at my current gig. Thanks for the additional disgust.
replies(1): >>36450238 #
3. masswerk ◴[23 Jun 23 18:01 UTC] No.36450238[source]▶
I hear, the British Heath Robinson version (by Tommy Flowers) was quite fast… ;-)