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  33. Brand, Stewart 4
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  37. brutalism 7
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  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
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  60. code 20
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  67. complexity 11
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  72. Corbusier, Le 13
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  74. craft 66
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  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
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  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
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  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
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  242. Müller, Boris 7
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  244. names 11
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  246. nature 51
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performance

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  • It begins with craft

    Something strange is happening in the world of software: It’s slowly getting worse. Not all software, but a lot of it. It’s becoming more sluggish, less responsive, and subtly less reliable than it was a few years ago.

    In some ways this is hyperbole. Objectively, we’ve never been able to do so much, so easily with our smartphones and laptops and tablets. We’ve never pushed more data between more places more readily. But while the insidious “worseness” I mention falls only in part on the engineering side of things, it falls harder on the more subjective, craft side of things, making it all the more worrisome.

    Why should we care about this? Because the majority of our waking hours take place within the confines of applications. A truth recently amplified by the covid pandemic.

    And I believe software used by millions (if not billions) has a moral duty to elevate the emotional and intellectual qualities of its users. That elevation begins with craft.

    Craig Mod, Brilliant Hardware in the Valley of the Software Slump
    craigmod.com
    1. ​​Apps Getting Worse​​
    • performance
    • craft
    • software
  • If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to make it faster?

    "If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?" [Jobs] asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Max, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year. "Larry was suitably impressed, and a few weeks later he came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster," Atkinson recalled. "Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture."

    Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
    • performance
    • motivation
  • Why aim small?

    Why aim small in this era of fast computers with plenty of RAM? A number of reasons, but the ones that are most important to me are:

    • Fewer moving parts. It’s easier to create more robust systems and to fix things when they do go wrong.
    • Small software is faster. Fewer bits to download and clog your computer’s memory.
    • Reduced power consumption. This is important on a “save the planet” scale, but also on the very local scale of increasing the battery life of your phone and laptop.
    • The light, frugal aesthetic. That’s personal, I know, but as you’ll see, I’m not alone.
    Ben Hoyt, The small web is beautiful
    benhoyt.com
    • performance
    • systems
    • conservation
  • The Website Obesity Crisis

    A Talk by Maciej Cegłowski
    idlewords.com
    1. ​​The Taft Test​​
    • www
    • code
    • performance
  • A Management Maturity Model for Performance

    An Article by Alex Russell
    infrequently.org

    For executives that value:

    • Revenue
    • Engagement
    • Design
    • Accessibility

    Performance is rarely the single determinant of product success, but it can be the margin of victory. Improving latency and reducing variance allows teams to test other product hypotheses with less noise. A senior product leader recently framed a big performance win as "creating space that allows us to be fallible in other areas."

    • performance
  • Reflections on Software Performance

    An Article by Nelson Elhage
    blog.nelhage.com
    • Performance is a feature
    • Performance changes how users use software
    • Performance needs effort throughout a project’s lifecycle
    • Architecture strongly impacts performance
    • Performance isn’t just about hot spots
    • Performant foundations simplify architecture

    …we underrate performance when designing and building software. We have become accustomed to casually giving up factors of two or ten or more with our choices of tools and libraries, without asking if the benefits are worth it.

    • performance
    • software
  • Add Less

    An Article by Cassidy Williams
    css-tricks.com

    A few people have asked me what I did to make this [website] so fast.

    The answer is: nothing.
    I just didn't add anything to make it slow.

    I kept it simple.
    The pages are pre-rendered.
    The CSS is inlined.
    I didn't add unnecessary javascript.
    The work was done before you got there.

    Your websites start fast until you add too much to make them slow. Do you need any framework at all? Could you do what you want natively in the browser? Would doing it without a framework at all make your site lighter, or actually heavier in the long run as you create or optimize what others have already done?

    • performance
    • minimalism

    Quote from Phil Hawksworth on Twitter.

  • Site performance is potentially the most important metric

    A Fragment by Kealan Parr
    css-tricks.com

    Site performance is potentially the most important metric. The better the performance, the better chance that users stay on a page, read content, make purchases, or just about whatever they need to do. A 2017 study by Akamai says as much when it found that even a 100ms delay in page load can decrease conversions by 7% and lose 1% of their sales for every 100ms it takes for their site to load which, at the time of the study, was equivalent to $1.6 billion if the site slowed down by just one second.

    • performance
    • ux
    • metrics
  • Website Response Times

    An Article by Jakob Nielsen
    www.nngroup.com

    Users really care about speed in interaction design...A snappy user experience beats a glamorous one, for the simple reason that people engage more with a site when they can move freely and focus on the content instead of on their endless wait.

    • 0.1 seconds gives the feeling of instantaneous response. This level of responsiveness is essential to support the feeling of direct manipulation.
    • 1 second keeps the user's flow of thought seamless.
    • 10 seconds keeps the user's attention. A 10-second delay will often make users leave a site immediately.
    • ux
    • performance
    • interaction
  • Fast Software, the Best Software

    An Essay by Craig Mod
    craigmod.com

    I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.

    Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance. Fastness in software is like great margins in a book — makes you smile without necessarily knowing why.

    • performance
    • software
    • ux
  • Finda

    An Application
    keminglabs.com

    RESULTS IN 16MS OR YOUR MONEY BACK.

    Did you know computers are fast? True fact.

    Finda uses vectorized CPU instructions and bitmap indexes to search in-memory results, and never waits on the disk or network.

    Furthermore, Finda is developed and used by the author exclusively on a circa 2013 MacBook Air. If you have a newer or more powerful computer, it’ll be even faster.

    • performance
  • A Plea for Lean Software

    An Essay by Niklaus Wirth
    cr.yp.to

    Software's girth has surpassed its functionality, largely because hardware advances make this possible. The way to streamline software lies in disciplined methodologies and a return to the essentials.

    1. ​​Measured by the number of its features​​
    2. ​​Essential vs. nice to have​​
    3. ​​Dependence is more profitable than education​​
    4. ​​The most rewarding iterations​​
    5. ​​Never enough time​​
    1. ​​A grossly obese set of requirements​​
    2. ​​Features and complexity​​
    • software
    • performance
    • function
  • Speed is a feature

    An Article by Nikita Prokopov
    tonsky.me

    Millions of programs have that unfulfilled potential of becoming your second nature, something you don’t even think about when interacting with. They’re waiting to be enabled to “click”. Speed is a feature.

    1. ​​Page weight matters​​
    2. ​​Performance and people​​
    3. ​​Features and complexity​​
    • software
    • performance
  • Performance and people

    An Article by Jeremy Keith
    adactio.com

    Not only is web performance a user experience issue, it may well be the user experience issue. Page speed has a proven demonstrable direct effect on user experience (and revenue and customer satisfaction and whatever other metrics you’re using).

    1. ​​Speed is a feature​​
    • performance
    • ux
  • Why Software is Slow and Shitty

    An Article by Pirijan Ketheswaran
    pketh.org
    1. ​​Roman empire military​​
    2. ​​Building is never a straight line​​
    3. ​​Conversations, not commandments​​
    1. ​​Planning doesn't make for better software​​
    • software
    • performance
  • The Taft Test

    A Tool by Maciej Cegłowski
    tafttest.com
    Image from tafttest.com on 2020-09-03 at 3.13.59 PM.jpeg

    Does your page design improve when you replace every image with William Howard Taft?

    1. ​​The Website Obesity Crisis​​
    • performance
    • www
    • fun
  • Page weight matters

    An Article by Chris Zacharias
    blog.chriszacharias.com

    Many of us are fortunate to live in high bandwidth regions, but there are still large portions of the world that do not. By keeping your client side code small and lightweight, you can literally open your product up to new markets.

    1. ​​Speed is a feature​​
    • performance

    Chris relates an anecdote from his days at Youtube where, after a major push to reduce the size of the main viewing page, analytics showed that average page latency counterintuitively increased. It turns out that this was due to a huge influx of new users from international regions with poor bandwidth, who were previously unable to use Youtube at all, and now could actually watch videos for the first time, due to the lightweight design.


See also:
  1. software
  2. ux
  3. www
  4. craft
  5. code
  6. fun
  7. systems
  8. conservation
  9. function
  10. metrics
  11. interaction
  12. motivation
  13. minimalism
  1. Craig Mod
  2. Maciej Cegłowski
  3. Nikita Prokopov
  4. Chris Zacharias
  5. Pirijan Ketheswaran
  6. Jeremy Keith
  7. Ben Hoyt
  8. Niklaus Wirth
  9. Kealan Parr
  10. Jakob Nielsen
  11. Walter Isaacson
  12. Cassidy Williams
  13. Nelson Elhage
  14. Alex Russell