Windows 11 Start Menu Revealed as Resource-Heavy React Native App, Sparks Performance Concerns
Windows 11 Start Menu Revealed as Resource-Heavy React Native App, Sparks Performance Concerns
Carmack, former CTO of Oculus and co-founder of id Software, argued that software inefficiencies - not hardware limits - are the real bottleneck in computing today.
Used to be programs needed to be well-optimized to run in limited hardware. I can imagine that optimization sensibility has taken a back seat now that companies can just say "you need better hardware".
At this point it's pretty much a challenge to write software bad enough that a computer will struggle to run it.
(Not a particularly great challenge obviously - I'm quite good a it myself)
Yes and no.
It’s about abstractions more than optimizing.
React native is JavaScript code, which means it’s starting (essentially) a web browser, then it downloads, parses, and runs the code.
All of this takes time, and is repeated every time it starts (perhaps they might cache this for windows).
If they used a compiled or JIT language, it would be much faster performance, since there are fewer abstractions, but the hi would be much harder to build…
You doubt my spaghetti code?!
Hit em with a fork bomb and call it a day
Yeah performance, security, etc., is always a low priority in software departments. All work generally have to get funded by some current or expected income specifically linked to that work. Things are never linked to cost of NOT doing the work. It's always assumed that there's no cost to not doing something. This is a huge flaw in moderne business practices in general as the only thing that matters is current revenue for purposes of stock price or the companies value to investors. In software this means that any work is generally tied to some feature requested by upper management and usually connected to some sale or otherwise linked to expected income. And that means every new feature gets a limited budget and generally in the end, cost cutting trims that down before delivery, but instead of cutting business features, they have to cut things like performance and security testing and development. Those end up as "technical debt", but there is almost never any income that gets tied to those unless there's a lawsuit or other legal requirement that forces the company to fund those things. The whole idea of a department having to "sell" every piece of work to a "internal customer" so they can get money from the organization is a ridiculous idea. It's all the same company's money, there's no actual customer and the whole bureaucracy to support all of that is a huge waste of time and money that could be put into the longterm health of the company. But longterm health isn't important anymore in so many industries because consolidation and legal maneuvering has removed most competition in many industries.
Yea it's always annoyed me that despite having decades of improved hardware. Software has been running as shitty as ever since the 2010s. Like I still have to wait for things to open and close or tasks to complete even in simple shit like launching an application or browsing files. WTF.
Users report that clicking the Start button can spike CPU usage by 30% to 70% on at least one core, depending on the hardware configuration.
Good grief. And that's coming from a GNOME user.
So every time I click the start menu and there's a noticeable lag before the menu comes up isn't just me overreacting?
Or when it crashes altogether. Now it makes sense
No, it is probably your cheap 10 year old computer that is causing that. No issue on any of my client's machines.
The start menu should not lag even on a 10 year old computer, that's just absurd.
Found the consoomer
lol, I have 3 computers and each one is less than 2 years old.
Don't defend the megacorp with a history of shitty software. It's just a bad look, dude.
I put Ubuntu with KDE Plasma on some 14 year old computers (with cheap SATA SSD upgrades) and their equivalent of a start menu opens with no lag. Surely the multi trillion dollar company should be able to compete with free competitors?
Ok, so WinAero points out React Native is cross-platform, but surely that shouldn't matter for the Windows start menu, right? Unless it's some ARM compatibility thing, making it easier to port or something. Just sounds like Windows is slowly turning into a web app altogether..
Just sounds like Windows is slowly turning into a web app altogether
That's just VDI, not windows being a webapp. AWS Workspaces is the same concept.
Does anybody have a link to an actual source for the claim? I would absolutely believe it, but this article's "source" just seems to be the same article but Russian. The guy on Twitter claiming to be the author of the code seems to be trolling, leaving me with no leads.
I want to send this to my coworker who hates React, but I don't want to spread misinformation.
I think the whole thing comes from this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMJNEFHj8b8&t=276 (at ~4:30)
Well thats sounds like a pretty good source. What a joke Microsoft is ffs
Holy fuck, what a bunch of dipshits, these C-Suite Microsoft executives and developers are god damned moronic as fuck.
I've also been on the hunt for a proper source, this was the closest official statement I found close to the subject matter, but it does not explicitly say
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/react-native/rnw-settings-win11/
Wtf??? That’s insanity…
I wonder if the new right-click menu is also part of this “improvement”, because it too is slow. Actually, a lot of stuff that used to be really fast in Explorer is now not nearly as fast.
I remember when an OS was just supposed to sit there and look pretty while you used the computer for your usual stuff.
An OS that requires you to upgrade your hardware and now we are discussing performance concerns? The writing was on the wall.
My question is: why??? Like, it makes no sense at all.
Something is very wrong with software development when a leading operating system vendor resort to using a 3rd party cross platform framework for their most important menu in said operating system.
It’s not like they’re going to make a start menu for iOS or something.
Not iOS; it's for all those Linux users that miss having a sluggish Start menu.
I want the Start Menu on my printers touch screen.
for their most important menu in said operating system.
I'd argue that the start menu is almost irrelevant these days. I basically haven't used it since Windows 8, despite using windows every single day.
Microsoft had to panic release 8.1 because they messed up the start menu so badly in 8, so I’d say it’s still relevant. Maybe not as much for power users.
I wonder how many collective watt hours this inefficiency adds up to over time in comparison to one that was well-optimized
What in tar nation? Why would they ever do such a thing? The main point of React Native is to make an application cross-platform (i.e., so it can run on multiple operating systems). What's the point in developing a Windows Start menu that can run on macOS, Android, or whatever?
Unless they're going for the second point of React Native, which is to be able to develop with JavaScript, which has an abundance of developers (i.e., it's less expensive). Maybe they thought that this was the main point, regardless of performance issues.
If I were to venture a guess, it's so that they can use the same start menu in multiple iterations of windows without tinkering (so, for example, they could dump a windows environment onto an xbox as an app). Kind of an ass backwards way of doing so in my opinion, but that's on-brand for modern microsoft
That makes a bit more sense.
Cross platform you say? So...like...ARM? 🙂
At a higher level, as in multiple operating systems. I think it's probably high enough that it doesn't care much about the hardware platform as long as it's supported. But I don't know the technical details of developing with React Native.
Headline: Horrible Software Platform Is Really Terrible, Still
Me: hm. shrug*
Sparks skill concerns personally
Holy shit. Replacing OS native components with React Native is wild .
