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Ask HN: Where are all of the slow websites people are talking about?

3 points by adroitboss ↗ HN
I think the developer community makes a big deal about websites taking a tenth of a second more. As if it causes some torturous unbearable moment that users have to sit through. See partial hydration and other related topics.

However, I can't even think of any websites that are so slow that this is an issue. Can someone please link below the websites that are causing this great outcry?

14 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 38.0 ms ] thread
ev1
Are you on a new-ish machine?
adroitboss
I would say so. It has a graphics card and an I5. It's not state of the art, but it's newish.
ev1
Sites like (for example) new reddit or many things with infinite scroll on the typical phone in many countries is effectively a disaster.

Sites that like to have fancy scroll or background effects are generally awful if you don't have a graphics card. I browse on a Celeron J4105 or a Pentium Gold sometimes (I use it to build some x32 bins) and JS-heavy sites cause full tab lockups that take minutes to resolve until anything is usable at all.

Think of devices like this: https://www.bluproducts.com/devices/studio-x10-2022/ This is a 2022 model, with 1 GB ram. On a Samsung Galaxy A03 if I swap between tabs in browser, HN will appear near instantly, I assume because it hasn't been evicted from memory, but anything heavier will take a few seconds and be a full page reload.

adroitboss
Thank you for showing me this. I didn't even know that 1gb ram devices were created for consumer use outside of raspberry pi and the like. I will keep this in mind going forward.
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groffee
Throttle your connection and use a machine with low ram, and you'll soon find most websites are unbearably slow.
adroitboss
I see your point, but wouldn't the issue than be visiting modern websites on dated hardware? Websites have gotten more complex, because of people's demands for better experiences visually. Therefore wouldn't we need stronger computers to keep up with the artistic expression and complexity of websites?
ev1
Most of the world doesn't have this. If all of your visitor base is devs with M2 macs then by all means go wild, but in practice this isn't how things go.
adroitboss
Yeah I guess that is what I was looking for. Like all questions the answer is more nuanced. I think if you are a luxury brand selling luxury products you can safely assume you don't need your website to run flawlessly on the cheapest hardware.
Finnucane
Most of the world can't afford the same hardware that you have. If you, as a web designer, say, you need to have the latest thing and the best possible connection to enjoy this website, then you shouldn't be surprised if you get people complaining and deciding to go elsewhere.
adroitboss
I totally understand that as well. However, wouldn't the people with the most expendable money also most likely have the newest technology. Therefore the customers you are probably going to have the least issues with, would most likely have newer hardware anyway.

I understand you leave money on the table, but you would spend less on support and less money trying to get your website to be 200ms faster to load. This is speaking from an Indie Hacker perspective. This could be potentially worth millions of dollars for a bigger business.

PaulHoule
The worst symptom of "slow" that I see is cumulative layout shift in content sites.

It might not be entirely accidental. All the time I try to click on a link but at the last minute the layout changes and... ka-ching! I clicked on an ad.

Maybe this is how Google can make $50B on ads a year without anybody admitting that they've ever clicked on an ad.

night-rider
Every millisecond counts especially in e-commerce. Every millisecond of latency is a potential lost sale