Android and other technologies that SUCK, rants

[droid]

Android sucks.

I don't know where to begin with this but how is it possible to have such shitty unresponsiveness and lags from a system running on fast multi-core and multi-gigahertz type processors? it's inexcusable.

I can understand an individual program (hipsterish: "App") hanging, but it's ridiculous that it could freeze or reset the whole device. I don't present this as a first world problem but as a technical ponder. Mind you, I'm still running freaking Froyo on my phone, but i see people with brand new phones that still reset for no reason and/or hang, etc.

Are these problems on Linus Torvalds' Linux or on the Android part built on top of it?
Any thoughts? am I out to lunch on this? Add your particular observations on performance flaws here.

Edit: I forgot to add, I wouldn't trust my life on this junk for a second, literally. Some time ago I was researching into a real time version of Linux, as perhaps a decent robotics OS, but i think i would still roll my own state machine based round robin loop.
</rant>

[fschmidt]

What modern technology doesn't suck? What modern anything doesn't suck?

[Moretorque]

Flat screen TV's are pretty good, although reliability can be a issue.

When did the newer computer stuff really start going to hell ?

[droid]

What modern technology doesn't suck? What modern anything doesn't suck?

Flat screen TV's are pretty good, although reliability can be a issue.
When did the newer computer stuff really start going to hell ?

There's pretty good stuff out there but at the same time there's an army of abusers that bloat and convolute everything.

One fundamental problem is that in many fields, an ability to use the [already] convoluted tools is confused with being a good designer.
So you have CAD/SOLIDWORKS drafters and C++ syntax divas that pass for "designers".

Just tried to install Visual Studio 2015 last week. 5Gigs? are you kidding me? needless to say it failed installation and also broke my project,
which i had to recreate after reinstalling 2010.

Now i have spent a few weeks developing some wrapper classes for Windows controls and 2D drawing. Most people don't look under the hood of this junk,
but it's a real clusterfick.

There really is a need for an alternative, developers-first, clean-slate operating system, *that is NOT based on the Linux krapnel.
I remember when i was 10yo and could just sit down and paint some stuff on the tv with my Commodore64, and even made a mine sweeper game.
Nowadays a kid has to contend with a mountain of task-irrelevant, engineer-level crap full of pitfalls and inconsistencies, just to paint a damn line on the screen.

[Moretorque]

Could it all be being done on purpose ?

[fschmidt]

There really is a need for an alternative, developers-first, clean-slate operating system, *that is NOT based on the Linux krapnel.
I remember when i was 10yo and could just sit down and paint some stuff on the tv with my Commodore64, and even made a mine sweeper game.
Nowadays a kid has to contend with a mountain of task-irrelevant, engineer-level crap full of pitfalls and inconsistencies, just to paint a damn line on the screen.

I agree. I worked at Commodore when the Commodore64 was developed and I wrote a text editor for it. Modern software is crap. I am trying to make programming sane again starting with developing a really simple programming language:

http://luan.luanhost.com/

I implemented it first with an interpreter, but I am working on a compiler right now. I would love to see a group of reactionary programmers develop other sane software including a sane operating system.

[droid]

I agree. I worked at Commodore when the Commodore64 was developed and I wrote a text editor for it.

Haha i do have a [rethorical?] question 30 years later, how the hell did games like pacman access the pixel rendering part??
I spent many nights trying to get that, but at the end i was stuck with colored character-printing, and the awfully slow PEEK call.

I am trying to make programming sane again starting with developing a really simple programming language:
http://luan.luanhost.com/

That's nice but if i may critique, you lose me with the weird % decorations, it hurts. I'm creating my own language too and won't allow any of that in it, no weird character prefixes or suffixes, heck if i could kill off hn_nt_bs_hungarian_notation once and for all i would do it too, but that's a stretch .

I'm also making it so the gap between mark up and programming is finally bridged. After all a program is just a model as well, but just encodes time in the up down order of the lines within functions.

I personally prefer braces { } instead of the xml style enclosing, both for readability and perhaps parsing performance.

Additionally, I specify a multi-pass compiler, so there is no need for the bullshit declaration+definition, forward declaration and .h headache files and file guard BS that takes so much time in C++, it's nuts!!!
There is simply a model of object A, and an instance declaration within the user, object B model, for example. Very simple, and the compiler figures things out from big to small, why put that burden on the person if the computer can do it?

Someone should also get rid of the freaking #defines and typedefs, they are handy but have been abused to no end, just look at the windows API. I will only allow for constants within an enclosed object model, to put an end to that madness.

I would love to see a group of reactionary programmers develop other sane software including a sane operating system.

+1 sane is the keyword, followed by common sense.

The big hurdle i see is all the drivers for the graphics cards and USB, etc, this is massive and ever-changing. I read somewhere the estimated labor value of the loonyx pile is about 1 billion

You'd have to kind of get some critical mass to get other [sane] people involved and help. It's like a catch 22.
If one could somehow get started with a minimal market share, then sane people could be actually paid for decent components, instead of it being an open source clusterfick.

</rant>

[fschmidt]

Haha i do have a [rethorical?] question 30 years later, how the hell did games like pacman access the pixel rendering part??
I spent many nights trying to get that, but at the end i was stuck with colored character-printing, and the awfully slow PEEK call.

I think you mean POKE, in Basic. Anyway what I remember is that the screen was memory mapped with 2 modes, text and graphics. In 6502 assembly you could just write to this memory directly.

That's nice but if i may critique, you lose me with the weird % decorations, it hurts. I'm creating my own language too and won't allow any of that in it, no weird character prefixes or suffixes, heck if i could kill off hn_nt_bs_hungarian_notation once and for all i would do it too, but that's a stretch .

I am a traditionalist and that applies to programming too. So I do my best to stick to known conventions even if they aren't ideal. The advantage is that other programmers will understand this stuff immediately because of their knowledge of these conventions.

I'm also making it so the gap between mark up and programming is finally bridged. After all a program is just a model as well, but just encodes time in the up down order of the lines within functions.

Luan does this too. The JSP-like syntax is built into the language, not an add-on hack like it is in Java.

I personally prefer braces { } instead of the xml style enclosing, both for readability and perhaps parsing performance.

Since Luan is based on Lua, I am following the Lua convention of using "end".

Additionally, I specify a multi-pass compiler, so there is no need for the bullshit declaration+definition, forward declaration and .h headache files and file guard BS that takes so much time in C++, it's nuts!!!
There is simply a model of object A, and an instance declaration within the user, object B model, for example. Very simple, and the compiler figures things out from big to small, why put that burden on the person if the computer can do it?

This doesn't require a multipass compiler. I am writing a compiler right now that does this in one pass.

Someone should also get rid of the freaking #defines and typedefs, they are handy but have been abused to no end, just look at the windows API. I will only allow for constants within an enclosed object model, to put an end to that madness.

No recent language has this stuff. Java for example.

+1 sane is the keyword, followed by common sense.

The big hurdle i see is all the drivers for the graphics cards and USB, etc, this is massive and ever-changing. I read somewhere the estimated labor value of the loonyx pile is about 1 billion

You'd have to kind of get some critical mass to get other [sane] people involved and help. It's like a catch 22.
If one could somehow get started with a minimal market share, then sane people could be actually paid for decent components, instead of it being an open source clusterfick.

The model to follow is open source where the operating came last. First open source tools were developed. When all the tools were there, only then was the operating system written. Sane reactionary software should follow the same path. I will do a sane programming language (Luan), sane web hosting (LuanHost), and sane forum software (Blasma). You can pick any area and make a sane tool to contribute to software sanity.

[droid]

Haha i do have a [rethorical?] question 30 years later, how the hell did games like pacman access the pixel rendering part??
I spent many nights trying to get that, but at the end i was stuck with colored character-printing, and the awfully slow PEEK call.

I think you mean POKE, in Basic. Anyway what I remember is that the screen was memory mapped with 2 modes, text and graphics. In 6502 assembly you could just write to this memory directly.

Yeah they were PEEK and POKE, what memories!, no pun intended.
By the way, i found a Commodore64 Flash emulator online, some people do make cool stuff out there

http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/

Someone should also get rid of the freaking #defines and typedefs, they are handy but have been abused to no end, just look at the windows API. I will only allow for constants within an enclosed object model, to put an end to that madness.

No recent language has this stuff. Java for example.

+1 true
I was mostly ranting about c/c++ since i mostly work on desktop and microcontrollers, it seems you have more of a background in the web/server area. I wish i could study it all, there's three lifetimes worth of material out there.

You can pick any area and make a sane tool to contribute to software sanity.

I should be publishing my spec next year, hopefully with some compiler like you're doing.
For now, as a tool/stepping stone, I'm writing light-weight, easy-does-it wrappers for win32's most convoluted stuff, without going overkill like QT or .NET

Thanks for your comments

[droid]

So much hyped talk of AI these days but the truth of the matter is that software is in a brushed-under-the-rug crisis.

These guys describe the horrendous, garbage software that is out there

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK50z_gUpZI[/youtube]

[droid]

Lol

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/ ... us-vehicle

I risk to predict another mini AI winter before things really take off.

[Winston]

Android is Google software and the developers create apps that may not be compatible with all android devices. That's why it's unstable. There are many compatibility issues. iPhone runs smoother but Android is more customizable and lets you download files from the web directly.

I think all Androids lag, even those with 3 or 4 GM RAM. However, you can decrease the lag if you uninstall most of the apps,if you have too many, and leave only the bare minimum apps. People install too many apps and over time they cause the system to lag. So if you uninstall most of them, the phone should run smoother.

I used to run those mobile care apps, but my techie friend told me they were useless and took up more memory than it freed. Temporary files do not use up much memory really. Asus phones come with a memory booster app that I can push and free up some RAM instantly. I don't know about other brands though.

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

Android is Google software and the developers create apps that may not be compatible with all android devices. That's why it's unstable. There are many compatibility issues. iPhone runs smoother but Android is more customizable and lets you download files from the web directly.

Well, Android is primarily written in Java...most Google stuff is done in Python and Go[lang] which Go has its own compiled bytecode as a result which leads to uneven memory swap cycles to pick up and execute the code for stability in memory. Generally-speaking, you are right in that regard.

I think all Androids lag, even those with 3 or 4 GM RAM.

3 or 4 GB of physical RAM perhaps? In the Android world, there's no such thing as RAM; all is Read-Only Memory which leads to using the same memory for data storage as well as memory swapping on the operating system.

However, you can decrease the lag if you uninstall most of the apps,if you have too many, and leave only the bare minimum apps. People install too many apps and over time they cause the system to lag. So if you uninstall most of them, the phone should run smoother.

I used to run those mobile care apps, but my techie friend told me they were useless and took up more memory than it freed. Temporary files do not use up much memory really. Asus phones come with a memory booster app that I can push and free up some RAM instantly.

To paraphrase, and again: when it comes to the Android world, you are dealing with ROM although it has writable cache characteristics to it.

[Winston]

If there's no such thing as RAM on an Android, then how come the box on the phone lists the amount of RAM? And the specs of the phones on www.GSMArena.com also list the RAM of the phone? The internal memory is a separate spec.

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

If there's no such thing as RAM on an Android, then how come the box on the phone lists the amount of RAM? And the specs of the phones on http://www.GSMArena.com also list the RAM of the phone? The internal memory is a separate spec.

It's there, but it's not the same as how RAM is used on a laptop or desktop computer. That's all I was implying for you to infer.