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Why Are Progress Bars Wrong So Often?

2018-03-02
thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos 5 minutes 3 hours 20 seconds well if you've ever installed a program update your OS or moved files from one location to another you've probably seen how the estimated time remaining can jump around wildly sometimes to the point where you feel like Windows is just guessing like someone at the roulette wheel and perhaps even more perplexing it's the fact that this has been an issue for 3 10 30 years well you know what a really long time since at least Windows 95 and it hasn't seemed to have gotten better at all I mean we have Cortana learning anything about our lies but Windows somehow isn't smart enough to tell us when a file transfer will be done what gives well as it turns out that progress bar is only given a limited amount of information to work with when you're trying to copy files and knows how many files are being moved around and how much data there is overall which a first glance might seem like enough to give an accurate reading given that you think that Windows would also know how fast your computer's hardware is but the reality is that your system's throughput can vary significantly over time for example if your file transfer has been going for a minute but suddenly a different process also starts hitting your disk with loss of data say Windows grabbing some unscheduled automatic updates or steam downloading some hot fresh overpriced DLC well when that happens your transfer speed will go down but the progress bar had no way of anticipating that so that estimate it gave you to start off with is now way off especially since it's common to see spikes at first when the data hits through drives high-speed cache then a sharp drop-off after the data gets transferred to the main part of the disk now this obviously doesn't account for all situations but even if you ensure that you don't have much else going on the background your speeds could still take a hit if whenever you're trying to move is split up into pieces all over your drive whether you're working with large files which have become heavily fragmented or just lots of smaller ones this causes your hard drive or SSD to have to spend more time looking around for all those small bits of data and again the progress far doesn't know if there are many files were scattered all over the place so it doesn't know how long seek times will be let's say though that you're installing a program instead of just copying files why aren't the estimates you get from your installer program much better well they too suffer from a similar and ability to anticipate in that they often work off of a checklist of things they have to do to get the program completely installed and some of these things take far longer than others like decompressing several gigabytes of high res textures if you're installing a videogame versus changing a small hansel of registry entries but many installers treat these tasks merely as two things on a longer list that will add a certain percentage complete to the bar when they're done instead of actively thinking about how long each task will take well hold on a minute John that last one just sounded like excuse making so why can't we just make progress track or smarter well we could but to do so would require more complex coding and algorithms to keep track of all these different variables that affect throughput and that still doesn't solve the problem of not always being able to anticipate changes in speed caused by other things your system is doing and although there are third-party file transfer programs out there that are better at giving realistic estimates spending tons of time trying to optimize an installation progress bar just isn't a priority for many developers compared to polishing up the user interface security or stability of their software you know the stuff that can profoundly affect your user experience so next time your computer gets stuck at 75 percent or whatever remember that unless is actually frozen the devs have probably just stuck to the old adage of a watched pot never boils and use the time to go do something more productive than stare at your screen like watching tech cookie and speaking of watching things do you want more people watching your website check out Squarespace simple powerful and beautiful to have 24/7 support via live chat and email it's only $12 a month and you get a free domain if you by Squarespace for the year it has a responsive design and your website will scale to look great on any device PC tablet or mobile it has a responsive design so that your website will scale to look great on any device it comes with commerce features every website comes with a free online store you get cover pages a feature that allows you to a beautiful one-page online presence in minutes and new for 2018 eight new website templates you could start a trial with no credit card 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