I too am not a SWE. This confuses a lot of SWEs, recruiters, interviewers, etc.
My domain used to have a name, but that name got changed to something that has the word AI in it. And I don't really identify with that either, although I use parts of that.
Hacker (in the HN sense, obviously) actually captures fairly perfectly how I approach using computers/tech.
Good piece for those with such an identity crisis to re-find the word for it.
Bravo. People who like the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica might like https://OldEncyc.com to dig into the volumes (by letter range) of 22 editions of old encyclopedias dated 1728-1926 (though not searchable like the OP).
I’ve been using it to listen to actual MP3s of the music I have. I can’t find any decent MP3 player on iOS (incredibly ironic given the iPod was one of the 3 devices the iPhone was supposed to be when Steve Jobs first introduced it) and VLC is pretty good.
I’m using VLC because it’s the only one that I know that can play opus. I chose the latter for lossy encoding because I have a few albums that are gapless and it’s hackish to get mp3 to support those (other than single mp3 file and cue file).
I regret to concur. On an iPhone PRO MAX with iOS 18.7-latest, my stopwatch says:
- Element X loads to list All Chats in 3 seconds.
- Element Classic loads to list All Chats in <1 second.
And Element X is supposed to be the "fast one", due to Rust SDK, etc. etc.
I'm giving Element X etc. the benefit of the doubt and will see them through.
But there NEEDS TO BE a user-advocate or project-manager just wailing on usability internally at Element. If you need such a person, find someone, and if you can't find anyone, hit me up, but I would think someone should be filling this role already.
In addition to bundling and network effects, one magic thing that helped grease the skids for some apps like AOL Instant Messenger or Facebook Messenger (in its glory days) or WhatsApp/Discord/Telegram or whatever gain very wide adoption was their relatively seamless user experience.
As much as the Parent sounds like complaining, I think it's complaining in good faith. We want Matrix to succeed.
Hm. Something sounds wrong here, then. On my iPhone 12 Pro Max on iOS 26, my account (~5000 rooms) opens in about 2s in Element X iOS. On the classic app it’s about 10s (ie unusable).
Roughly how many rooms are you in? and what server is this on (it could be a serverside problem)? And what precise build of the app?
> and what server is this on (it could be a serverside problem)?
It's a hosted SaaS personal homeserver. So yes, quite possibly a server-admin issue. I've just put in a ticket to find out.
EDIT: Synapse 1.139.0
> And what precise build of the app?
Element X Version 25.10.0 (190)
EDIT: After updating to Element X Version 25.10.1 (192) [latest Update from App Store], about 2 seconds is observed -- still slower than Classic, but a little better than before. I will still finish following up regarding Server issues/info with server admins; hopefully that fixes it.
Thanks a ton for all you do! Good to know it's not the expectation.
This is really surprising. Can you do a clean launch (ie kill the app and relaunch it) and then submit a bug report from both apps and let me know what mxid to look for? (DM to @matthew:matrix.org if needed). The logs will say where the time difference is coming from. EX should always be way faster than classic Element.
Your "good experience" on Element X iOS matches my "bad experience" on Element X iOS.
See, with my Server and Chats, Classic is actually very snappy:
- Element X: ~1.5 seconds avg (rounds to 2 sec if using a non-decimal stopwatch, but more like 1.5 when measured more precisely)
- Element Classic: ~0.6 second avg (actually slightly faster visually, this includes my response time to stop the timer, probably more like just around/under 0.5 sec)
Anyway, Classic is very fast for me to open. I like it a lot. It feels almost instant.
But X loads in 2-3 times the time. I sit there waiting for content to load, even if it's just for a second.
Because I really hope speed does not regress for people already with very fast load times in Classic, when X becomes the only flagship App in the App Store.
To be complete, for anyone following along: the above hypothesis was allegedly incorrect. 2 seconds is not supposed to be normal for so few chats. Element X is supposedly normally nearly instant to load & list chats for such a small number of chats.
So, I'll try to come back here and comment if I get it resolved.
1. It is much more profitable to introduce new features very, very slowly.
2. If everyone's doing the same thing... one has got to wonder what the people running those companies are up to. My gut says most of the founders/boards are probably largely all on the same WhatsApp/Signal group chat(s), and feel pressure to follow a certain groupthink.
3. It's much easier to profile individual users when the signals are nice and clean. I suspect modeling individual users (building digital twins) could be a really big and mostly quiet part of the longer play for these companies. That pristine initial data might be pretty nice to have.
4. Maybe it would be really boring or doesn't test well. A good thing about talking to the computer is the lack of having to deal with pesky other humans and all the issues they have. Many people instinctively despise reading text generated by a computer that SOME OTHER HUMAN PROMPTED IT TO WRITE (with some exceptions, of course). This might be called the "default conciseness" problem.
Nothing stops one from hosting their own LLM, hooking a web UI to it in such a way that multiple users can access it. Or using a commercial/networked API to do that.
Not a bad idea to try, really. Maybe you're the first one who thought of it...
IMO, 996 is kind of a scam to get people to work less and therefore be less competitive.
Real silicon valley works 24/7, only taking breaks to sleep.
The more people that work only 996, the better people can do who work 24/7.
Unless this means hourly wage workers. In which case, is that really "silicon valley" working? In which case, yes, web search show that generally California caps that at 72 hours/wk in general. So, 12 hours/day with 1 day off makes sense.
What is the fuss? People do what they sign up for. You don't like it, do something else, inventing the alternative if necessary?
I would do it if the rewards were good, if it was fun, or if I had to.
1. Get a college degree in the engineering field of interest.
2. Get a job as an engineer in that field.
3. Optionally, become a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) according to however that is done in your location.
It's not really like software engineering, in which liberal arts or self-taught people get to be called engineers without the matching blood, sweat, and tears.
(If all you want to do is make stuff, you could learn the requisite sciences to know how things work, teach yourself CAD to design something close enough, and then either put in the hours at community hacker spaces or contract someone overseas to actually make whatever you came up with. But, it seems like you are considering a much more serious career shift?)
I too am not a SWE. This confuses a lot of SWEs, recruiters, interviewers, etc.
My domain used to have a name, but that name got changed to something that has the word AI in it. And I don't really identify with that either, although I use parts of that.
Hacker (in the HN sense, obviously) actually captures fairly perfectly how I approach using computers/tech.
Good piece for those with such an identity crisis to re-find the word for it.