Article: Why Mobile Web Apps are Slow

[Mauro Souza]

Yes, is a very long read, and a very interesting read too.

I have both a x86/mainframe and mobile backgrounds. And the way people
works with memory is radically different on each platform.

I worked on a softhouse making apps for palm tops a decade ago, way before
iOS, Android, and maybe Symbian. Back on that times, we had to count how
many bytes we would spend on some function, and had to rewrite a working
class because it used a dozen kb of memory. Old people from mainframe
backgrounds do the same. They scrap the last byte, or last bit of memory to
do the work, and some programs are some kind of (masochistic) work of art.

Now I work on a mainframe environment (Linux on mainframe), and I see
people allocating a whole GB of memory to cache pdf reports that are never
sent anywhere, just in case the user clicks the "View report" button. But
nobody wants to download a fat slow pdf to open on the fat and slow Adobe
Reader anyway. And this Java servlet is seen by a couple thousand users.

I think the main issue with the slowness on the mobile is the focus on
simplicity. By design, the mobile environment is trading speed and
customization for easy of learn and use. Nobody wants to use malloc/free
every time, nobody wants to get hurt by dangling pointers and buffer
overflows. So let's use the JVM and it will save us from memory management
issues. On the other side, JVM cannot be flexible enough to work well for
all and every object out there.

As production technical support for Linux now, I sometimes recommend that
the developers test their software (almost always server-based) on a very
small underpowered test server. Run JBoss on a 256MB or less Linux box. As
they test that fatty servlet on their 4GB desktops with only themselves
testing and see nothing wrong, things are likely to break on the real
world. If they can finish testing their work on the little box, it will
work when ten thousand users connect later.


Mauro
http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521
Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God.


2013/7/15 Scott Sullivan <scott-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org>

> Rather long read, but related to our recent talk on Mobile Apps by Myles.
>
> http://sealedabstract.com/**rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-**slow/<http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-slow/>
>
> It came to me from an ARM mailing list because mobile is largely ARM(*)
> based. The article covers a fair bit of ground
>
>
> (*) There are some rare MIPS and x86 based Phones/Tablets out there.
>
> --
> Scott Sullivan
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