Why Progress Bars Don't Move Smoothly ▓▓▓░░░░░░

4 minutes remaining. Then 15 seconds. Then 5 hours. Why can't computers just tell you how long something's going to take? • MORE BASICS: • The Basics
Written with Sean Elliott / seanmelliott • Graphics by William Marler wmad.co.uk
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[@TomScottGo]

I'm having to film back in the Tiny Room against green-screen again, as lockdown means the Centre for Computing History is closed! Hopefully they'll be open again soon, although that depends on a very different kind of progress...

[@tek1645]

1 week ago?

[@spywalkz1]

Ohh HeLLo ThErE

[@zelo101]

hi

[@vefq]

hiii

[@cheesecakeburger]

oh

[@i-win]

Can't explain the fustration of things getting stuck at 99%

[@mixxed_nuts]

Then be prepared for the frustration of it being stuck at 100% and nothing happening

[@Iucebowel]

Then be prepared for the stuck of it being at frustration 100% and happening nothing

[@altrag]

@@mixxed_nuts Or 101%. Always know you're in for good times when you see that :-/..

[@iexplainjokestomakethemles1560]

@@altrag i hate when my game loads 101%

[@Fish-bt4cj]

@@altrag oww that physically hurts to see

[@MidwinterMinis]

Good ol' floppy drives "3%.... 4%.... 98% DONE"

[@CoderGautam]

hello verified person

[@skyvorythings]

Hey, its my favourite 40k youtuber. Neat.

[@josh_1518]

You skipped the 2% after 98% but before done

[@jupiter2142]

Or netflix

[@tparadox88]

The store where I used to work would reboot the self service computer after every customer so it could restore the default state of the machine. The software it had to launch after the reboot used to be stupidly slow to load some process that takes the progress bar between 3% and 78% (like 5-10 minutes, or at least it felt like it when there was a line to use it) and then only a few seconds to complete, until we upgraded the computer to a faster processor and SSD, and then the progress bar would just already be at 78% by the time you could see one.

[@Sercil00]

The last 1% always takes by far the longest. And the risk of the whole thing crashing rises exponentially as well.

[@traceyguilbert7906]

Love ur pfp axolotl my fav animal

[@lethall6609]

No the 99 does 😂

[@BassandoForte]

It's called "the law of the sod"... 🤣

[@BassandoForte]

It's the same law that dictates that if you're waiting for a parcel it will come at the latest they say - Unless you nip out, then when you come back they've just been... 👍🤣

[@noredine]

@@lethall6609 That's what he said. "the LAST 1%"

[@charper13126]

I once wrote a small program for a department in my company and they didn't think it was good enough. I added a small progress bar to the front that literally just incremented a counter at even intervals and they went nuts for how robust I had made it and loved it. It was a 3 second loop that flashed a modal with the word "loading..." and a progress bar that did nothing but count to 100 by 1 and it changed the perception of the complexity. I eventually took that out, citing a performance improvement.

[@karolakkolo123]

Big brain

[@MowLawner]

Really goes to show how little the non-techies know about tech

[@KF-zb6gi]

Anything animated is great🤣🤣

[@GrimRize]

Perhaps not in your particular case but as someone who used to do a lot of programming for fun many moons ago, one word sums it up, 'feedback'. You'll know what I loathe if you are familiar with large commercial crap like SAP and anything designed around it for end user experiences which in my experience has little to none, or wildly unexpected or might as well be invisible user feedback. If you display something for more than a few seconds and it isn't immediately obvious what you should be doing, you failed with your GUI (assuming you have one of course). A lot of stuff has moved away from desktop software where I work and moved towards web front ends, oh god how terribly slow, fails a lot, has little to no feedback, half the time you only know something has worked or is working purely because you have sat through nothing happening so many times and confirmed the data via another method that wastes even more time..... and i'm ranting hahahaha!

[@samwinchester7844]

@@MowLawner It's called providing a good user experience. If you make the user wait with no indication of what's/if any is happening, they will hate it.

[@henrybarber288]

The most annoying thing is when it reaches 100% and then just sits there for another 3 days.

[@ChrisD__]

Or at 0% for 2 hours... Very cool windows update.

[@MrBluemoon74]

Standard windows xp behaviour use to be sometimes: set the progress bar to 90%, then begin what you have to do, upon finishing set it to 100%. now with windows 10 we have those dots that fly in, do a slow circle and fly out again, over and over again.

[@dsi-films1264]

@@ChrisD__ This is scary true

[@titaniumvulpes]

I once heard a web designer talk about how sometimes a progress bar isn't even truly a progress bar, it's just a code or gif image set to raise up to around 90-99%, swap to a different bit of code or image and display that until it's just about finished, and then swap to a third bit of code or image that displays 100% (this is most common on websites or video game loading screens but I'm sure some program installers do this too). The real trick to it is like Tom said, making it a little janky so it _seems_ like a real progress bar.

[@iadtag1853]

@@ChrisD__ At the very least, as Linus had pointed out too, they don't take that much time with the updates nowadays.

[@Azeria]

“Why can’t they just tell you how long something will take?”- Because they don’t know.

[@lmao7454]

Or they can calculate time but it's like "10 years left"

[@lemonlattez]

@@lmao7454 2 minutes left...30 minutes left....1 day left.... 70days left..... 148 Years left.. 30 seconds left.. DONE!!!

[@lmao7454]

@@rita25y.o-checkmyvideo17 what are you ._.

[@Ansh77K]

@@lmao7454 abomination of mankind

[@mitaalishukla3850]

@ʜᴇʟᴘ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴅɪɴᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴄʜ 1 ꜱᴜʙ. Awwww! I choose to believe there's some good in humanity and that you're not just spamming. Happy Birthday, and I subbed.

[@greedthenyavaricious]

My absolute favorite thing is when loading time estimates spit out stuff like "infinite" or "96 years." I don't see it happen as often anymore (and it's also unhelpful) but it's hilarious.

[@plumjet0930]

0% 14:34 remaining 7% 25:10 remaining 18% 2:10 remaining 63% 0 seconds remaining 92% 4 days remaining 100% 2 seconds remaining

[@Edward256]

@@plumjet0930 "2 seconds remaining" it says for a full 5 minutes. XP

[@birdandcatlover5597]

I never minded those, since they were so amusing

[@TarunoNafs]

Oh, a dead torrent file will guarantee you that experience. The feeling when you see that infinity sign...

[@thezipcreator]

infinite probably happens because of floating point

[@chipchip3]

I feel like not enough people are showing appreciation for the timing skills he did for 1:24

[@B4NDIT_12]

Woah wow he can read time from his camera

[@chipchip3]

Killjoy

[@NicoPlyley]

@@B4NDIT_12 Also I doubt the video started rolling the very second he started speaking so he has to adjust for that too

[@sansundertale1234]

@@B4NDIT_12 how would he know that its 5:10 long tho

[@wanganeu]

@@sansundertale1234Well you don't have to be a prophet, just cut and edit it accordingly - maybe that's why it cuts mid sentence in the end 😂

[@10ON10]

Even 0.1% movement of progress bar is a huge relief than it getting stuck for long...

[@noeldoesthings]

So true

[@benrgrogan]

Am I the only person who places the corner of the mouse pointer on the progress bar when this happens? So I know if there has been any movement

[@soupkitchen467]

@@benrgroganAll the time

[@jvccr7533]

@@soupkitchen467 you have to leave a space

[@DavidKizivat1]

I'm sorry to inform you that sometimes the progress bars are explicitly coded to keep moving continuously at least a bit even when no job was completed since the "last big jump" of the progress bar. The "big jumps" are often when something has actually completed.

[@AuthenTech]

Wow, kudos to knowing the exact length of the video WHILST filming..

[@electron8262]

That's the perk of filming your video in One Take™

[@1xeshm]

@@electron8262 you put a timer behind the camera and when you reach the point you just glance at it and say the time it displays. Cool trick nonetheless.

[@thetipsysparrow9552]

@@1xeshm Still had to know how long the whole video will be though, a timer behind the camera can't tell you what the time will be in the future for an unknown video length. Combination of editing start and finish to make sure it fits and rehearsals are the only ways I can think of to do that live

[@gabormiklay9209]

Editing can do magic.

[@gavintantleff]

@@gabormiklay9209 buuuuut it’s a one take, so there’s no cuts...

[@8stormy5]

My old internet setup was extremely prone to dropping connections temporarily, and it was really funny watching "time remaining" estimates steadily climb by several days of time before suddenly jolting back to a few minutes

[@brainwater176]

Had satellite internet limited to 10 gigabytes before. When it ran out it reduced to dial-up speed. A download once shot up to 4 years.

[@God-of-canine]

So one day I was using my dell Inspiron 15 3000to download a steam game called world of tonks, it went like this from one hour to hour five hours three days 365+ more than a year. (It took a day and a half to install)

[@calcutt4]

One time not very long ago I was updating a steam game, the estimating time remaining started at 5 minutes and steadily increased until it said "more than one year", before going back to 20 minutes

[@christopherbedford9897]

Windows 10's updates take "meh, good enough" a little too casually though. It can sit on 21% for three-quarters of an hour then jump to 81% for 15 minutes more and then 98% and done in a few seconds. I suspect they decided to only update the progress bar after completion of (e.g.) each file installed, and that in the above scenario there are some really huge files that are complex to install and a few smaller / simpler files after that.

[@BassandoForte]

When it forces a U2 Song virus on you - no wonder it takes ages... 😪🤣

[@OLBastholm]

@@BassandoForte That was not Microsoft. That was Apple (on the iPhone, I think). And why would it have anything to do with a virus?

[@BassandoForte]

@@OLBastholm - Did you want it? Did it take up pointless hard drive space..?? And no - it was Windows 10 although Aople is just as unethical... 🤣 That's why I use Android... 😝

[@vinson3725]

@@BassandoForte pointless? updates are there to keep your devices up to date with anti viruses, security and patches, i don't understand why people have a problem with Windows updates, it barely takes any time for me

[@BassandoForte]

@@vinson3725 - So you're happy they forxe pointless things like U2 tunes onto your PC..?? 🤔🤣

[@PhoenixSC]

"There's 5 minutes and 10 seconds of video, and we've got through 1 minute and 24 seconds." - *checks* Holy frick.

[@FarrelTTE]

Wait What? How the Frick?

[@bedro422]

HOW

[@mcvibing2785]

Sup Phoenix

[@JoeMoment]

Bruh

[@arkanon8661]

I keep seeing my subscriptions everywhere

[@jamesplaysgameso594]

The bar: *goes to 99% instantly* Also the bar: *Takes 5 hours to finish*

[@tofifichannel7199]

Not gonna ruin it its in 111 like, not gonna like it cus its 111 not gonna break the chain. Because then it’s 112.

[@ZenthosSohtnez]

@@tofifichannel7199 You good?

[@SecularTranscendant]

@@tofifichannel7199 now its 222

[@amazedacorn1062]

@@SecularTranscendant I ruined it sorry

[@hashishiriya]

@@tofifichannel7199 dude, it's 699 now... i definitely can't like it

[@RyanSandberg]

As someone that has actually coded a very basic progress bar before, yes. It's near impossible to make it smooth, and yes, my answer was exactly the same. It shows that it's making progress and not frozen, and that's all that really matters. I have a new respect for progress bars after trying to make one actually function, and I had tutorials to figure out how to do it.

[@Cypeq]

It's not very sophisticated to increment value by a little every time something completes... Estimating time is whole can of worms.

[@dagoberttrump9290]

How about a neural network that learns from different machine settings how long tve overall process is going to take

[@Great_Olaf5]

I mean... How effective is it at showing that there is in fact progress going on when it sits unchanging at 25% for two minutes before racing all the way from there to 68% in less than two seconds.

[@Xs2...]

I remember from some games, that they would have an installer that had: a blue progress bar with a percentage. And on the left side of the screen would be three additional bars for showing you what each step of the installation was doing. So a bar for disk usage, etc. That was far more informational then just one bar with or without an ETA displayed. (Windows 95/98 era).

[@nedmurry]

The Epic Games Store still does that. It gives my eyes something to do while a game installs/updates.

[@zombiekiller7101]

@@nedmurry lmao same

[@Juampa300]

Lemme get ANOTHER quick shoutout to WInrar the GOAT

[@ahmed4363]

@@nedmurry A point for epic games. They just gotta compress their files like steam does because i dont want to download 30 fricking gigabytes just to make games if i fan just downloaded 3gb instead from Unity

[@celestialtree8602]

While it's not quite similar, Minecraft's Forge Mod Loader also tells you what it's doing; specifically, it has multiple progress bars, in increasing levels of detail, each with a step count. One for the main 7 or so steps of loading, then one for what it's doing within that step (i.e. loading a specific mod), then a third for what it's doing within that (i.e. loading individual textures).

[@thetasigma412]

*every programmer after trying to fix a small bug in their code:* “It’ll still probably be wrong, but it’ll be differently wrong”

[@Pattoe]

I remember raising off a defect for a system I was testing where adding a discount of 50% to a service which cost £24 would instead increase its price to £48. In the next release adding a discount of 50% to the service which cost £24 decreased its price to -£26. Wrong in a different way.

[@shaunkim5059]

@@Darenz-cg9zg maybe it subtracted 50 from 24 (which would become 26) instead of 50% of 24.

[@quixomega]

I'd fire a programmer who thought like that. If you don't understand why your fix works, it probably doesn't.

[@JusteFantastico]

@@quixomega You are not a programming manager, then. At least I hope not. Sometimes problems in complex codebases are incredibly confusing so you try a hail mary in an attempt to fix it and it works. In an ideal world you can spend forever debugging and figuring out what caused an issue. In the real world, you have deadlines to deal with and something needs to work ASAP. It doesn't matter how.

[@jcfiggy]

@@Pattoe From x2 to -50. dang.

[@STATESZ]

everybody gangsta till tom scott tells the exact length of the video in advance

[@brunnomenxa]

Here the video has a delay of approximately 0.5 seconds of the real value.

[@adamrezabek9469]

nah, much better is saying nothing to user, freezing and eventually dropping BSOD

[@sharktacos]

I KNOWW

[@rosk3170]

😂😂😂 so true

[@davidmachado132]

@@brunnomenxa Maybe the computer calculated it wrong, cant trust those

[@djcook]

This video would not get off my recommended so let’s see what it’s about

[@kacauthecat9484]

Hey, Dj

[@content3551]

this video randomly came up in my recommendations

[@woahachannel]

*TWO YEARS. FOUR LIKES. WHAT.*

[@slimydroid]

I found this very interesting. My job is a performance test analyst, and we often find that performance issues in software is not the software itself, but the users perceptions of it. Have a user wait for something to happen with nothing going on, instant 'its running slow' report. Add a spinner, progress bar, literally any user cue that something is still happening and they'll be more tolerant. The software could actually be slower because it has to deal with updating the screen as well as the job it's trying to do, but users will be happy about it.

[@GadgetAddict]

I remember in my younger years when reinstalling Windows Me on a borked computer. And we'd put a piece of tape on the screen to mark the progress bar position, to see if it was really moving.

[@bsvenss2]

Hahaha. Good one.

[@jcfiggy]

Verified = Likes. Watch.

[@ansilnaseem]

@@jcfiggy Verified comments > Verified comment mocking reply. There is nothing wrong if the person is verified or not

[@igorchistyakov8876]

Good times.

[@redsquirrelftw]

I always put my cursor where the line is and see if it moves haha.

[@yuvalne]

Personally my favourite kind of progress bar is when there's two progress bars: the top one showing the progress of the overall process, and the bottom showing the progress of each individual task. That lets you actually see why some bits take longer, and in my opinion gives you a better approximation of the time left.

[@kjdude8765]

Loved that in older installers. Very informative and reassuring!

[@derdarkl2890]

And in some cases help you with troubleshooting if somerhing crashes while loading :D

[@simontay4851]

Thats good because you can actually see what is or isn't happening.

[@joweber7492]

The only specific program I know that does that is WinRar while unpacking

[@IceMetalPunk]

@@derdarkl2890 As opposed to things like Limewire (remember Limewire?), whose loading screen had "steps" like "Scouring New York City for limes..." Which maybe the developers knew what it was actually doing at that point for debugging, but it means nothing to anyone else.

[@Revel005]

I am a computer security expert and you make a very good point about smooth progress bars representing something potentially malicious. Good stuff!

[@lokeshnandan]

*I'm being honest* , him knowing the exact length of the video time lapsed and telling the exact length of the video in between the video made me sub

[@achappel]

Knowing the exact video length a minute into a five minute one-take video is a solid flex 💪

[@justcallmenoah5743]

Honest

[@m-th]

And also just casually mentioning the exact time you have currently spoken at the right time. Takes no effort at all, slap it in there!

[@ROCK-rd3hs]

Well it didn't really matter on the take. Man's gotta adjust that in the outro though

[@greentjmtl]

Probably just the camera screen flipped towards the front.

[@gabedamien]

My favorite thing about the video! Though it's not exactly difficult, just needs a little prep (rehearsal + timer + note down milestones, or even better, code up a simple scrolling teleprompter with time display). Intro and outro clips also afford some padding for wiggle room.

[@justinian-the-great]

If good old internet explorer taught me something, it is that progress bar is also capable to go to 100% and then return back to 99% and stay there for like 5 hours.

[@Vinni-2K]

bruh

[@mfThump]

winrar showed me that a few times

[@0_-]

you're an old interneter

[@brojoe44]

When you're clicking it wondering wtf and "Explorer.exe has stopped working"

[@brojoe44]

At least little kid me was smart enough to just rerun explorer.exe when my taskbar and stuff disappeared

[@Adulf666]

Finally someone who asks right questions and gives precise and short answer in a concise manner - KUDOS to you mr Tom!

[@seyoch]

I don't know how many people will fully appreciate the fact that you knew in this long take exactly how long the video was going to be and mention exactly where in the video you are to the second. But with having a video editing background myself, oh boy, did I appreciate that! Well done! I loved it.

[@marcel151]

Progress Bar: Seems to be stuck. Me: Putting the cursor just right on the end of the bar to see if it's still running.

[@MouseGoat]

Progress Bar process to get stuck because the mouse is blocking it

[@MarcosRobertoDosSantosJF]

Hahaha! I do that too!

[@kaylag5043]

Omg ur stupid. If you put the mouse there it's gonna be in the way of the progress bar!

[@softis5star110]

I can relate, I also do that.

[@enemdisk6628]

Relatable

[@deanmoncaster]

The one thing that should never ever ever be displayed on a PC is "100% complete. Please wait"

[@dave2980]

But fr I get this a lot and it just doesn't make any sense. How is it 100% if I still have to wait like 1/4 time of the whole thing more.

[@bilib1891]

Because 99,5% is rounded up. DUH!

[@dominicarmesiniataide9968]

@@dave2980 rounded up

[@lordsiomai]

Exactly. Defeats the very purpose of progress bars

[@anantkharade119]

Man's waited 5 years to download a game

[@Eclipse-yg6dl]

People: I need a better computer Physicians: Just flip the monitor sideways so the bar goes down due to gravity

[@superevolvedshinamalgamleo8168]

yup

[@I_killed_that_beard_guy]

yup

[@___Zack___]

..... Physicists?

[@bosselotiscanon]

@@___Zack___ not a typo, my doctor also prescribed me the same thing instead of viagra.

[@___Zack___]

@@bosselotiscanon Ha! not gonna lie, that was actually fantastic 😆

[@PRDreams]

I found you a bit ago and you are delightful. I'm watching anything that is suggested by the mighty algorithm and so far? Pure gold.

[@SuperPlayz]

I love it when it takes 2 seconds to go from 0% to 99% and 1 hour to get to 100%

[@treehugger8790]

cough cough* steam installations

[@65E]

I know

[@51256]

Hahahahah

[@williamaydelotte6420]

Same

[@LostToSpace]

@@treehugger8790 fr steam downloads in a nutshell

[@LRC92]

I love it when a simple download says "2 years remaining" or "∞ time remaining".

[@wolfsyncc]

"brb gonna download a game" last seen 2 years ago "yo bro downloaded that game, what did i miss?

[@oofers9939]

@@wolfsyncc you missed my funeral

[@Aeternus75]

@@oofers9939 wait then who’s speaking-

[@IIiiiLiiOiiIii]

@@Aeternus75 my funeral

[@placeadrien5566]

@@wolfsyncc that's what my father said to me never came back

[@exoticlol]

The fact that Tom can tell you inside of the video how long it will be AND the exact second that s clip plays in advance is crazy.

[@TheSecondPersona]

My favorite memory of a loading bar (or technically a "time remaining" counter) was one time downloading/installing a game on Steam. It was maybe 80% of the way when I noticed the download speed was slowing down significantly, and so the remaining time predicted went up from 3 minutes to 4, 5, 6, 7, and kept climbing. 30 minutes, hours, then days, then weeks, then months, and finally was all the way up to 1 year of predicted time remaining. A moment later it finished and was ready to play.

[@Hanyamanusiabiasa]

"The download will complete in 5 minutes." "I mean 10 minutes" "I mean 99 days :O" "Download complete"

[@josedevgd9566]

I know 100% what the guy above is saying

[@sauce4897]

@@josedevgd9566 smol brain

[@Kangahrooo]

@@sauce4897 yes

[@imjustaguy4340]

The ps4 allwes starts at like 7 hours and gose to 20 mins (i like watching that tho its sayisfying)

[@Extremezotako]

LMAOOOO

[@micahy.6190]

"Imma just let this update overnight" *Goes to sleep... Wakes up... Opens laptop "Would you like to install this device software?"

[@jcfiggy]

:/ i hate that

[@ayaanazr]

UNDERRATED COMMENT

[@the.abhiram.r]

or when windows crashes and updates the computer anyways. AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING.

[@stirfryjedi]

"Press okay now to confirm installation." 😭

[@kabochaVA]

sudo dnf update Whenever _you_ choose to update...

[@XperimentorEES]

I like the comparison of loading bars being like the queue to a movie or something, reflecting real world incremental improvements the typical user can understand at face value. But filling a glass with water is in itself a smoothly transitioning progress bar we watch in real time, and if it's chunky then you got other problems to worry about.

[@Tharmin.124]

To further ensure the user knows that the program hasn't crashed, it's always nice to add a "time elapsed" counter as well

[@FilmscoreMetaler]

The worst kind of progress bars are the ones that roll in a circle infinitely and it doesn't really mean anything. Sometimes the installation process freezes forever but the animation is still going.

[@arthurmoore9488]

That's not a progress bar, it's just a dumb animation. Still better than nothing, but not by much.

[@hoodiesticks]

I believe the term for that is "Spinner". Ideally they should be used for tasks that only take a few seconds, because displaying a whole progress bar for something so short wouldn't be worth it.

[@oskarwinters1873]

if you see it on mobile games it usually just means your internet connection fell.

[@Bentroen_]

@@hoodiesticks Actually, the point of them is to indicate a task that will take an indefinite amount of time, e.g. when you're downloading a file that you don't know the total size of.

[@CorelUser]

they're there so you can tell whether or not the application has frozen and/or stopped working

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

Petition for Tom Scott to re-edit the title and fill the progress bar slowly every day.

[@NetheriteMiner]

this is the this many views video all over again

[@SKyrim190]

I had a fleeting impression that it was increasing along the video and got paranoid observing if there was some sort of magical trickery going on...but, no...just a normal title

[@dottyman7251]

petition signed (and I'm the 68th person to like your comment)

[@JBLewis]

Mark Rober just a similar thing with his Mar Rover Perseverance intro video, each day the video was re-titled counting down to the landing.

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

No, it will get stuck where it's at for 6 months, then suddenly finish.

[@Horizqn_]

Tom: Progress bar not smooth KZbin progress bar: WHAT ABOUT ME Lag: Well I counter you and many others.

[@KyleHeg]

i have watched this video twice, refreshed my youtube recommended 8 times and still every time this video keeps getting recommended to me

[@jamessawley213]

Steam be like: "Ok pal, this game will take 2 weeks... I mean 20 seconds... I mean 4 days, I mean 5 hours. . . I mean. . ."

[@hypereternal2263]

I mean 5 hours .... 2 weeks .... finished

[@kenji642]

or 2 years.. im not kidding, steam actually said it'd take 2 years to download a game

[@adamholliday3391]

@@kenji642 What game was it? And what were the computer specs?

[@StreamHGF]

relatable

[@debonairpuma8774]

99+ years

[@brunoliddle]

"It'll still probably be wrong, but it'll be differently wrong..." - this sounds like almost every single update to every piece of software that ever existed.

[@3bigbignig-abandoned]

😂😂😂

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

And a cause for celebration for the software developers.

[@baby333]

hahahahaha

[@HandledToaster2]

Every programmer trying to bugfix :(

[@0_-]

@@HandledToaster2 true

[@David_Crayford]

If you have two machines, you can leave one to process, download or install in its own time while doing something productive on the other computer or device. If you are building or fixing a computer, you may need a second one to display the PDF of the manual, or to search online for how to fix the broken one. And if it's the whole network that is being fixed, then it's time to catch up on something offline, even if it's just making yourself a nice cup of tea.

[@MegaLokopo]

You could probably design a loading bar that manipulates human emotion to convince us to be patient and constantly thinking it is always almost over.

[@angelogandolfo4174]

“.... and 24 seconds.” Smack bang on the 24 second mark. Now THAT’S attention to detail........

[@feronanthus9756]

Or padding out the necessary time with the intro

[@igorchistyakov8876]

@@feronanthus9756 one does not contradict the other, tbh.

[@beast123465]

I’m shook on how accurate this was

[@taylorhancock5834]

“It’ll be wrong, but it’ll be *differently* wrong” -Tom Scott

[@ponypapa6785]

few things are better than causing a *different* error than before. specifically when a lot of time has been spont on that one error

[@KurtFrederiksen]

I myself like when things fail in a known and predictable way if it has to fail. I would rather that my thermometer always was 3 degrees of than some random degree of at any time. It might be wrong but differently wrong is worse.

[@Spikehead777]

Sometimes I'd rather have something be differently wrong. Usually it means I did something to change the outcome and that potentially leads towards success.

[@Rachaelshaw7]

I absolutely love the ending well done.. well done

[@MrGhozt]

Progress bar: 3 percent complete Estimated finish time: 2 minutes remaining Progress bar: 99 percent complete Also estimated finish time: 22 years remaining

[@spaghetticoconut658]

I once had Steam tell me a game wouldn’t finish downloading 4 years from now. It’s been 5 years. Steam, where’s my game?

[@zeinab9222]

you got it yet?

[@user-ty2fm3ge9m]

You went 5 years without restarting your computer once?

[@theuselessteammate2097]

Is there some sort of r/missedthejoke

[@maikeru5187]

Dang steam still hasn't given you your game

[@HL1_EP1]

@@theuselessteammate2097 r/woosh

[@antonklettert]

"It'll still probably be wrong, but it will be differently wrong" has to be my favorite tom scott quote

[@3dlabs99]

its a much more pleasing kind of wrong

[@atomickoala62]

Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to gradation. Stuart: Of course it is. It is a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it is very wrong to say it is a suspension bridge.

[@VictorLima-mv4ni]

Tom scotte quot

[@marioh9926]

Your videos are extremely interesting. The way you compose them is very good. I encourage you to keep working. Thanks for the content, Tom! Congrats!

[@iankemp1131]

Great explanation and great ending :)

[@choozu]

Checkout lines at the supermarket ARE the real life progress bars. You think that they're only a couple of shoppers ahead of you remaining but then one of them spends eons on counting their coupons and/or "remembering" to get one more thing and disappearing into the aisles!

[@Milamberinx]

Did they have to take a boat to get to the isles?

[@stevencraeynest7729]

or the cashier's shift ends suddenly

[@geshtu1760]

Exactly - and wondering whether to switch to a different checkout is like deciding whether to cancel the download and try again from a different server

[@dananskidolf]

All these things sound like problems from back in the "human cashier" days.

[@canis_lupus2220]

​@21st Century Socialist Cannot happen here, because every scanned item needs to go into the weighing area before it lets you scan the next. But I agree, I take longer at the self-checkout than a trained cashier would take to mark my items. So the waiting time becomes an important factor when choosing between the two options.

[@Bentroen_]

Google Chrome has once shown me "8 years left" as the remaining time for a download. Sure, I can wait!

[@CrazyMazapan]

It's because it's Chrome. Too busy collecting your personal information to do the job. ;)

[@pmvid]

Premiere once showed me 939281827478383:23:07

[@julius855]

Steam users: PATHETIC

[@Pmf95k]

Super Smash Bros shows “280 hours left”

[@Bentroen_]

@@julius855 Oh, I get this all the time as well. My theory is that they keep calculating the "rolling average" even when the download is idle due to some external factor (i.e. the disk is busy so Steam can't write files to it), but they still proceed to throw those zeros into the calculation and you get "more than one year left".

[@mitachu]

Super video about could be a very dry subject. Oh, and it's great to see an Acorn A3010 in the background!

[@NeoHiPPy1980]

Than you for making this video! I can't even BEGIN to recollect the number of times I've had to explain this to users! Friendly reminder: Defrag your HDDs, folks!

[@heck_n_degenerate940]

You always gotta love seeing “ETA: 11960 hours 28 minutes 54 seconds”

[@0_-]

What does ETA mean?

[@heck_n_degenerate940]

@@0_- ETA stands for estimated time of arrival, in this case it’s the amount of time the computer thinks will take for something to download.

[@brethebird3148]

37 seconds later *task complete*

[@wesleymays1931]

ETA 2147483648 hours

[@Penguinking9466]

Or like 99+ hours

[@pmvid]

* progress bar moves smoothly * *_something's wrong I can feel it_*

[@jayageorge4278]

Where is the n?

[@muratkaanmeral2185]

just a feeling i've got

[@pmvid]

@@jayageorge4278 I dunno,

[@KurtFrederiksen]

Yes, some joker made a gif animation for the progress bar.

[@mvl8209]

Windows Troubleshooter feels targeted by this comment

[@dheerajbalodi3071]

Well done great job explaining it

[@alexandreblais8756]

Well that was quite informative, thank you for the video

[@davidlatoche8751]

Steam: "installing.. estimated 0 seconds remaining." *1 minute later*

[@mirjanbouma]

I've had the opposite: download time remaining: 3 years. Spoiler: it did not take three years. It was less than 15 minutes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@TaijiArban]

Same with valorant update: More than a year. I even saw some program say incalculable.

[@AgentxRyan]

@@TaijiArban lmao that reminds me Windows once said that Valorant took up 3.4 terabytes of space (visual glitch) when it really took up like 13gb

[@kasane1337]

I get that so often. Usually it sits at "0 seconds remaining" for at least 2 min.

[@safe-keeper1042]

@@AgentxRyan not progress bar-related, but your comment reminds me of installing an old game on a modern computer and the install program telling me the computer might not be able to run the game because it required 32 MB of RAM and I had only 4 GB.

[@jeffreytenthije]

The progressbar type I hate is the quick or smooth type, but just takes forever to confirm the last % because it skipped all of the other 99 bc of the smoothness

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

YES! YES! YES!!!!

[@tomihawk01]

Search in Windows Explorer does this and I hate it.

[@Henning_S.]

Windows Updates do this

[@amai_zing]

I’ve been a software developer for decades and I still find myself trying to explain to people that the progress bar shows how much of all the tasks the program needs to perform have been done, not how much time it’s going to take to do those tasks Since things have gone largely internet based (which can be a total crapshoot), progress bars have largely been replaced with spinning loading things because we developers have essentially given up on trying to give any predictions and just want to let the user know “we’re still doing something, please continue wait”

[@seiru]

That's a smooth way to end the video. Respect++

[@a_blind_sniper]

My favorite progress bars also have the optional "Details" feed that prints what's been happening. Seeing a lot of text print really quickly gives a satisfying indicator that "things are happening!"

[@doomse150]

If the detailed log is really detailed, this could actually slow down progress, because displaying stuff on screen also takes time

[@pacifico4999]

@Ezequiel Ciamparella it will take the same time with dummy text or meaningful text. Printing on console is the slow part, if you do it too much.

[@doomse150]

@Ezequiel Ciamparella What Pacífico said

[@ABaumstumpf]

​@@doomse150 Depends - but just 1-2 lines per Second will have no noticeable impact unless you are really really bad at your job (or a web"developer").

[@MrTyrellcorp]

@@ABaumstumpf 1 or 2 lines in a loop can really slow things down tho

[@jbtechcon7434]

"Are you done?" "No." "When will you be done?" "I won't know until I'm done."

[@thunder_bird0012]

.

[@varindred]

..

[@Shadhooe]

....

[@lucianomachado8345]

.....

[@parcivalnayuta]

......

[@gushax]

This is the most brilliant video ending on KZbin EVER. Period.

[@kentslocum]

My new favorite excuse is "I'm not wrong; I'm just differently wrong."

[@scorchik11]

Even an actual queue acts like loading bars, many people just go straight through and then there’s one person who takes forever

[@jackw7714]

At the cash machine there is always that person who acts like they've never used one before

[@PedroSantos-fw6gk]

When my torrent downloads shows _"63 years remaining"_ I'm like "great, I'll leave it downloading and come back when I'm 84." Ten minutes later: _" seeding"_

[@laurinneff4304]

Always love it when that happens. One time I got like 500 bytes per second. It hurt, but at least the download wasn't completely stalled

[@dylanwhitney8889]

Nothing worse than going back to check on the download and seeing that it's on 99% but all the seeders are gone😂

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@laurinneff4304 I always increase my seed ratio like 10-100x higher than my default limit when that happens, hoping to offset the ppl that just leech, and maybe ultimately bringing the speed a bit higher for later ppl

[@jaakkopontinen]

Heh is Bittorrent still a thing? Been years since I last saw these terms used :) Seeding! Had forgotten! And share ratio!

[@donnawander7710]

@@jaakkopontinen yep! it gets used for linux ISOs quite frequently

[@hammerfahrer3166]

those edits are really great

[@douggale5962]

It's nice to watch a video that is entirely correct. The main reason for progress bars is to alleviate boredom. If it is perfectly smooth, it is boring. Besides the legitimate causes for irregular progress, an unpredictable pause or speed fluctuation adds suspense.

[@daniellefreyaold6099]

I like it when they include something like a "3/16 modules loaded" or scroll names of current operations in plain text ( more common on linux machines) its a much more tactile sense that the machine is continuing to work, and seems a little more reassuring.

[@sulevturnpuu5491]

And then the Everquest progressbar started telling things like 'Attaching beards to dwarves.'

[@Hxrb]

I've seen a post about someone complaining that "Their apps (or website, I forgot) tooks forever to load" and the company decided to do nothing except adding words like "Processing File (abc)..." and "Rendering assets (123)..." under the bar. The same customer said that the loading screen are now faster than before HAHAHA.

[@whatis4295]

@@Hxrb One of the beauties of UX. Just add in something to look at and the program appears to be more responsive. It even works for people who knows how that trick.

[@fissure256]

@@sulevturnpuu5491 Or the classic "reticulating splines" from SimCity 2000

[@lukmly013]

@@whatis4295 Yes. Like turning on Linux machine. How it feels normally: 5 minutes How it feels when I hit arrow: 10 seconds

[@michaeledmunds7266]

Me downloading a game off the PlayStation store: "Download will be complete in 50 minutes... 3 hours... 20 minutes.... 30 minutes... it's done."

[@moreuse]

then its stuck at "Copying...." for hours

[@ahmed4363]

You guys have anything other than a samsung s3?!

[@ahmed4363]

And GOOD INTERNET?!!

[@miningmonkey1]

@@moreuse yes

[@no1DdC]

It took me three days to download all the updates for Gran Turismo 6 on PS3 - with a freakin' 300 Mbit/s connection. I was using the disc copy, I might add. Why? Because someone at Sony decided that the best way to deliver updates on that system was by having each individual update install separately. This is a minor annoyance with a game that has received its normal three to five patches over its lifespan, but with GT6, this meant installing 22 patches, one after the other, each of them at least hundreds of megabytes large on a system with a hard drive that would have been slow in 2006 and a processor that is fine in a supercomputer, but utterly incapable of quickly decompressing large amounts of data. And the system inevitably failed at installing some of these patches, even crashed during one over night download session, because it's from 2006 and Sony's engineers were taking crazy pills at the time, so I had to delete everything and restart again twice. Those three days were the successful installation run and don't include previous failed ones. Naturally, Sony's servers were also slow as hell, for some reason, which didn't make it any faster. Let's just say the PS3 is the last Sony console I've ever bought. The game's great though and it was totally worth the effort, but holy hell, what a nightmare.

[@thermalXTX]

I love the Netflix percentage count.. It’s at 1%, 4% and then done, never even gets to 5

[@corruleumblue3317]

Gotta love that reference to the invention of the progress bar at the end there.

[@shmup2923]

I remember back in the 2000's , the bars had little reference and animation. So I would put my cursor lined up with the bar to see if it was moved.

[@igorthelight]

+1

[@ardenkel1127]

Waaaay before that. I did it in Norton Commander days...

[@johnme60]

yup😂😂 , I did the similar , I used to remember like: " it was below the letter "e" , now it has moved from there.

[@clockworkkirlia7475]

I remember doing the same!

[@kirishima638]

Haha same

[@StartToSkill]

Vista: "Estimating time remaining..." *2 hours later* Vista: "Estimating time remaining..." Vista: "0 seconds remaining" *Task finishes*

[@FalconFlurry]

At least your task finished, legend says there are Vista computers out there that are still estimating the time remaining

[@mojave5661]

haha funny because vista bad.. get it?

[@0_-]

I think the disk can go faster but it'll take time to get to it's max speed at that current time

[@krinkrin5982]

That particular issue is because the system is indexing files and it can take ages to do just that.

[@Menjoood]

Ah yes, the Vista experience of everyone who've never used Vista.

[@samanthak9346]

really clear and interesting. Thanks!!

[@StdDev99]

That's the kind of golden content I subscribe to Tom Scott for.

[@31ll087]

The real pain is when it starts going backwards.

[@tk36_real]

Hello there

[@dabs4270]

@@tk36_real general Kenobi

[@31ll087]

@@tk36_real General Kenobi

[@kislayanand4641]

"I've come to bargain"

[@dabs4270]

@@kislayanand4641 no, you came here to be general Kenobi

[@NekoreoGolden]

1:23 HOW

[@kjdude8765]

Best guess is a live stopwatch timer.

[@rolu9345]

there's padding at the end of the video

[@BigDBrian]

@@rolu9345 i believe Leoreo said HOW in response to Tom calling out the current time in the video, not the edited in visual

[@user-pu8ty1ki6l]

Guessing current time: Multiple practice takes to keep flow, combined with a clock of some kind that Tom can see. Guessing video length: Full script rehearsals to gauge rough length of the video before recording, plus tweaking the credits at the end to make sure it's accurate.

[@crispoman]

EDITING It was probably originally (when written) "There's [length] of video, and we've got through [length]" and once the pacing had been worked out you just put the real values in. Any slight variations can be fixed with video editing (you'd be surprised how little you notice a

[@warvzel1365]

Finally! A very accurate and relevant video!

[@UDKodr]

As a developer myself i completely agree it's letting the user know somethings happening and nothings wrong. It's nice to know how long it took to render something as a benchmark and an estimate of times left is nice incase you are crunching a task, want to know if you have time to walk away etc but those are perks not the main function

[@ImSquiggs]

I was friends with a computer genius as a kid, and his parents always had the cutting edge tech to play around with. One thing I remember him saying is "When I grow up and program games, I'm going to make a load bar that runs smoothly." That was his one mission in life, haha.

[@Josh-ez1bt]

i hope that guy becomes successful

[@leonardofranzinribeiro4220]

I wish him well on his crusade for the perfect loading bar

[@farisfaikar_r]

We'll watch his carrier with great interest

[@inolongerusethisaccount4004]

The quest for the perfect progress bar

[@magi1134]

My idea is the active colored part moving smoothly, but the size of the end extends itself if the loading is buffering

[@sweetpandageek]

“it’ll still probably be wrong... just differently wrong!” is a perfect explanation of me going back to check my answers on a math test

[@shakir_ahmad]

Your comment is the reason why I like internet.

[@ast9398]

Tom is proof that knowledge is the coolest thing

[@davidhirt9129]

Probably the most tom Scott video of all Tom Scott videos.

[@ketsuekikumori9145]

"It will be differently wrong." I'll use that when I don't want to admit when someone is more correct.

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

I use something similar in programming. If I can get a program that was failing to fail differently, then I've learned something.

[@MidnightSt]

Yes. I'm a programmer, and I take a "janky" progressbar that I can feel/see is directly tied into the operation before some "fancy" artificial smoothness where I have no way to judge whether it's not just an animation completely unrelated to what's happening (or even to the fact whether something is happening or not).

[@Furiends]

I think progress bars only make sense with a single characteristic of a task. Download progress bars are actually really good. They tell you progress, rate and estimated time remaining. Combining multiple characteristics together is lazy and misleading. However its a disease with computing that the user shall have no idea what the blackbox is doing. Really a computer could be providing much more meaningful statuses on its tasks. But it'd require a lot more than a progress bar.

[@ammyvl1]

@@Furiends well the question is: why *do* you need to know what it's doing? For the vast majority of apps, it's not necessary.

[@kindlin]

@@Furiends A list of progress bars (progress bar 3/8) isn't that much harder than 1 progress bar.

[@electronx5594]

@@ammyvl1 well let's say youre in a hurry and need to leave your wifi, the progression can help you decide whether to wait for awhile or stop the process and do it again later

[@cardboardbox_tech]

In our stuff we tend to make a "wizard" style progress bar, something you'd see, say, in winxp installation, where it would give you a checkmark list of things to do and progress for the current thing it's doing

[@grraver]

Loved the video! Thanks!

[@chloelayla017]

One of the most underappreciated technological advancements is the way loading times are becoming largely redundant now. The pain we used to go through in the 80's, 90's and 2000's has largely been resolved. Think cassette games on your Spectrum, Dial Up Internet, Firing Up Windows or downloading an MP3 or updating your phone software and I bet you can remember the horror when they went wrong. Things are so much speedier and reliable now, that for many, they're barely noticeable. The fret of worrying about whether something will work or load has largely subsided and for that, I think we should be eternally grateful.

[@imarcus1973]

"Less than 1 minute remaining", Yes 1 Microsoft minute...

[@dave0smeg]

Love Microsoft Minutes. "23 Minutes remaining" means anything from 7 minutes to 32 hours.

[@cycrothelargeplanet]

@@dave0smeg ahh

[@danielgstohl9993]

Don't quote me on this, but I think that behaviour comes from the way caching is handled. Essentially, most OSs will take some RAM that's unused at the moment and use it to cache disk writes to make them faster or even save some write operations if the same thing is modified multiple times. The Windows Explorer doesn't know about that and just hears from the OS that files are being written, but not whether they are written to RAM or the actual disk. But the developers of Explorer probably thought of that, so to be sure the Explorer will tell the OS to flush the cache, (i.e. tell it to write all cached from RAM to the disk) before closing the copy dialog. They just didn't think to make a progress bar for that or adjust the existing one.

[@fatrobin72]

1 minute later. "2 hours remaining" 5 minutes later. "Done."

[@Armageddon_71]

Similar to The World. Dio's monologues that are supposed to be 7 seconds long can be anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes.

[@axefinn9343]

I honestly knew what to expect and halfway through wondered why I even clicked this

[@Skyrim_Shuffle]

As I'm watching this, my video has buffered at least 3 times. Blaming it on the Wi-Fi because Tom is great regardless!