Re: Testing the new VC code

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

> In any case, none of the differences seem worth getting excited about.
> I'll keep an eye on CVS latency, but I won't reintroduce complexity
> against it unless we get complaints from real users.  With response
> times of a quarter second I think that is unlikely - it's not that far 
> above the minimum ergonomic threshold of 0.17sec below which humans
> simply cannot notice latency at all.
>
> (A spinal reflex arc is about 0.10 seconds.  Human nerve conduction
> velocity - the "speed of thought" - is not actually very high.)

I don't think that the numbers you throw in here carry a lot of meaning.
As a musician, I certainly have to be able to produce and recognize runs
with individual notes shorter than 0.17 seconds.

The speed typing record is at 216 words per minute.  That's words, not
letters.

So whether or not those kinds of delay turn out relevant in practice
very much depends on which tasks with what kind of interactivity they
appear in.  Blanket musings about some "speed of thought" are
meaningless.

-- 
David Kastrup