Gajim - 2023-11-11

> Gajim GTK3 is veeery laggy as well Squeaky Latex Folf are you referring to switching windows?

I think questioning software efficiency and minimum hardware requirements is reasonable conversation

>> Gajim GTK3 is veeery laggy as well > Squeaky Latex Folf are you referring to switching windows? Probably ↺

It isn't so bad anymore, although groupchat switching is still not instant

Meanwhile on C++ and C clients like Psi+ and Profanity, switching chats is instantaneous

no, I'm not talking about group chats, I mean switching to gajim from another application

I've noticed that some GTK 3 themes have some ridiculously slow visual changes that happen when you switch to the window using GTK 3, but I still don't know why or if this is intended ✏

I've noticed that some GTK 3 themes have some ridiculously slow visual changes that happen when you switch to the window that is using GTK 3, but I still don't know why or if this is intended ✏

Yes, chat switching in gajim has a noticeable delay

How come?

I don't really know. You can reduce that delay when in chats with many participants by keeping the roster closed.

An obvious thing to do is to blame Python. Heck, most Electron-based chat programs like Discord are known for being notoriously slow, with switching channels easily taking half a second or more.

for me, I only see improvement there when it's big numbers, like thousands of users

However, this is closed-minded. Element has proven that Electron-based programs don't always have to be slow

Element can switch channels a lot quicker than most of its kind

actually, I think I compared gajim to Element and maybe Discord and gajim was equivalent for chat switching ✏

that was about a year ago

maybe more

Well, if roster visibility is actually a problem in performance, that sounds like an unnecessary bottleneck. Psi+ can display a groupchat roster without any kind of performance impact

it's not slow enough for me to be annoyed in gajim, definitely under 0.5 seconds

interesting

Psi+ instantly switches chats and groupchats with a roster sidebar with no delay

of course, faster always feels better

However, opening a groupchat for the first time in Psi+ causes a very slight delay

But then it's loaded and it will be instant next time ✏

I have to agree with what you were saying earlier. Chat apps really shouldn't require a lot of compute. I hate this treadmill of always being expected to have the newest ultra-fast hardware to do the same stuff we've been doing for decades.

Exactly

A possible requirement for super fast and efficient computing is an ahead of time compiled language with easy to optimize, simple data structures and control flow.

C falls under that category. C++ is pretty close however it includes non-efficient data structures in the base language

now I'm wondering about that newish thing for python, not sure if I'm thinking of cython or something else

I think I heard the python creator talking about it

However, I don't know whether it is fair to blame the language. It does play a part and I do notice a pattern of general slowness in high-level languages like Python, JavaScript, and even Java to some extent.

However a lot of things can be blamed on the code itself as well

Perhaps the general slowness is caused by developers having less of an idea what effect code will have on the efficiency of the program

Python does try to hide that away

Meanwhile in C, performance impacts are generally clearly observed as it is a very explicit language

C++ does hide some things, especially memory management and offers other mid/high-level abstractions ✏

When I wrote a Python program related to audio, the program would freeze as the audio buffer got extended

I had no idea how this worked internally. Python kept me ignorant to the internals of my own program

And maybe that's a pitfall that leads to further unoptimized code

There's another Python program called Nicotine, a free and open source Soulseek client, which suffers from one of the worst performance issues ever

Nicotine freezes randomly and with every action you perform

Especially list-related actions

Clearing the uploads list makes Nicotine freeze for minutes as it "clears" a list

Who knew that clearing can take so long?

There's probably some insanely unoptimized code. Is that what "Pythonic" entails?

PyCucked

Fast as a snail

Squeaky Latex Folf: now you rambled along for a while, told us several times how fast Psi would be, and tried to guess a lot about Gajim's performance while not having used it for some time. If you wanted to investigate actual performance issues (I still don't know if you really have any), you could take a profiler and just have a look.

yep ^

python has threading and async

I don't think python has anything to do with performance issues tbh

the fast and the furious quote

it's not how you stand by your car it's how you use it

applies to languages, platforms etc as well

> python has threading and async But the interpreter could be a bottleneck in some workloads ↺

for chat apps i doubt it

if we are talking hard realtime systems sure

Gajim for daily use. Psi(+) for emergency and some other functions which Gajim has no.

Gajim can not stand when being attacked by extremely long and plenty spam messages, especially on weak CPU devices. No ground for blame.

After all, it is written in Python.

Also try Dino, there is an unofficial Windows version.

again with the python arguments? ....

No. Why argue about Python?

I did not say “Python is not good”.

What if I told you, that the most commonly seen lags in Gajim are caused by GTK, which is not python? Window focus lags depend on your theme, if GTK applies backdrop classes to all elements, that's not a python issue.

Isn't that fixed in gtk4? I heard (wrong?)

Sorry for my fault. Should I tell users it is because of GTK? ✏

☭Mike Yellow: does it matter? :)

pep.: could be :)

> ☭Mike Yellow: does it matter? :) Hmmm... I think yes. I should tell users Gajim is not a software which every function and performance are depended on Gajim developers. (Like Gajim 1.8 does not support Windows 7 is because of Python official.) Then they will not bother you about these questions/problems.

also python doesn't matter in performance. i swear the amount of times that python is the problem is assumed :x

Grrrrr Python!

My love-hate relationship with Python

It's so easy to write duct tape software in it

If you have religious reasons not to use gajim.... There is really nobody forcing you

Squeaky Latex Folf: take your gentoo elitism elsewhere

please all lets end this topic now

> Squeaky Latex Folf: take your gentoo elitism elsewhere isnt emerge written in python?

> please all lets end this topic now Apologies ↺

umu, did you see what i just wrote?

sorryyy

lovetox: never seen you so strict on moderation before... dislike it when people insult gajim?

no, i dislike it when people discuss things of no relevance to this support chat

like what language is best

what framework is best, what OS is best, ...

> no, i dislike it when people discuss things of no relevance to this support chat but thats pretty common... people sometimes go off topic slightly... it isn't like the topic was here for long. but anyways... its a bad topic and should be avoided like you said :) ↺

not long? its the last 100 messages, thats long enough for me

thats why i said, lets end it

oh I didn't see that... now the aggressive response makes sense. Sorry.