So, most people seldom give a thought to the psychology of a browser. (Maybe we should call it the Spychology, for obvious reasons.)
My browser is Firefox von Mozilla. A while ago it asked me to upgrade to its new version, but I was in a contrary mood, and I said, no, nuh-uh.
OMG. Little did I know how this would upset the thing. The first thing it did was to tell me that it has trouble doing something or other, and can it reload? So I said, Not Now. It did not appear to do anything in response to that, and I proceeded to wait until it open up the half-dozen tabs I had open, but ... i t w a s s o s l o w.
Unfortunately for me, I have had just enough computer background to be able to get into the sad mind of this browser. You see, it probably doesn't expect users to deny it permission to update. The updating Team has not reckoned with senior citizens (me) who have suffered under updates that invariably make products work not-good-ly.
What happens, at the level of pseudocode, is as follows. There is probably a switch that is present, at top level, that sends control to Old Firefox, in the unlikely event that the user has said: Don't Update. But, even in Old Firefox, they have probably embedded numerous switches, all throughout, that keep checking whether the user has decided to change his or her mind, and update. So the control flow probably looks like this.
Check whether to update: CHECKING...
Update? : NO.
Do a couple of steps: OKAY...
Check whether to update: CHECKING...
Update? : NO.
Do one more step: OKAY...
Check whether to update: CHECKING...
Update? : NO.
Oh, come on; check again: CHECKING...
Update? : NO.
I can't believe this! : ???
Yes, debugging computer performance can be invigorating, except possibly in this case.
Arch
No comments:
Post a Comment