Measured: Typing latency of Zutty compared to other terminal emulators (2021)

So why would you expect it to be better if you shrunk them down to micro size? That is the whole point of my comment, that the observed latency is better explained as a function of hardware/software complexity and not "year of production". If you understand this, it should not surprise you at all that most contemporary desktops have the latency characteristics they do since we have seen it before in the old supers/workstations, their closest equivalents in terms of hw/sw complexity and capability. Of course it could be better and some are but you won't find them in that article.

>but these 'toy' computers are capable of running a word processor or spreadsheet, writing email, browsing the web (without js), compiling c, running an ide, etc. the zx spectrum even had a first-person 3-d shoot-em-up called elite. so i don't think it's pointless

Can it perform those tasks all at the same time like we expect now or like a mainframe/workstation user would have expected then? When you look at the entire landscape of computing hardware and software it is difficult not to see the early micros in that light. An extreme example would be the Altair 8800. I don't see how you could describe that computer as anything other than a plaything for enthusiasts. I made the analogy between modern desktops and old supers which you seem to agree with; could you even say that an early micro is the rough equivalent of a 50's mainframe with a straight face? It should be but the analogy is more difficult to justify: 36-bit vs 8-bit words, FORTRAN vs BASIC, FPU (some) vs no FPU, at every level of the analysis there are compromises. It should be clear that the micro represents an extremely compromised version of general computing that would be alien not only to us but to the serious computer user in the 70s/80s and yet their characteristics should be held as a benchmark for computing devices in general? Outside the context of "the home computing experience" they make for a poor comparison. Unfortunately there is great ignorance in this area due to the disproportionate focus on micros when discussing historical computing. Videos and articles on the Apple II series, awash with insufferable amounts of sentimentality, are a dime a dozen but you will be lucky to find anything on the IBM TYPE 704, a much more interesting and equally significant machine.

You'll find most keyboards in your link, despite these fullrate-enabled high poll rates, actually have higher latency from keypress to event than what PS2 trivially achieved.

Which, by the way, is consistent with the findings in Danluu's article ("a joke"), showing that pressing 2 keys at once might not be as accurate, but does not completely compromise the results, relative to using a mechanical arm.

Note that Danluu documents his methodology, and even expresses that he would prefer a mechanical arm setup.

Which is why...

>That article is a joke.

Is undeservedly unkind.

It does quite a bit. e.g.:

If your refresh rate is 60Hz, that's some 16.6ms per frame.

If the frame takes 16.7ms and thus isn't ready by the deadline, you get either tearing (very visible, annoying, experience breaking) or your frame takes 33.3ms, which is a lot of Jitter.

Jitter between 16.6ms and 33.3ms or tearing, are both much worse than 16.7ms you could get with freesync, which is just some 100µs of jitter.

Even at 120Hz, the barely miss deadline case would be half the jitter, but still 8ms vs 50µs. And the tearing alternative is still every bit as horrible.

Seems like that's similar to how Vim can feel so smooth to use, with experienced users not even thinking about what keys to press but just what operation to do, as the inputs can be combined in intuitive ways and the entire program has very low latency to do anything. Very different from "ugh, now I again need to move my hand to the mouse to select that bit of text".

i mean it isn't going to convince anyone who says they 'have never once had a problem with typing latency'