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Comment by igouy | Hacker News Reader

> a fun visualization of each language’s performance

The effect is similar to dragging a string past a cat: complete distraction — unable to avoid focusing on the movement — unable to extract any information from the movement.

To understand the measurements, cover the "fun visualization" and read the numbers in the single column data table.

(Unfortunately we aren't able to scan down the column of numbers, because the language implementation name is shown first.)

Previously: <blink>

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/blink_elem...

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It does visualise how big the difference is though

Cover up the single column of lang/secs and then try to read how big the difference is between java and php from the moving circles.

You would have no problem doing that with a [typo histogram should say bar chart].

Cover the labels on the histogram and try to read how big the difference is between java and php....

We can read the relative difference from the length of the bars because the bars are stable.

I can see the relative difference in speed between the two balls.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

:-)

PHP looks much slower

The question is: How much slower?

We could try to count how many times the java circle crosses left-to-right and right-to-left, in the time it takes for the PHP circle to cross left-to-right once.

That's error prone but should be approximately correct after a couple of attempts.

That's work we're forced to do because the "fun visualization" is uninformative.

That might be your question, but then you can look at the numbers. No chart will be as exact.

If only we could look at the numbers without the uninformative distraction.

I found the animation informative

> I found the animation informative

Java was so fast it glowed orange!

I wonder if the distraction of the animation actually makes people slower at reading the information that is in the text column.

The animation serves its purpose -- it grabs attention.

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