

Ask HN: What actually causes a computer/program to run slowly? - quizbiz

A friend of mine asked and I couldn't answer. Maybe you guys can help me out.
======
tokenadult
A badly chosen algorithm can waste immense numbers of processor cycles doing
something that could be done more efficiently with a better algorithm.
Sometimes a bad algorithm can run into memory size limits or other issues that
stop execution completely.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_efficiency>

------
msie
I always wondered if a lot of programs were riddled with timeouts (directly,
or indirectly through calls to apis) and if eliminating them would make the
computer faster (although more prone to errors ;) ).

------
thexa4
Most of the time a slow program is waiting on input/output to slow devices,
like the network or hard drives. Badly chosen algorithms can also lead to slow
applications.

------
noodle
typically, i/o operations, which can be caused by numerous things. or, if
you're just crunching some serious numbers.

if your "computer is running slow"(tm), its probably from paging/thrashing due
to not having enough ram or having too many things open. i've fixed too many
"my computer is running slow" problems that ended up being someone having 100
IE windows open at once.

