Comment by jakobegger
7 years ago
They also had those progress bars when you stopped or restarted some services in an old version of Windows. They had no idea how long it would take, so they just made a logarithmic progress bar that became slower and slower, but never finished.
That trick only works once. As soon as you see that progress bar pattern a couple of times, you realise that it is fake, and it is infuriating.
Progress bars need to be honest. If you don't have any clue how long it'll take, show a spinner instead.
I'd rather just see output of something tied to the actual process.
Basically an answer to the question, "Is this thing taking a long time because it's doing work - or because it's busted"
In software it's busted at least 20% of the time and I think that's being generous.