Cached data is becoming a hazard

[kris44dad]

As the related technologies are getting faster and cheaper, I think caching data is becoming more of a nuisance, then a performance benefit. In the mobile space, clearing the cache seems to solve app problems about 98% of the time. Speaking about Android, I'm not taking about  data space, although that can occasionally cause a problem, but the cache space.

 

If I were an app developer, I think the first thing I would do upon starting (or coming to the foreground...whatever), is to force a clear of all cache data just to avoid trouble tickets with my app. Desktop/laptop solutions have never had this issue on as large of a scale as the mobile apps do, as I remember.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

14 minutes ago, kris44dad said:

As the related technologies are getting faster and cheaper, I think caching data is becoming more of a nuisance, then a performance benefit. In the mobile space, clearing the cache seems to solve app problems about 98% of the time. Speaking about Android, I'm not taking about  data space, although that can occasionally cause a problem, but the cache space.

 

If I were an app developer, I think the first thing I would do upon starting (or coming to the foreground...whatever), is to force a clear of all cache data just to avoid trouble tickets with my app. Desktop/laptop solutions have never had this issue on as large of a scale as the mobile apps do, as I remember.

The reason why we have it on such a large scale is as you said, performance. You could clear the cache as an app developer. But you're just going to get a lot of complaints of how your app takes so long to load. 

[kirashi]

33 minutes ago, kris44dad said:

As the related technologies are getting faster and cheaper, I think caching data is becoming more of a nuisance, then a performance benefit. In the mobile space, clearing the cache seems to solve app problems about 98% of the time. Speaking about Android, I'm not taking about  data space, although that can occasionally cause a problem, but the cache space.

 

If I were an app developer, I think the first thing I would do upon starting (or coming to the foreground...whatever), is to force a clear of all cache data just to avoid trouble tickets with my app. Desktop/laptop solutions have never had this issue on as large of a scale as the mobile apps do, as I remember.

17 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The reason why we have it on such a large scale is as you said, performance. You could clear the cache as an app developer. But you're just going to get a lot of complaints of how your app takes so long to load. 

I would rather have an app that takes an extra 5 seconds to load than an app that doesn't function because the cache is broken most of the time. Facebook's entire platform is a prime example of this, even on desktop with caching disabled. On multiple devices, old and new, I have run into cache problems where the Facebook app either stops loading content, or loads a cached version of the content (without me knowing it's cached) but refuses to let me comment, like, or act on this content. In order to clear this, I either have to completely close the app, or sometimes clear the cache on Android, or delete and re-install it on iOS (because Apple doesn't believe in allowing the user to clear cache.)

 

It's the same reason as how the desktop site gets out of whack very often for me. When you first load up any page on Facebook.com (a user profile, business page, a group, or just the homepage) it caches what you currently see along with a bunch of Javascript functions so that it can load things you click on in the same tab very quickly. Even with caching disabled explicitly in your browser, it will still use the HTML5 local storage to cache things from the current tab.

 

When this works, it's a really great experience, so I'm totally fine with caching for this reason. However, I have yet to experience a Javascript-heavy website or mobile app that can properly detect when AJAX calls don't display the content on the users' screen. It's almost as if there's no client-side verification happening to ensure the AJAX call actually displays what the user requested, so the user is left with a loading modal that never completes, or in Facebook's case, a desktop site that appears to change but never loads any content until the user refreshes the page in their browser. Yikes.

 

I would sooner just go back to having everything load up server-side before being delivered to the user to completely eliminate this problem, but that means greater expense for companies running the servers on the backend since they'd no longer be offloading the display modal to the users' machines. I'm all for cost-saving measures that speed up the user experience, but not if it means a broken user experience.

 

[Sniperfox47]

9 hours ago, kirashi said:

I would rather have an app that takes an extra 5 seconds to load than an app that doesn't function because the cache is broken most of the time. Facebook's entire platform is a prime example of this, even on desktop with caching disabled. On multiple devices, old and new, I have run into cache problems where the Facebook app either stops loading content, or loads a cached version of the content (without me knowing it's cached) but refuses to let me comment, like, or act on this content. In order to clear this, I either have to completely close the app, or sometimes clear the cache on Android, or delete and re-install it on iOS (because Apple doesn't believe in allowing the user to clear cache.)

 

It's the same reason as how the desktop site gets out of whack very often for me. When you first load up any page on Facebook.com (a user profile, business page, a group, or just the homepage) it caches what you currently see along with a bunch of Javascript functions so that it can load things you click on in the same tab very quickly. Even with caching disabled explicitly in your browser, it will still use the HTML5 local storage to cache things from the current tab.

 

When this works, it's a really great experience, so I'm totally fine with caching for this reason. However, I have yet to experience a Javascript-heavy website or mobile app that can properly detect when AJAX calls don't display the content on the users' screen. It's almost as if there's no client-side verification happening to ensure the AJAX call actually displays what the user requested, so the user is left with a loading modal that never completes, or in Facebook's case, a desktop site that appears to change but never loads any content until the user refreshes the page in their browser. Yikes.

 

I would sooner just go back to having everything load up server-side before being delivered to the user to completely eliminate this problem, but that means greater expense for companies running the servers on the backend since they'd no longer be offloading the display modal to the users' machines. I'm all for cost-saving measures that speed up the user experience, but not if it means a broken user experience.

 

You're talking about this like it's the cache's fault. It's not the cache's fault that the Facebook devs are incompetent with regards to app design and optimization. It's not the cache's fault that Facebook frequently stores data incompletely.

 

Dealing with everything on the web server side is a huuuuuuuuge step back, not just from performance but also from UX. The whole reason why JavaScript even became a thing was because users expect a dynamic experience that updates with the actions they take. Does that break things occasionally? Maybe. But it also results in a lot better user experience for the *vast* majority of users.

 

At the end of the day, 53% of users abandon websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. That's the whole reason AMP is a thing. That's the whole reason caching exists. People don't want to be wasting time waiting for things to load. You may want to, but most of the people companies get their money from do not.