stupid progress messages

[waider]

DUMP: 99.92% done at 287 kB/s, finished in 0:00
DUMP: 100.00% done at 287 kB/s, finished in 0:00
DUMP: 100.00% done at 268 kB/s, finished in 0:00

I hate useless progress indicators, but it seems they're the most common type around. A progress indicator needs two things in order to be useful: knowledge of the completion time, even if only approximate, and consistent speed. I can't be the only person who gets ticked off at installers that go from 0 to 96% in 5 seconds and then spend two hours making up the remaining 4%. I'm not interested in how much work is left in the job, I'm interested in how much longer it's going to take to finish.

Comments

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

As soon as I see two decimal places in a percentage progress measurement, I know this hasn't been thought out enough.

This is a particularly hard problem when a long operation has two parts, and the amount of work in part 1 is known a priori but the amount in part 2 is not.