Why do software installation or updates always go very fast up to 90% complete, then the last 5-10% takes so much longer?
In: Technology
You invite people over to a party and you want to bring out the cake when everyone arrives. People keep asking you when’s cake. If you give a time estimate based on when you think people will fully arrive you will be way off. If you go by when the party starts you would be “stuck at 100%” for a while, or end up in over 100% time. So you just count who is there vs who all RSVP’d. 80% of the people show up before the party start but people trickle in.
A more concrete answer, progress bars can’t tell the future. In some cases you can go off of average run times if it’s on the same system. But usually for something like an installer, there’s multiple steps. Some will move for things like downloads, but you might have a step at the end that takes longer like compiling or coping files.
Basically it’s not a % of the amount of time left, but the amount of work, even if that work might go slower.
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