The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#71

Post by Clubber » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

0xbear wrote: post #49

Theodores wrote: post #20

I have decided to stick with writing code rather than progress my career. Consequently I am that minority in the team delivering features that customers use. I take personal pride in that and keep quiet about it. Those reports, those plans, the documentation, the mock ups, the meetings and the emails are not in the final product, all that work counted for next to nothing. Ultimately it was mostly two of us working aw…

You'll be out of a job by your mid-40's. I suggest you reconsider your decision to not "progress your career".

Yes, that's not anywhere close to true. It might be in SV, but most businesses just care about how well you solve problems.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#72

Post by damnfine » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

neilalexander wrote: post #24

wolfgang42 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a Windows 7 machine refuse to shut down because it was "Playing Logoff Sound"!

Windows 2000 wouldn't even start the logoff or shutdown process until the logoff sound had completed playing. ;-)

Oh god, I remember setting a whole sone as my logoff somewhere in the win9x days, and it totally would. I had to hear the whole damn song just to reboot, by which time I had forgotten to change it. Annoyed my family for weeks.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#73

Post by 0xbear » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #71

0xbear wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be out of a job by your mid-40's. I suggest you reconsider your decision to not "progress your career".

Yes, that's not anywhere close to true. It might be in SV, but most businesses just care about how well you solve problems.

Says someone who's not 40 yet. Tech is notoriously ageist.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#74

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

I'd like to read this, but Blogspot is absolutely the most reading-hostile service of which I'm aware. Its "dynamic" formats most especially.

Not only do these defy all readability within a browser, they break fallbacks: console clients (w3m, elinks, etc.), or readability alternatives (Pocket, Instapaper, Outline.com).

Please just don't use Blogspot. And don't use the dynamic styles if you must.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#75

Post by codedokode » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:53 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #34

Aside: is this website messing up the scroll for anyone else?

Blogspot's UI is awful. They probably tried to follow trends and make an app out of website. While loading the page it first shows you the preloader with gears, then loads the top post and only later loads the post you were going to read. It probably gives good score in automated load speed test but in fact you can start reading the text much later than if it were plain HTML page.

And when I clicked the search box, the post I was reading has scrolled itself away (no kidding!). I tried to remove focus from the search box but the post didn't come back.

And that is Google's product. It might have some advanced code inside but the UI is awful.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#76

Post by codedokode » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:55 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #74

I'd like to read this, but Blogspot is absolutely the most reading-hostile service of which I'm aware. Its "dynamic" formats most especially. Not only do these defy all readability within a browser, they break fallbacks: console clients (w3m, elinks, etc.), or readability alternatives (Pocket, Instapaper, Outline.com). Please just don't use Blogspot. And don't use the dynamic styles if you must.

I agree, it is an example showing why you should not try to convert every website into a SPA. A in SPA means "application", not a "website".

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#77

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:58 PM UTC

chipperyman573 wrote: post #66

sz4kerto wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On desktops, yes. Other companies have been moving everything to the web, where telemetry is easier and more thorough.

The problem is that Web exists in a sandbox. They can collect data about my usage of their website, full stop (large sites like Facebook and Google get around this, but that's not really telemetry). With desktop there's no way of knowing what's collected with "telemetry"

[deleted]

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#78

Post by glangdale » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 11:03 PM UTC

pavement wrote: post #29

ajross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't purely a software engineering mess though. The PC architecture for "off" is a mess at the hardware level too. I mean, long ago you just had a physical switch on the power supply. But then filesystem authors invented buffering and that wasn't safe anymore. So now there were two ways to shut the machine off: the "safe" way and the old way (where the "old" way was still available via e.g. holding the power bu…

If I don't like what a computer is doing, I will frequently just yank the plug, pull the battery, flip the circuit breaker, and fuck the rest. All this buffering and fault tolerance is bullshit at the consumer level. If the disk's file table gets fucked up, then let it burn. I'll format the disk and re-install your stupid operating system as I see fit, whenever I want, and keep my actual data safe and sound far away…

There was a nice paper a while back on the topic of 'crash-only systems'. That is, the idea would be that no software system was permitted to have a dignified shutdown path at all. Every system would be turned off with the equivalent of the power switch or "kill -9".

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_paper...

The point that was made was that frequently the recovery paths were on net faster (for a shutdown/reboot cycle) than the "durpee dur, I am slowly shutting myself down paths" and that you have to build a good crash recovery path anyhow.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#79

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 11:30 PM UTC

bradford wrote: post #10

I started at MS during Vista and I've been involved (sometimes tangentially) with Windows ever since. This is all my opinion, but It's been very interesting seeing the decision making process change over time. If I had to summarize the change, I'd say that it's evolved from an expertise-based system to a data based system. The reason why eight people were present at every planning meeting is because their expert opin…

> "Telemetry is, by now, a fundamental part of the engineering process"

This is how we get faster horses instead of cars.

Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)

#80

Post by guelo » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 11:41 PM UTC

bradford wrote: post #10

I started at MS during Vista and I've been involved (sometimes tangentially) with Windows ever since. This is all my opinion, but It's been very interesting seeing the decision making process change over time. If I had to summarize the change, I'd say that it's evolved from an expertise-based system to a data based system. The reason why eight people were present at every planning meeting is because their expert opin…

I don't see how telemetry would have fixed the organizational problems described in the article. You still have to agree on a handful of features to implement for the AB tests. If cross-team communication across the kernel, shell, and menu teams is bureaucratic and slow and it takes months for dependent code changes to trickle through the repository tree you're still going to end up with the lowest common denominator feature implementations.