People expect technology to suck because it sucks • Hacker News Board

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#231

Post by leetcrew » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #225

leetcrew wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all customers care about quality. yes, but not to the exclusion of features. I work on a B2B product where our customers bill their customers by the hour, so they tend to have a pretty good idea of how much time a feature saves them. if a competitor adds a feature that cuts the time needed for a project in half (not unrealistic) but crashes and forces them to start over a quarter of the time, the customers w…

There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about A, then there's no tradeoff, you just choose B no matter what. The question is, why do we make consumers make that tradeoff? Why are we shipping junk at all? There shouldn't be a reliability tradeoff. All products should be reliable. It ought to be a bare min…

> There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about A, then there's no tradeoff, you just choose B no matter what.

fair enough, I probably overstated my point with some of the wording.

> The question is, why do we make consumers make that tradeoff? Why are we shipping junk at all? There shouldn't be a reliability tradeoff. All products should be reliable. It ought to be a bare minimum standard.

everything in life is a tradeoff. we could make software more reliable, but then we would have to spend less time adding new features, or we would have to hire more/better engineers and charge more. maybe we even get to pay down tech debt and gain the ability to add features faster in the long run. doesn't really matter if someone else dumps a bunch of buggy new features in the meantime, converts our customers, and forces us out of business. in the absence of some industry-wide gentleman's agreement or regulation, we have to observe the behavior of customers and do what their behavior (not words!) indicates they want.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#232

Post by wazoox » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

Ah yeah. I recently switched from ADSL to fibre. Speed-wise, it's full joy. However the now incredibly advanced modem/set-top-box/DVR is an utter mess.

There are two boxes : a network server/DVR/router and a TV set-top-box. The server part so far behaves reasonably well (apart for a couple of interface quirks). But the set-top-box is a nightmare.

It all started with networking. The system ships with PLC adapters. It turns out that nothing reliably works with these. I switched to WiFi. It's worse. I finally gave up and now have a 15 m ethernet cable going around my living room.

You have random error messages every time you turn on the set-top-box. When switching from the TV function to some other (like chromecast, or youtube), half the time the sound from the last TV channel you visited can still be heard. You have to hard reset the box to solve the problem.

Once the bluetooth remote stopped working. I tried everything (swapping batteries, resetting everything, etc), no luck; finally I had to do a full factory reset of the set-top box and pair it again with the remote (takes about 30 to 40 minutes I probably could have enjoyed more doing anything else).

The box has an integrated chromecast. However it can't be seen on the network about half the time. I've found that by turning the box off and on, then going to some network app (like youtube), it's back.

Then half the time chromecast playback is choppy and unreliable. You have to turn it off and on, etc.

Then you have the same sort of weird behaviour with Youtube, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc you name it. Not a single app works reliably (i. e. the first time, and most of the time).

I complained on the forum. People yelled at me because literally millions of people are using the same setup as I am, and don't complain, so it's probably that I'm too fussy. I'm not. It's really awful. Fortunately I don't watch TV anymore, but I must intervene at least once or twice a week to sort out bugs for my family.

What's surprising is actually that millions of people probably have a hard time now simply watching TV, because all of these "smart devices" are so broken.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#233

Post by Nagyman » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

rswail wrote: post #153

airza wrote: post #16

I feel like the slow decline of software quality has been in lockstep with the gradual transition from (expensive and non-measurable) manual software/hardware testing and QA to automated frameworks and rollout-based quality assurance. I constantly encounter broken functionality, buggy or unpleasant UIs, just as the author has. It feels like many of these problems could be avoided if you just had one person whose job…

As someone who has been programming since 1984, software quality has greatly improved not declined. The level of complexity in modern day software is orders of magnitude greater than that of even a decade ago. What has changed is our reliance on that software. We are now so deeply embedded into our software existence we see these flaws up close.

Great comment. People also used to use only a few pieces of software in any given day (or week, even!) e.g. email, web browser, and word processor.

Now, our computer ("phone") is with us everywhere we go and we'll use dozens of complex applications per day, connected by dozens of APIs, networks, protocols, and hardware features. It's a miracle any of it works sometimes! Thank you to everyone for making this stuff seem like magic; my twelve-year-old self would be amazed at how well it works.

I do feel like there are more UI bugs as we optimize for certain metrics over others. Timing updates has become far more complicated, so we get weird UI refreshes as new data comes in, stale caches, missed notifications, etc. Turning it off and on again often works, surprisingly (probably because devs start with clean environments often, so that's the functional baseline).

Lastly, it is probably far more lucrative for a technology based business to use their most valuable minds for the Next Thing, rather than iterating on the current thing. Incremental revenue improvements just don't cut it in a capital-driven world; everyone is trying to escape the local maxima to find billion/trillion dollar businesses.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#234

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #148

julianlam wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page Nowadays, I would consider this a problem with the browser. How often does one navigate backwards with the backspace key? Recently, I had some doubts over whether or not I should clobber the native browser behaviour for "ctrl-s", but then I realized that nobody anywhere EVER saves a…

I for one fully expect the backspace button to work if I do not currently have a text field focused. once you learn keybindings for an application, there's usually no way to perform that function as quickly/efficiently with a mouse. please do not break the conventional ones. ctrl-s is probably fine to break though. even when it does "save" the page, it rarely does so in a useful way.

Oh, I fully expect CTRL-Q to close my browser window (with all the tabs) when I mistype CTRL-W. That doesn't make it any good.

Do you know at all times what element has the focus? An error there can be of high consequence. (Even though browsers do make an effort to refill forms on page forward, it doesn't always work.)

It is a very bad shortcut, and there's always an alternative one anyway, because it's not always available.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#235

Post by vidanay » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #165

leetcrew wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one fully expect the backspace button to work if I do not currently have a text field focused. once you learn keybindings for an application, there's usually no way to perform that function as quickly/efficiently with a mouse. please do not break the conventional ones. ctrl-s is probably fine to break though. even when it does "save" the page, it rarely does so in a useful way.

I’ve just tested on Chrome: backspace on its own does nothing, going to the previous page is bound to cmd-LeftArrow.

Chrome made this intentional change about four years ago. Prior to that, backspace had the described behavior.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#236

Post by SilasX » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #95

efitz wrote: post #83

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically softw…

Doesn’t reality suck the same ? My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention. My house decays days after day. Floors need constant cleaning, wall have holes from small impacts, paint contains inedible fragments and disperse nocive gas. Bees are building nests on my balcony and it’s definitely not what it was built for, nor where they should…

>My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention.

That's not a good example, nor is it parallel to the dynamic the article describes.

Your car stinks a lot less than cars did 10/30/50 years ago (emits less in the way of pollutants or CO2 per mile driven), is less likely to kill you in a crash involving the same size cars/velocities (despite weighing less!), needs less maintenance, lasts longer, and can notify you of potential collisions and sometimes avoid them.

It's probably only worse in terms of education needed to perform maintenance or nominal sticker price.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#237

Post by atoav » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #232

Ah yeah. I recently switched from ADSL to fibre. Speed-wise, it's full joy. However the now incredibly advanced modem/set-top-box/DVR is an utter mess. There are two boxes : a network server/DVR/router and a TV set-top-box. The server part so far behaves reasonably well (apart for a couple of interface quirks). But the set-top-box is a nightmare. It all started with networking. The system ships with PLC adapters. It…

Just judging the symptoms looks to my like one of those classical "cobbled together" pieces of software, where they only wrote the glue code and once it was OK shipped it.

The of intricate that have to work (read: that can go wrong) on a modern device is just baffling.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#238

Post by capableweb » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

selestify wrote: post #191

elboru wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for mentioning AirPods! I was so excited to buy them after a ton of reviews saying they just worked. They said the days of fighting with Bluetooth audio were gone. I believed them, then reality showed up. My Mac sometimes unpairs them and worst it doesn’t find them. Some times while my baby is sleeping I put my AirPods and play a loud video just to realize they were not connected. My wife’s right side AirPo…

To provide an anecdotal counter-example, AirPods have worked seamlessly for me so far. Much quicker to connect and more reliable than Bluetooth. So their marketing isn't completely off-base :)

I was under the impression that AirPods works over Bluetooth, did Apple really invent their own wireless technology + protocol just for the AirPods?

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#239

Post by machello13 » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #236

hrktb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t reality suck the same ? My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention. My house decays days after day. Floors need constant cleaning, wall have holes from small impacts, paint contains inedible fragments and disperse nocive gas. Bees are building nests on my balcony and it’s definitely not what it was built for, nor where they should…

>My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention. That's not a good example, nor is it parallel to the dynamic the article describes. Your car stinks a lot less than cars did 10/30/50 years ago (emits less in the way of pollutants or CO2 per mile driven), is less likely to kill you in a crash involving the same size cars/velocities (despite we…

But devices have also gotten smaller, lighter and more efficient, and software can also do much more today than it could a long time ago. I think the analogy is fine.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#240

Post by atoav » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

bobochan wrote: post #47

This is one of the strangest takes that I have ever read. I can remember my dad's turn on the waiting list finally coming up so that it was his turn to bring the HP calculator home from the government lab where he worked for the weekend. It was an absolute marvel. The whole family sat around the kitchen table for hours as he talked about RPN and showed us how the calculator worked. It was magic. Almost 50 years later…

"Technology sucks" in my eyes just means there is a mismatch between expectations and reality.

People expect their technology to solve their problems. But often their problems have nothing to do with their technology, and anything to do with outside aspects like how they use it.

E.g. during Corona one boss at a institution I know bought a incredibly expensive Video conferencing "thing" and expected it to run incredibly smooth, which it didn't, because he neither was willing to invest into the buildings bandwidth/latency nor did he make sure the people on the other side also had that bandwidth/latency as well.

People like to believe into technology, like they would believe into gods or magic words: they don't want to understand how it fits into the world they are part of: they just want it to make their problems go away.