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

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#281

Post by johnbrodie » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

thewebcount wrote: post #257

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…

> Doesn’t reality suck the same ? No. A hardware product like a car has predictable wear and tear governed mainly by the laws of physics. The fact that I can no longer use my smart speaker because the manufacturer decided to stop supporting it, went out of business, or got bought is not at all the same. My car will still work through all of those things in the exact same way. It also doesn't throw up random dialogs (…

A car has tons of parts that, sure are "governed by physics", but in effect just randomly fail. I can theoretically understand that my there's a clunk in the frontend of my car because I've exceeded the MTTF of a suspension bushing. To almost everyone though, it's essentially just a random event based on nothing they've perceived.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#282

Post by com2kid » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #81

The problem is with the idea of "continuous delivery". Many people fail to understand that technological advances only increase productivity if the innovations, the great leaps forward, are relatively rare, with long periods of stability and refinement in between. There's always an adjustment period, where people have to spend time learning a new technology, and any issues with the new technology need to be resolved.…

> Innovation has never and will never happen on a schedule. This is simply greed-driven, promotion-driven, pointy-haired-boss-driven development.

For consumer goods, it is the hype cycle.

New updates and releases get press. They also restore consumer confidence.

If Samsung announced that next year they weren't releasing a new Galaxy phone, the entire industry would freak out. Consumers would lose confidence in buying Samsung phones, journalists would write articles questioning if Samsung was pulling out of the market, a lot of bad things would happen.

Give it 18 months without a release and people would start to think of Samsung as "that company that used to make phones."

They would have to fight like heck to restore their image.

Software is the same way. In the Vista/7/8 era, Microsoft looked like they were falling behind because their competitors started releasing yearly, or even bi-yearly, feature updates.

Sure every Android version up until 7 was kinda-sorta-terrible, but it kept Android in the news. Likewise, Apple got huge free press every time they announced a new revision of OS X (now MacOS), and every time they came out an announced a new version of iOS.

The result? "The desktop is dying, phones are where the real innovation is at!" articles being published even faster than those software updates came out.

You can of course release too fast, rarely do Chrome or Firefox's releases get any press (unless there is a controversial UI change), but in general frequent updates are free advertising.

Tesla is also great at this, I'm nowhere near being in the market for a Tesla, but at least a couple times a year I still end up hearing about software features they are rolling out!

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#283

Post by jschwartzi » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

TwelveNights wrote: post #206

adamsea wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve also had centuries to improve the technology of books and I think that makes a difference. Although the weaknesses you cite seem like problems in search of a solution. No one ever expected books to have variable font size ... why would they? Lastly let’s recall the book five hundred years ago is dramatically different from the book of today. For example your point about liquids is now in many ways resolved by t…

While nobody expected books to have variable font sizes, the fact that ebooks do allow it to be adjusted means that people with deteriorating vision may still read them.

A magnifying glass was the original solution to this problem. They never run out of battery.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#284

Post by mikewarot » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:43 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…

When is the last time leaving your keys in the car caused your house to suddenly slide 10 foot southwest?

When is the last time you flipped a light switch, and suddenly your pool disappeared?

Have you ever had French doors appear in your dining room because of a "Windows Update" on Wednesday morning?

Have you ever had to wait for half an hour for your house to boot later on that same Wednesday?

When is the last time you closed a door, and were killed by a hailstorm of bowling balls?

At least with a light switch, you know it's very unlikely to cause structural issues, or plumbing issues, or drain your bank account. Computers are singularly horrible in the ways things can fail.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#285

Post by Fricken » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

TwelveNights wrote: post #206

adamsea wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve also had centuries to improve the technology of books and I think that makes a difference. Although the weaknesses you cite seem like problems in search of a solution. No one ever expected books to have variable font size ... why would they? Lastly let’s recall the book five hundred years ago is dramatically different from the book of today. For example your point about liquids is now in many ways resolved by t…

While nobody expected books to have variable font sizes, the fact that ebooks do allow it to be adjusted means that people with deteriorating vision may still read them.

In the early days of the Gutenberg press when most were illiterate, they would gather together and the one person could read would read to the rest of the group. So, arguably, it was both easier and more inclusive for a blind person to read what there was to read then than now. At least they didn't have to rely on any special accommodations.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#286

Post by neltnerb » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

TwelveNights wrote: post #206

adamsea wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve also had centuries to improve the technology of books and I think that makes a difference. Although the weaknesses you cite seem like problems in search of a solution. No one ever expected books to have variable font size ... why would they? Lastly let’s recall the book five hundred years ago is dramatically different from the book of today. For example your point about liquids is now in many ways resolved by t…

While nobody expected books to have variable font sizes, the fact that ebooks do allow it to be adjusted means that people with deteriorating vision may still read them.

Yeah... and once you're no longer paying by the page there's really little upside to using a small font you have to squint at or use margins that are too narrow to easily scan the page. I have no idea how long the books I read are, but I probably read them a few hundred words per screen simply because it's way easier to keep my place. Average for a small paperback exceeds 300.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#287

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #202

thaumasiotes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A car for the most part has a single purpose. Technology offers humans a lot more than just getting from point A to point B. Sure, a car is just one example of technology. Technology in general is responsible for everything we have and everything we do. Here are some other technologies: - farming - weaving - plastic - glass - ceramics - steel - cooking To the nearest 0.0001%, 100% of people need these things to wor…

Way too broad of a definition. I clearly meant computing and how a person interacts with their devices as that was the discussion at hand.

Why would this differ from any other technology?

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#288

Post by vkou » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #268

vkou wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grass was greener when I was younger, and the sugar is sweeter. Most software has always been crap. There never was a golden age, when developers 'cared'. The truth is, some developers produced polished, well-working, well-made software. Some developers still do that.

Try using some old software. Like windows 7 or vim or emacs , or PHP or old reddit. Due to their age , they 've accumulated a lot of fixes to their bugs. They may look weird and old , but they waste less of my time.

They waste less of your time, because they are either doing different things from what their new versions do, or you have more experience working around their problems. [1]

I'm glad someone mentioned reddit in this subthread. I exclusively use old reddit, because I use reddit to read, and comment on text forums. The new reddit design is hot garbage for this usecase.

But what it's not hot garbage for is scrolling through image-heavy/meme-heavy subreddits. It's much better than old reddit for that use case.

New reddit doesn't suck for my use case because the reddit developers hate their users. New reddit sucks for my use case because reddit wants to be a 'scroll through memes' feed, not a message board. Complaining about it is like complaining that Mercedes-Benz doesn't really want to make airplanes anymore.

Oh, and old reddit wasn't even good for my use case! I'd much rather use a real forum, then reddit's opinionated-UX disaster, but since everyone I want to talk to is on reddit (because they spend most of their time scrolling through memes), I have to suffer through it.

[1] The parts of Windows that got overhauled visibly-to-the-user (mostly windows explorer + pre-installed programs) were always crap. The first thing I do on a new Windows installation is to install an orthodox file manager, because the OS is unusable for me without it.

The overhauls under the hood were largely invisible.

The new additions, like the search omnibar are, for the most part, decent.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#289

Post by _qulr » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #282

_qulr wrote: post #81

The problem is with the idea of "continuous delivery". Many people fail to understand that technological advances only increase productivity if the innovations, the great leaps forward, are relatively rare, with long periods of stability and refinement in between. There's always an adjustment period, where people have to spend time learning a new technology, and any issues with the new technology need to be resolved.…

> Innovation has never and will never happen on a schedule. This is simply greed-driven, promotion-driven, pointy-haired-boss-driven development. For consumer goods, it is the hype cycle. New updates and releases get press. They also restore consumer confidence. If Samsung announced that next year they weren't releasing a new Galaxy phone, the entire industry would freak out. Consumers would lose confidence in buying…

> If Samsung announced that next year they weren't releasing a new Galaxy phone, the entire industry would freak out.

The smartphone industry has only themselves to blame for setting up this expectation. But it is possible to get off the train. I remember when Apple announced they were dropping out of the annual MacWorld San Francisco conference, because they didn't want to constrain their product release cycle. Apple survived that just fine.

> In the Vista/7/8 era, Microsoft looked like they were falling behind because their competitors started releasing yearly, or even bi-yearly, feature updates.

Competitors? Windows and Mac had near 100% market share on desktop. There was only 1 competitor. Vista was released in January 2007, but Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was infamously delayed until October 2007 because of iPhone, so this telling of history doesn't seem entirely accurate. Moreover, Mac OS X releases were already slowing. Here's a list of months since the previous major .0 release:

10.1.0 6

10.2.0 11

10.3.0 14

10.4.0 18

10.5.0 18

10.6.0 22

10.7.0 23

10.8.0 12

10.9.0 15

10.10.0 12

10.11.0 11

10.12.0 12

10.13.0 12

10.14.0 12

10.15.0 12

Thus, major Mac OS releases were slowing down year by year — which is totally sensible — but then Steve Jobs died after 10.7 was released in 2011, and only then did they switch to a yearly schedule.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#290

Post by tremon » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #278

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…

> I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). My dishwasher, which has only buttons to select what to do during the next wash cycle, has a firmware bug. Sometimes when the door is closed, it will start one of the pumps. If I cycle "heated drying" on then off again, the pump will stop. I figured this out because, well, I've worked on firmware and I understand the how of how softwar…

After I learned to recognize watchdog resets, I started seeing them more and more often

Yup, sounds like my TV. It's not even one of the smart ones, I was careful to avoid those. But once every few days, it stops responding to the remote control when performing some action (opening the EPG, switching channels). I then have to wait about ten seconds for the display to go dark and the TV to "reboot" itself, so I can continue channel surfing.