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People expect technology to suck because it sucks

tonsky.me

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Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#311

Post by l0b0 »

How do we, users, makers and managers alike, move away from this awful state of affairs? Some random ideas:

- If anyone manages to build some truly fantastic software for massive numbers of end users, maybe those users will start expecting a higher bar for other software. Consider for example search engines pre/post Google. Naive search engines just don't exist anymore, because they were several orders of magnitude less efficient at getting useful responses. So that was a sea change. (Unfortunately monetization, SEO, sabotage and things like ignoring search keywords have resulted in search engines regressing in the last several years.)

- Long term design. Commercial software seems to be redesigned massively every few years, which is terrible UX. On the other hand, the vast majority of F/LOSS is designed once and either never changes again or just gets added to until it drowns in clutter. Even though the latter is caused at least in part by a lower budget, and often ends up being pretty bad UX-wise, I actually prefer it. One good balance is Amazon's web site. From a quick glance it looks like everything is where it was a decade ago, and overall it just looks familiar.

- UI convergence. Web browsers have converged so strongly that being able to do things like navigating and filling in a form in a completely unfamiliar browser is very likely to succeed. And browsers are so enormously popular that they have set expectations for how UIs work in other software.

- Quality assurance in all its myriad forms. A lot of energy is being spent touting the One True Silver Bullet, when in reality every approach has diminishing returns and shortfalls. If you use only manual tests every version is going to have more bugs than the last, because you don't have $MM to spend testing every single detail for every release. If you only use integration tests the suite is eventually going to run for longer than your release cycle and will be skipped and trimmed in ways which mean you'll miss bugs. If you only use unit tests you can only release fizzbuzz-size chunks reliably. And so on. Instead use every technique you know of until you hit similar diminishing returns for each of them.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#312

Post by tetris11 »

swirepe wrote: post #301
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an old house, and routinely discover ugly hacks that were done by the previous owner, presumably due to laziness, cost or just lack of skill. For example, they buried tons of stuff (toys, furniture, water heater etc) in the backyard and built a terrace on top of the pile to cover it up, apparently because they were too lazy to take it to the dump. The terrace decayed, so I had to tear it down, but in doing…

To be fair, the previous person didn't know you were going to try to plant vegetables in their landfill.

But those same owners failed to mention the landfill during the handover

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#313

Post by kthejoker2 »

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 (…

John Deere has entered the chat.

Also, car companies have been tinkering with "electronic repossession" - remote kill switches due to nonpayment.

So ... get ready for other things to suck as we attach technology to them.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#314

Post by bhauer »

rootusrootus wrote: post #93
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…

> accidentally backspace while not in a text field Thankfully that can be disabled, but I find it to be one of the most infuriating 'features' of Firefox. If it weren't something that could be turned off, it would be a deal killer all by itself.

Also, in most normal web pages—at least those not using hideously over-complicated scripting—just pressing your "forward" button (Alt+Right, for example) will navigate forward and restore the edits you had in the form.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#315

Post by IggleSniggle »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #86
brundolf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tell a slightly different version of this story, focusing in on "rollout-based quality assurance". I would say that effortless, automatic updates are to blame. When you can always just push an update, the impact of a given bug goes way down. It's no longer mission-critical to exterminate flaws before shipping; a totally broken feature becomes a mere annoyance. So project prioritization shifts from polishing a…

I agree that games used to have far fewer bugs when shipped, but it's not true that games never received updates back in the day. I distinctly remember queuing on file sharing sites as a kid in the early 2000s to download half-life updates and updates for other games.

I remember when DLC used to be called “a patch” and it was both bug fixes and also huge amounts of new content. I wish I could remember what games this pertained to.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#316

Post by pbreit »

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…

The thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is incompatible "upgrades".

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#318

Post by hrktb »

mikewarot wrote: post #284
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…

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…

I’d argue computer programs failing mode are often less gruesome that real life’s gas and electric failures.

As a kid we had a gas range, and it was pretty easy turn on a burner and just leave it open without lighting it. Or just start cooking something and forget about it, depending on your situation your house is gone.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#319

Post by nightski »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #287
nightski wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm really surprised to hear you question how computing is different from any other technology? General purpose computing is extremely broad in scope. It's used in everything from finance, design, manufacturing, communication, engineering, medical, entertainment - pretty much every field or industry in the world has been impacted by it. More so than any other technology in existence. Even something like gasoline has had less impact than computing. Being able to take advantage of this powerful tool is a huge leg up on life. There are countless applications of computers in our daily lives. To just ignore that and use them for their bare minimum function is quite sad!

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#320

Post by monksy »

mikewarot wrote: post #284
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…

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…

Whens the last time that you had a car door working door, and it fell off when you opened it? (MVP, no tests) [I'm not talking about a worn out car]
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