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People expect technology to suck because it sucks

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Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#341

Post by titzer »

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…

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

Or the pool just disappeared for no reason and you couldn't get it back unless you sold your house and rebought it?

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#342

Post by titzer »

acituan wrote: post #213
happytoexplain wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that the entire software/hardware stack is a world created entirely by humans, untouched by "reality" for the purposes of all these annoyances, so it feels like we should be able to wrangle it better after so many decades. It's entirely our own creation, and we decide every iota of it, and yet it bites us (justifiably or not - turns out thousands of people each creating different layers of a…

> I think the difference is that the entire software/hardware stack is a world created entirely by humans, untouched by "reality" for the purposes of all these annoyances, so it feels like we should be able to wrangle it better after so many decades. Humans, as the makers of these systems, are part of that reality, which was not created by us. The reality is that we are great apes writing precise machine instructions…

> If anything users are becoming too egocentric, expecting the world to conform to their comfort, with a dash of construal level fallacy, underestimating from a mile away how easy it would be to write bug free programs with perfect designs in a real world, by real people, with real budgets etc.

Selection bias. You only hear from users who want new features. You rarely hear from users who don't want new features and just want software to stop being buggy and acting like a goddamn haunted house.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#343

Post by titzer »

For most people, technology is a haunted house riddled with unpleasant surprises. With no agency, they are at the mercy of other people's bad ideas that keep changing. Everything needs to be updated because everything else needs to be updated, because everything needs to be updated. Duh!

Software updates! Guess what! Here's a new UI for ya. We moved all the stuff! It's like someone threw you a surprise birthday party, but not on your birthday, on their birthday, and their idea of the best gift evar is to hire an interior designer (for free! lucky you!) who completely rearranges your house inside and out and springs it on you after you return from the grocery store. And there's no going back.

At first it was exciting--when I was 15--then it's slightly bothersome, then downright annoying, then it's infuriating, then it's just tiring. Your brain learns that there is no point in learning anything anymore because they're just going to scramble it again anyway. Learned helplessness. People age out, ended up feeling old and useless and jaded because their skillset is completely inapplicable, after just a few years.

Yeah, I can understand why people hate tech.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#344

Post by jdbernard »

holidayacct wrote: post #338
jdbernard wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree, quite strongly, about your general point regarding the short memory and ungracious expectations of people at large, I also disagree, strongly, with your dismissal of the problem addressed in this article. By and large these problems are all man-made and have known remedies. It is possible to be both grateful for the great advances, conveniences, and benefits of modern software and simultaneously frustr…

I dismissed the article because I refuse to click on link-bait titles just to generate ad impressions.

Understandable, but please don't comment if you cannot add to the discussion (because you haven't actually read the article being discussed).

In this case I think you've done yourself a disservice. I've generally found Nikita's blog worth reading, and he doesn't serve ads.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#345

Post by vsareto »

nicbou wrote: post #121

As an experiment, I logged every bug I encountered for a few days. I averaged 5 bugs a day, not counting dark patterns or bad design. Everything is broken, and nobody is upset. [1] Some of the software I use is so unreliable that I expect it to fail. I expect the Vodafone login page not to work properly. I expect one of my airpods not to connect on the first try. I expect my banking app to show random error messages,…

>Everything is broken, and nobody is upset.

Most software is still net positive in productivity. We tend to place more emphasis on failures as users.

Remember you're running millions of lines of code that talks to other computers running millions of lines of code that communicates over a network running millions of lines of code to deliver some information on the order of seconds to minutes -- and then something responds to that information and everything happens all over again.

All day, every day, trillions of packets of information get delivered just fine. Try doing that as a human, delivering letters. You probably won't even approach a million packets delivered in your life time. And people have the audacity to say, "oh my, some things didn't work, this is completely broken"

In only a single generation, we went from voice communicators to super computers in our pockets. The utility vastly, vastly, vastly overshadows the glitches that come with frenetic advancement. How long did it take humans to invent basic numbers?

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#346

Post by city41 »

n0on3 wrote: post #130

Advancement in tech are nowadays driven only by profit, which in turn is driven by sales, which prioritise what people are likely to pay for. People expect technology to be affordable and they really don't care what the effect of this is. Put competition in the mix and you get a lot of stuff that sucks because the field of battle is not the quality, is pricing and marketing. And then stuff dies after a short time. An…

Although I agree quite wholeheartedly with your comment and the article, I still feel it's possible to find good or at least better software out there. I recently switched to Android because it is far less buggy than iOS. I honestly think iOS is the buggiest software I've ever used. I also similarly switched from Spotify to Amazon Music Unlimited for the same reasons. I have yet to find even a single bug in AMU. It's honestly quite impressive in today's software world.

I really hope more companies start to see quality and reliability as a competitive advantage. I know I'm an outlier, but I gladly pay more or switch when I find a product that is more reliable.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#347

Post by canada_dry »

titzer wrote: post #343

For most people, technology is a haunted house riddled with unpleasant surprises. With no agency, they are at the mercy of other people's bad ideas that keep changing. Everything needs to be updated because everything else needs to be updated, because everything needs to be updated. Duh! Software updates! Guess what! Here's a new UI for ya. We moved all the stuff! It's like someone threw you a surprise birthday party…

> I can understand why people hate tech.

To add to that, now that I'm a retired lifelong techie I realize why "old folks" back in the day would hesitate to give up the old, outdated software that they knew how to use.

E.g. I'd prod older friends and family to give up wordperfect - which they knew and loved - in order to progress to the feature-rich-new MS WORD.

Now I'm a linux advocate with its archaic terminal commands and I can empathize with anyone who wants their laptop, phone, TV, microwave, etc. to stop evolving!!

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#348

Post by jrumbut »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #208
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…

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…

A similar thing happened at a relatives' house, a long disused storage space under a deck needed to be cleaned and whatever natural forces were at work had accumulated enough new dirt to actually bury items stored under there (a similar array of items, since no one had played with the children's stuff and a few old chairs and such had been thrown there).

It's a lot of work to dig a hole large enough for a water heater, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened (I probably would have also checked inside the water heater since if you wanted to bury something and keep it dry one might consider a water heater tank as a possible container, not sure it actually works but it's a natural idea).

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#349

Post by delecti »

sabujp wrote: post #270
cblconfederate wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

old.reddit.com is the best, is there a plugin/extension or some script to force chrome to always redirect to old.reddit.com for all reddit urls? edit: found https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/pajiege... and https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/pajiege... this one seems to be pretty popular (requestly) : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/requestly-redirect... anyone have bette…

If you're logged in, you can just have your account stay on the old design.

preferences > beta options > uncheck "Use new Reddit as my default experience"

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#350

Post by laretluval »

asciimov wrote: post #260
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 don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is. Deaths, a lot of deaths. Software Engineering needs a PE type licensure and a union. We need a way to stand together to advocate for better working conditions, practices, and tools.

What is the evidence that professional licensing would help? Even the most skilled programmers produce bugs. Professional licensing would only raise the barrier to entry for a well-paying job.
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