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We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

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Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#151

Post by narag »

tester756 wrote: post #36

20%? This industry is built on lack of effectiveness. We've built a few complex, production ready OSes, with bilion programming language and compilers, with a few web browsers, with X drivers for everything (graphics, network, sound). Basically everything a few times Just to display funny cats in web browser

Basically everything a few times

That's a very good idea. Really.

In tirannies there's only one thing of each. When that thing breaks, you're sorely out of luck.

People associate diversity with justice. But diversity is in fact your plan B, or C...

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#152

Post by mattpallissard »

mindvirus wrote: post #3

Those are rookie numbers. With a little Kubernetes, we can get them way up. So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers. No wonder so much stuff is broken and slow. Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.

> Those are rookie numbers.

I make a living dealing with computer problems.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#153

Post by tivert »

hospitalJail wrote: post #130
tivert wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure I didn't have to walk down the stairs to change the temperature a few times, but as the Thermostat started to bug out, I spent hours trying to fix it. I lost more time than I ever saved. I've got an Ecobee, and I've never had a problem. The main reason was (unlike the Nest, at least at the time) it's fully functional in offline mode (schedules and everything). I've since learned that HVAC people typically disl…

After much research, my conclusion is that my HVAC system didn't have one of the wires connected, Common, C. This was not a problem until some update that caused the rest of the wires to be insufficient to recharge completely. Over the next year or so, the battery was killed. Who knows though. It was fine for the first few years, aside from when my power company overrode my settings on hot days and my kid had a life…

> After much research, my conclusion is that my HVAC system didn't have one of the wires connected, Common, C. This was not a problem until some update that caused the rest of the wires to be insufficient to recharge completely.

My Ecobee doesn't have a battery at all, so that's something I had to deal with immediately upon installation. Luckily, I had an unused wire going to my own thermostat that I could repurpose. I believe it also came with a kit that would allow it to use a nonstandard signaling protocol so it could get needed power even if I didn't have an extra wire.

I'm kind of puzzled why a Nest would even have a battery. Just a kludge to allow unreliable installation in places that don't have the proper wiring?

One of the things I hate about modern software/product engineering is the over-reliance on updates and the mindset that aggressively obsoleting "old" versions. It creates a huge amount of unreliability and wasted time. IMHO, updates break things as much as they fix them.

> Who knows though. It was fine for the first few years, aside from when my power company overrode my settings on hot days and my kid had a life threatening fever.

Could they do that through the Nest, or did they have a separate cutout on the AC?

My home has a remote operated cutout, which I'd assumed wad inactive until I randomly read by bill very carefully and realized it was active even though I never signed up for it (apparently the previous homeowner had it active, and that carried forward to my account).

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#154

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

nerdponx wrote: post #33
wredue wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude on HN was describing the other day how they’re moving to use an AI to generate a list of cars with specific features in their inventory and how this was a great part of the AI future. But as we see frequently even on the most sophisticated AIs, they get shit wrong… a lot. So this company decided to replace an actually working, guaranteed to produce proper results filtering system with a guaranteed to not produce…

People don't want buzzwords, people want promotions, bonuses, and recognition. It turns out that producing working software is not the optimal way to obtain those things at a lot of companies.

It's also the investing/partnering side of things too though.

Some VCs and the like aren't interested if your company isn't hitting those buzzwords.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#155

Post by javajosh »

javajosh wrote: post #25
mindvirus wrote: post #3

Those are rookie numbers. With a little Kubernetes, we can get them way up. So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers. No wonder so much stuff is broken and slow. Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.

There is something like a paradox of automation at play, too. Both business and programmers are aligned on not wanting drudgery, but this means that a) we undervalue first-order work, and b) our automation reach often exceeds our grasp (k8s being an excellent example). Perhaps my thinking is colored by my recent read of Patrick O'Brian's excellent "Master and Commander" series of historical novels, about early 18th c…

Correction: late 18th and early 19th century sailing ships.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#157

Post by tivert »

mikewarot wrote: post #67

When I started as an IT manager at a small events firm in 1997, I had 40 hours of work every week, just keeping things alive. By the end in 2013, things just ran smoothly, and I waited for something to break. Windows got reliable between Windows 97 and Windows 7, servers got reliable, networks got reliable... everything stopped breaking. There's no way 20% of peoples time is wasted on borked computers, that's a whole…

> There's no way 20% of peoples time is wasted on borked computers, that's a whole day every work week.

IMHO, Window XP and Windows 7 were peak Windows reliability. It's been downhill from there.

And I don't think their definition of "wasted time" is just "borked computers," they also seem to include things like slowness and bad UX.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#158

Post by tester756 »

narag wrote: post #151
tester756 wrote: post #36

20%? This industry is built on lack of effectiveness. We've built a few complex, production ready OSes, with bilion programming language and compilers, with a few web browsers, with X drivers for everything (graphics, network, sound). Basically everything a few times Just to display funny cats in web browser

Basically everything a few times That's a very good idea. Really. In tirannies there's only one thing of each. When that thing breaks, you're sorely out of luck. People associate diversity with justice. But diversity is in fact your plan B, or C...

I'm not saying that this is bad, just not so efficient.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#159

Post by febusravenga »

jonhohle wrote: post #108
mindvirus wrote: post #3

Those are rookie numbers. With a little Kubernetes, we can get them way up. So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers. No wonder so much stuff is broken and slow. Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.

Maybe that’s a good business idea: solely focus on bug fixes for clients so their “rockstars” can architect their way into more bugs that need fixing. Since the business’s employees I are only focused on bugs, and not features, they’re not leaving tech debt in their wake.

it's my strategy since I become bored with tech. I don't have passion or urge to create new useless software. There are many young or naive or plainly stupid which do. But I still have skills and insight to cover their asses when they corner themselves and are too busy with next fad and there are bugs to be fixed in yesterday's crapware... and I'm only 40..

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#160

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

hooverd wrote: post #99
jrockway wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see. People are already involved in business-critical processes, and they have a far-from-100% success rate. You can see this with self-driving cars; 0.00001% of the time, they decide to swerve into oncoming traffic for no reason. But they can't get drunk! So whether or not that's a win is something that only time can tell. (People will be outraged, because no person would ever do what the A…

That's the great part about AI, because computers don't make mistakes, you can launder whatever biases you want through an objective and rational computer.

We already have this today when anti-theft alarms go off at stores as you exit with your paid purchase. You're presumed guilty because someone didn't disable the tag since the robot can't be wrong.
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