Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everything's broken and nobody's upset

hanselman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 418 posts

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#181

Post by evincarofautumn »

pmjordan wrote: post #49

As a user of software, I get similarly frustrated as the author. ("user" here includes use of third-party libraries to build on) However, developing system-level software, I've come to realise that even if you really, really care about the quality of your software, you can still be bitten by statistics. Basically, developing error-free software is comparatively easy if your software effectively performs no I/O, that…

As someone who works on compilers for a living, even “read in some data on launch, grind through some computation, emit output, terminate” is not an easy problem. Regardless of what tools you use, there are no substitutes for testing, care, and rigour. And testing.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#182

Post by prof_hobart »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #134
prof_hobart wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they meant to be examples of complex tech that aren't allowed to fail and don't? Or examples of complex tech that does fail, but really shouldn't? >but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly It's not an excuse - it's an explanation. These things are complex, and complex things sometimes fail. The average…

They are meant to be examples of failures which are extremely rare and would be unacceptable to consumers. Sorry, I realize they are quite unimaginative :P My response to your comment is the same as the previous one: >My argument is not that consumer products should be perfect; it is that when consumers see deficiencies in them which could reasonably be fixed, they have every right to complain. In fact, they should c…

>They are meant to be examples of failures which are extremely rare and would be unacceptable to consumers. Sorry, I realize they are quite unimaginative :P

Cars stop moving on a fairly regular basis, often as a result of the comparatively simple mechanical side of things. In the case of Toyota a couple of years ago, they didn't stop moving at all when the driver wanted them to.

The other examples you gave have happened too - this despite the rather more critical nature of the machine gun issue and again its relative simplicity compared to, for example, a modern phone.

I've got no problem with people calling out where they see problems, expecting someone to at least take their complaints seriously, and in a lot of cases expecting the company to do something about trying to resolve it.

But that's not really the message I took from the article - the idea that that these problems are caused by lack of passion or quality on the part of the people making this stuff rather than being an almost inevitable result of the complex nature of these systems.

TBH, I'm not even sure I buy that it's really that much of a problem. Almost everything isn't actually broken - the vast majority of our tech works remarkably well the vast majority of the time, and I prefer having tech that mostly works and is both available and affordable than having the same tech that will work perfectly when it's delivered in 5 years time at a vastly increased cost.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#183

Post by jiggy2011 »

rand_r wrote: post #180
jiggy2011 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically this is just the halting problem.

The browser doesn't have to know or care if some javascript on a page is doing an infinite loop. It's quite possible to sandbox a tab so that it can't take down the browser, just like an OS sandboxes processes so that one can't take down the kernel and other processes just from using too much CPU.

That is true in that Chrome always seems handle this better than Firefox for example. I guess it is to do with scheduling the browser UI threads and the JS threads. Although perhaps there are issues with locks and contention because there is probably some shared state between the browser UI thread and the JS engine/DOM on that tab.

Thing is once you start implementing stuff inside the browser to handle these situations your browser is moving away from being a document reader program and into the realms of being a full blown OS in it's own right running on top of another OS with shared state between the two.

That adds a load of complexity on it's own.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#184

Post by mgkimsal »

white_devil wrote: post #170
zdw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to take an even harder line: Sync is a fundamentally broken. The only solution is to switch to technologies where merging data is a primary core feature. Thus why I use text files and git to manage the vast majority of my data. The sooner people realize that sync isn't fixable (or a good idea in many cases), the sooner real solutions appear.

Sync is a fundamentally broken. Yep. It's weird that everything is built around just one button that says "Sync", when there are two different directions involved. Either you want to save the state of whatever device you're currently using, or you want to revert it to the state stored in the cloud. Export Import, pretty much.

well, 'export but give me anything new that's not in conflict', or 'import but don't overwrite anything in conflict'...

'sync' somewhat makes sense, but two sync options labelled easy to understand would go a long way to clearing this up, but... would likely introduce other issues as well.

'sync' works fine, except for when it doesn't. :/

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#185

Post by count »

taude wrote: post #76
edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

I was complaining to someone the other day about how needlessly complex washing machines, driers, and other home appliances have gotten. I bought a luxury refrigerator (LG) about 5 or 6 years ago. The motherboard/controller unit had to get replaced 3 times in the first year. I'm still using a washing machine and dryer from the early '80s that I somehow inherited. No one's ever said to me my clothes aren't clean. When…

My 'new' dishwasher isn't needlessly complex. It's very complex because it uses less than half of the water per wash my older model did, so it has to filter/cycle.

And no issues with it in 5 years. It replaced a dirt cheap, super simple 1980s style single-lever, single button model that failed after Not everything is broken, it's just cheaper and possible to make shitty things en masse. You can still pay for quality (see: Porsche reliability vs. Chevy reliability).

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#186

Post by scott_s »

nullc wrote: post #163
jmduke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things in particular I'll attack here: > - No Kindle You're definitely not alone in this -- a lot of my friends still prefer hard copies over eBooks -- but as someone used to literally lugging three-four textbooks to class, plus periodicals, plus personal reading, there's a clear and definitive value add from the Kindle. (That being said, just because you don't have a Kindle doesn't mean you don't, say, read eBoo…

> There's no other site where I can talk and keep up with my grandparents, my college roommate, and my girlfriend simultaneously. 'Necrophiliac bestiality, of course! How else am I to screw my food while I eat it?' If these people mean something to you, then you should be able to find the time to have adequate direct person to person communication with them instead of broadcasting to them and your closest 600 best bu…

There is more to Facebook than the friend-feed (the broadcast mechanism). Person-to-person communication is mostly what I use it for; it has replaced email and IM for many people.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#188

Post by mgkimsal »

I've thought for a while of having a general 'bug tracker' that's centralized around me, not a particular company. I'd have one place where I file all my bugs/issues, etc, and companies could subscribe to it, or sync it in to their existing issue systems. I'm tired of having to create yet another jira/etc username/password, navigate yet another UI for reporting something, having it not work, having someone not get back to me, and so on.

Having someone get back to me or notify me of a change may never happen entirely, but I'd have a centralized record of all my issues. And other people could search them if I shared them (by default, perhaps). And vote them up, or add their own notes. Or give me an answer or workaround.

Perhaps this is sort of what stackoverflow is or where it's going, but I think there's another approach to tackle this issue, and there may be room for multiple approaches(?)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#190

Post by daedalus_j »

SanjayUttam wrote: post #133
edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

I don't think the OP is being serious. Wash dishes by hand? Call me optimistic but, I kind of thought we perfected the craft of producing dishwashers.

Our 4 year old dishwasher was just recalled because it has, apparently, a habit of catching on fire unexpectedly.

"Perfected" is a tricky word. :-D

Post reply on HN