Everything's broken and nobody's upset • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#211

Post by pasbesoin » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:30 PM UTC

I spent a number of years doing QA ("real" QA, guiding and advising the entire lifecycle) and making sure that the software in my little corner of the world did work. (Often catching critical bugs after some other "QA" process had entirely missed them.)

It's a thankless job. The developers I worked with directly loved me -- the best of the lot did, anyway. (My observation in turn of their abilities and professionalism.) But management had no clue (and refused to get one). And many developers outside of my exclusive little clique had to be brow-beaten into some level of compliance.

Speaking generally: You say you want quality. But your actions belie this.

P.S. If you're concerned about "quality", amongst other things you should read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". To understand the importance of and drive for quality amongst those who really care.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#212

Post by moubarak » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:32 PM UTC

Thank you so much for this article. Im not alone.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#213

Post by julien_c » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:32 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #202

alexholehouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly some of these are life choices, and important ones which almost certainly make sense to you, but one thing; No dishwasher? I don't really understand this. My dishwasher has a single wheel and a switch. The switch is "heated dry" [ON|OFF] and the wheel sets to one of three positions ("light wash", "normal wash", "medium wash"). If you're only washing dishes for one then I guess this makes sense, but I fail to…

No dishwasher here, either. It takes 10 minutes, start to finish, to wash and put the dishes in the rack, if I've neglected to do them for a day or two. 15 total if I towel dry them. Yeah, the dishwasher would be more convenient, maybe, but doing it by hand is just plain faster and I don't have to multitask. Probably cheaper, too.

Using a dishwasher actually saves water.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#214

Post by mej10 » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #205

mej10 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, mine literally just has a dial that is only used to turn it on and off. No buttons, switches, anything. You just turn the dial like 0.2cm and it turns on. I can't imagine being OK with wasting time washing dishes by hand.

It's therapeutic, for me anyway.

It is funny that you describe it as therapeutic. I have several manual tasks that I would describe that way. Just not washing dishes. :)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#215

Post by crag » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

It's not the bugs that "bug" me. It's the time it takes developers to fix them. Example: Mountain Lion's Mail; for some of us, it suddenly takes all the accounts off-line. The fix is to restart it. There are HUGE threads in the forums [about this issues and several others], and multiple posts on various sites around the net and STILL no fix.

Another example from Apple: The 2011 MacBook Air wireless connections issues. Also several huge threads in the forums, and multiple posts around the net and nothing.

And Apple isn't the only company. I don't even want to get started on the state of video games today (look at the launch of D3 from Blizzard and what a nightmare that was or SW:TOR - just a couple of recent examples).

I imagine two reasons for that state we are at now: Money - the rush to release (and "worry about fixing bugs later" -this is VERY true in the gaming world); and in Apple's case, they hate to admit anything can possibly be wrong in perfect-town Apple.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#216

Post by nradov » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #123

cstross wrote: post #30

Reading his laundry-list of paper cuts, it looks like many of them (around 50%?) relate to one particular issue: synchronisation. It keeps coming up, time and again, from his email woes (seriously, folks, didn't we solve this one back in 1980?) through to the borked address books, contact lists, and photo streams. Sync software usually takes a conservative approach to deleting or merging records, and leaves duplicate…

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.

Synchronization in IBM Lotus Notes/Domino has worked quite well for 20+ years, so obviously sync is not fundamentally broken. More likely we've just failed to learn from history.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#217

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:34 PM UTC

alexholehouse wrote: post #122

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…

Clearly some of these are life choices, and important ones which almost certainly make sense to you, but one thing; No dishwasher? I don't really understand this. My dishwasher has a single wheel and a switch. The switch is "heated dry" [ON|OFF] and the wheel sets to one of three positions ("light wash", "normal wash", "medium wash"). If you're only washing dishes for one then I guess this makes sense, but I fail to…

My latest dishwasher is 'energy star'. What that means is, every year they have to use 10% less energy and water. After the last 10 years, the dishwasher uses almost no enery nor water. And it doesn't get the dishes clean. And there's no way to override it.

My water comes from a well. Its plentiful and free. Its pointless to save a gallon, and make me hand-wash half the dishes.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#218

Post by joverholt » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:35 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #205

mej10 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, mine literally just has a dial that is only used to turn it on and off. No buttons, switches, anything. You just turn the dial like 0.2cm and it turns on. I can't imagine being OK with wasting time washing dishes by hand.

It's therapeutic, for me anyway.

I agree, wife and I wash most of our dishes, she washes, I dry. It's a great time to let your mind wonder and think about problems. Mindless tasks like drying dishes and scooping the cat box give me a chance to actually think about things in a no pressure environment.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#219

Post by icebraining » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:36 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #157

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got rid of mine and went back to a dumb phone. I didn't like being connected all the time, it wasn't healthy for me.

Then disconnect your data plan. To me, just having the Android Calendar & Contacts interfaces is a huge improvement over most dedicated 'dumb' phones. I guess that you still have to have the discipline not to connect wifi, but I don't think that would be too much of an issue. Disabling/enabling wifi on Android is fairly easy. This barrier, though small is probably enough to help keep you in-check.

Wouldn't it be better to get a cheaper, wifi-less Symbian Nokia? Or is the Android software that much better?

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#220

Post by jiggy2011 » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:37 PM UTC

lnanek2 wrote: post #106

Doesn't Facebook say move fast and break things? I know, personally, I have an Android app that gets about 12k new users a month, and I see exceptions reported all the time that I can't reproduce from the buggy as hell WebView, web content control, in Android. Especially when used with AdMob/Google ads, so much so that I use other advertisers instead. I could spend a week copying the source code for WebView into my a…

I guess the Simcity example was from years ago. I don't know whether or not culture has changed it that time.

This was also a time when there were comparatively less apps and games available on the PC, or at least ones that were widely used. So it was probably practical for them to test their new OS with just about everything on the market.

Now, however there's no way in hell it's possible from MS to go through and test everything that every ISV produces with Windows 8 for example.