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Everything's broken and nobody's upset

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Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#261

Post by efa »

emddudley wrote: post #252
neutronicus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I just don't like dishwashers. They don't seem to save any work - I still basically have to clean the dishes in order to precondition them for the dishwasher, and now they create this monumental chore (put everyone's dishes away) that all the dishwasher users are constantly trying to avoid and foist off on the other dishwasher users. No, thank you.

My dishwasher does not require any rinsing. It has a built-in grinder for larger food particles that get washed off.

My dishwasher also cleans beautifully with no rinsing (thought I usually rinse the big particles). Now drying is another thing all together. I usually have to hand dry dishes (especially plastic) when I take them out before putting them away.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#262

Post by heydonovan »

Honestly, I think a step in the right direction would be more people submitting bug reports. Get more people used to the idea that bugs do exist in software, and it's up to everybody to say "Hey, your software has issues. This is how you can replicate it. Please fix!". Also, let's stop implementing features, and fix bugs first. No use building upon software with known bugs in it.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#263

Post by nradov »

anuraj wrote: post #189

Over the years we have failed to develop software as a true engineering discipline. The way a structural engineer can design and certify a structure as sound, I dream one day we will be able to do for software.

Not at all. We have developed software as a true engineering discipline. It's only applied where it's really needed, and can be economically justified. For example, avionics and some safety-critical industrial control systems.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#264

Post by koide »

batista wrote: post #239
batista wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bingo! This is one perfect example of the problem he's referring to about people not being passionate enough to fix the problems: "Those bugs are not that important." That's a lame excuse. Who cares that we are better than 15 years ago, the point is that we have lots of (seemingly) low-hanging fruit that stays there for plenty of releases and that nobody cares enough to fix, because "bah, it's not that important."…

> The key point is who defines what "opportunity" is and, most importantly, why. There are opportunities to build new features, or opportunities to fix what's broken. Who defines it? The business. Opportunity cost is a business notion (even if that business is making a non for profit OS software). > The pride on creating a mighty fine piece of software should do it. I actually DO try to attack all the user facing (an…

Open Source complaining assholes apart, which can fall high on the disrespect scale sometimes, users have all and every right of complaining about the things that are not working, always. Users are not in debt of software developers in my view. If you think otherwise, then that's the key of our disagreement.

I do think that "don't care about UX bugs" is a prevalent attitude among software developers. I may be mistaken, but let's not forget you even used it as an argument: "those bugs are not that important", which is what compelled me to reply.

I believe that death by a thousand cuts is worse than death by a single blow, each time these bugs occur make a little cut.

And of course some of them might be devilishly complex or E_NOREPRODUCE, but I believe they are pervasive mostly due to the industry being focused on having more features before stabilizing old ones, because, you know, those bugs aren't that important.

(Hint: Multiply 5 minutes wasted by an annoying bug by 12000000 users and you have a million hours down the drain, each time)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#265

Post by aasarava »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #254
neutronicus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I just don't like dishwashers. They don't seem to save any work - I still basically have to clean the dishes in order to precondition them for the dishwasher, and now they create this monumental chore (put everyone's dishes away) that all the dishwasher users are constantly trying to avoid and foist off on the other dishwasher users. No, thank you.

Been there; done that. And once I bought a dishwasher, I lost all motivation to do it by hand. Scraping off stuck stuff, the whole process of cleaning the sink, plugging it and filling it with water, sorting dishes by category (do the glasses first! Pots last!), running out of room to put the dry dishes so dry hands and put some away, then back to washing. Its not unpleasant, but just lots of work and the dishwasher…

What do you mean by "the energy-star hoax"? (Curious.)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#266

Post by shanselman »

gav wrote: post #233
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…

I wonder how much Kindle ownership and home size correlates. I was a strong proponent of owning physical books until about 2 1/2 years ago when I moved into a small Manhattan apartment. Since then I've bought about 200 e-books and about 5 physical books. I simply don't have the space. I have boxes and boxes of books in storage and I'm now glad that I'm not adding to that. Playing with some rough numbers into I get ab…

I would say it correlates more to household income and education. Folks need to "get" digital books and feel confident that they will still own them. I've gotten tired of looking at physical books that full up a half a room so I've moved to Kindles and Comixology and haven't looked back.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#267

Post by arbitrage »

crag wrote: post #215

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…

To elaborate on your example: Apple's Mail.app has always been vaguely shit. Every major rev of OS-X always introduces a new way in which Mail.app fails.

> in Apple's case, they hate to admit anything can possibly be wrong in perfect-town Apple.

Bingo. And that's exactly what the article is talking about. Things that a company or programmer has the ability to fix _now_ just don't get done.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#268

Post by aasarava »

prawks wrote: post #198
TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would seriously reconsider Kindle. It beats any kind of screen for reading, and beats any kind of paper materials in logistics. For me, personally, it's pure value; something I can't say about most of other electronics I own.

"Hey I read this great book the other day!" "Oh really? That sounds really cool!" "Yeah, here you can borrow it..... Oh wait never mind..." " :( " I don't think it really beats paper materials in logistics. You're buying proprietary books. 14-day lending to other people (who may not have a Kindle) doesn't really solve that.

For what it's worth, there is a Kindle reader app that lets you read books w/o an actual Kindle. But I agree that lending restrictions (and the question of who really owns the copy of the book) do make things more difficult.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#269

Post by nradov »

lazyjones wrote: post #56

With no accountability for vendors at all, no software warranties worth the name, this is hardly a surprise. Until people can start suing for damages (it costs me time = money to get such problems fixed), software will stay mostly broken because vendors have no good reason to invest money in fixing it.

People can sue their software vendors for damages right now. There's nothing stopping you. Of course most software licenses disclaim liability for defects, but if you purchased software with those license terms then you have no one but yourself to blame. Caveat emptor.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#270

Post by JoeAltmaier »

aasarava wrote: post #265
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been there; done that. And once I bought a dishwasher, I lost all motivation to do it by hand. Scraping off stuck stuff, the whole process of cleaning the sink, plugging it and filling it with water, sorting dishes by category (do the glasses first! Pots last!), running out of room to put the dry dishes so dry hands and put some away, then back to washing. Its not unpleasant, but just lots of work and the dishwasher…

What do you mean by "the energy-star hoax"? (Curious.)

To qualify for 'Energy Star' in the US, you have to use 10% less energy/resources (water) as last year. No standard; no other goal.

Result: clothes washers that don't wash (my washer at least has a button to override Energy Star, obliquely named Extra Rinse or Heavy Duty), dishwashers that don't get dishes clean; water heaters that deliver luke-warm water.

The goal cannot have been "Use less energy, even if it means sucking". The goal was actually "Get a sticker on your product, for marketing reasons." Thus, a hoax.

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