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If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

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Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#81

Post by prmoustache »

varjag wrote: post #44
fer wrote: post #34

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. I still don't understand how a full focus stealability debounce is not the norm. If I am in the middle of writing, or interacting with one UI bit in any way, no othe…

You can't really debounce it easily due to how the OS event queue work across processes and windows. One fix could be to not bing the focus to newly open windows (like you could in X11) but that's not what users want.

> but that's not what users want.

You don't know that until you ask users. That would be a much more useful question than those boring "tour guide on first login" or "please activate cortana/copilot" or "do you want to sync to onedrive" stuff one gets notified on some major desktops.

My preference is focus follow mouse, no focus stealing on new window opening.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#82

Post by hypfer »

markovs_gun wrote: post #74
hypfer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One could argue that fascist run FOSS projects might be working against your interest as a user. I guess so, but that's abstract and hard to grasp for most people. "The guy has clearly lost it and thus is probably not making sensible decisions" otoh is pretty easy to understand, signals effectively the same and side-steps basically all the drama.

> "The guy has clearly lost it and thus is probably not making sensible decisions" That isn't the problem though. Fascism isn't mental instability, it's an ideology. Someone going off the deep end and making bad decisions does so essentially at random, while someone driven by ideology messes things up in very specific ways. In the case of Fascist ideology, the specific ways they ruin things are specifically intended…

[flagged]

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#83

Post by ungreased0675 »

Proofread0592 wrote: post #50
brazzy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

Counterpoint: Take a look at consumer cellular. I would say it’s drastically cheaper than verizon, at&t, or t-mobile, but the customer support is better than all 3.

Ting also has (had?) excellent customer service. Call the 800 number and the first thing you hear is “hello” from an actual human who has the ability to help you. They also didn’t charge a lot, which makes me think great customer service is a choice.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#84

Post by rightbyte »

Y-bar wrote: post #76
gchokov wrote: post #27

It was always like this.

I think the flaws have moved. I remember Mac OS 7-8-9 (”Classic”) fondly and the suite of software I regularly used there. It crashed, and crashed hard, a few times per week. That never happens today, maybe at most once a month. However, what has changed in terms of quality is that there are 1000% more smaller bugs. I never felt that small annoyances or problems were even noticeable or even existent back then. Every…

I don't think it fair to compare cooperative multitasking OSs to OSs that requires virtual memory chips on a software quality basis.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#85

Post by jwr »

I have the same impression when I use things that are around me every day. Everything is broken and seemingly nobody cares. It seems that the teams developing software never use it themselves and do not care about bugs and terrible usability problems. It seems the management does not use any of the products that their businesses produce. And it seems that the ubiquitous breakage is just accepted as the status quo.

This extends to any device which has software or firmware: banking websites, banking apps on mobile phones, car firmware, etc.

I find it very depressing, especially when I think of the people who design, develop and deploy these apps. We are talking about large companies and teams of people. Entire chains of well-paid people designed, looked at, developed, tested, and then accepted these apps. And yet they break in the most obvious ways, or fail to be usable, instead pestering us with pop-ups and useless drivel and forgetting their state at every point.

These problems are not subtle. To take a glaring example from my everyday life, in my car there are buttons for moving windows up and down. Sometimes when you press the button to move the window down, it will actually start moving up. We are talking about a simple button that moves a window. And seemingly everybody thinks this is fine?

I don't know what to do about this.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#86

Post by graemep »

hypfer wrote: post #70
graemep wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I edited my wording before I saw your reply to take the word fix out. > People by now at large seem to be rather fine with both being called racist or just.. well.. being racist. I disagree. I do not get that feel at all in real life (in the UK, BTW). On Facebook you get that feel because it is full of ragebait and attracts nutters. There are some people like that, but most people would be deeply ashamed to think the…

Hm. I mean I would wish that your observation is correct, but I kinda doubt it. Doesn't match what I am seeing outside of the Internet. But, regardless of that, I still believe that shorthand terms and indirection are a less clean solution, and, if possible, the cleaner one with less dependencies should be used.

> Doesn't match what I am seeing outside of the Internet.

Where are you? It makes a big difference. I am talking primarily about the UK, where I have lived in different areas and know a variety of people in many different places. It is, in my experience, a society where racism is relatively rare: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#87

Post by jagged-chisel »

eviks wrote: post #75
frameset wrote: post #37

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. One of my absolute favourite features on KDE Plasma with Wayland is the global setting to control what can steal focus. It works wonderfully, and I always miss it wh…

How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary. It's just in this case the user has made the decision to not wait for startup and switch to another app. Aggravating step - he was typing. Is this workflow part of the Kwin settings? It's not interrupting typing part of the settings?

Any app should be ready to accept focus. It should never steal focus. When I start an app, and wait for it to launch, I am attempting to give it focus. I can withdraw that intent at any time by doing something else (e.g. switching apps) and the launching app should finish launching and wait in the background.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#88

Post by jagged-chisel »

frameset wrote: post #66
anonzzzies wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is definitely needed. On Mac it is really infuriating how stuff (auto update etc) just take focus/pop up crap. I am literally never interested in it and am confused why I cannot just say [x] Force apps to mind their own business. We have f’ing notifications for this; why does it need a dialog window?

Maybe it's a hazy memory, but from 2007-2011 my main computer was a MacBook Pro. I swear in that era, when an app wanted attention it would bounce in the dock endlessly. That was annoying, but it let you finish doing what you were doing until you were ready to switch focus.

I think you’re right - macOS changed this behavior at some point.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#89

Post by prmoustache »

markovs_gun wrote: post #78
danlitt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence of people actually using it?

Yeah I switched to Linux full time at home last year and never even heard of this distro in doing any research about it.

I heard about it but since I also heard it was built by a white supremacist, I'd rather use one that is made by decent people, especially when the added value is only a preconfigured hyprland desktop.

So good marketing? Hell no.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#90

Post by eviks »

frameset wrote: post #80
eviks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary. It's just in this case the user has made the decision to not wait for startup and switch to another app. Aggravating step - he was typing. Is this workflow part of the Kwin settings? It's not interrupting typing part of the settings?

> How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary Maybe you do. I don't. With this setting we can both be hapopy.

We can't both be happy because the setting does nothing for me.
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