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Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

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Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#11

Post by jrcii »

geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Excel is not perfect but it is best in class. I've built and maintained a time-series statistics research database for one of the largest trade associations in the world for over 10 years which heavily integrates with Excel. In so doing I've become intimately familiar with its quarks and shortcomings but ultimately it always provides a path to accomplish your goals, including high-performance automation https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/bb687829.asp...

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#13

Post by WA »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (wh…

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it.

Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed.

So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out of the system and the urge fades. And there's clearly no expectation for my thoughts to go anywhere. It's written for an audience of one.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#14

Post by mentos »

Imagine facebook is a spherical magnet with ten thousand small lead balls clung to it. If you're trying to create a better magnet it can't just be the same as facebook's. Putting the same magnet near facebook's will only collect a small handful of peripheral users. If you want to capture the critical mass you have to energize a magnet with an attractive force so great that it will begin to vibrate users close to the facebook core and attract them through the empty space between to you.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#15

Post by eterm »

adrianN wrote: post #6
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Doing complex modelling in Excel is not a good idea. There is no way to do proper software engineering, so bugs are common and hard to find. For examples, see http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm

Except "proper software engineering" would mean whatever is being built simply never gets built.

In many cases it's better to get somewhere quickly with excel then work out if "proper software engineering" is required than never get off the ground because engineering something is too difficult.

Think of excel like lego. Someone can quickly build something out of lego. Now if someone tried to build a cathedral from lego, you might suggest that they find an architect and do some proper house building, but without lego they would never have tried.

And chances are they're not building a cathedral.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#16

Post by popmystack »

colanderman wrote: post #7
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Word certainly is, at least on OS X. Within an hour of my first time using it in a decade last week, I caused it to beachball for five minutes straight by clicking a single button (select all text of a given style). It then took me over an hour to figure out why my TOC entries had no spacing between their numbers and titles (hint: it wasn't the spacing setting), and another hour to figure out why, after I "fixed" the…

I wouldn't call Word's features obscure. They may not be relevant to you, but it is an extremely powerful publishing tool.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#17

Post by eterm »

Nutmog wrote: post #5

Can you not just clone the shitty product so existing training is still useful? Do software companies enforce copyrights on things like the location of buttons and the names of menu items?

A clone of a crappy product is at best a crappy clone.

What makes bad products bad is precisely the stuff you're trying to copy. Any clone just inherits the bad parts then inevitably adds other bad parts behind the scenes or misses random features. (Hello Open Office).

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#18

Post by elcapitan »

eterm wrote: post #15
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing complex modelling in Excel is not a good idea. There is no way to do proper software engineering, so bugs are common and hard to find. For examples, see http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm

Except "proper software engineering" would mean whatever is being built simply never gets built. In many cases it's better to get somewhere quickly with excel then work out if "proper software engineering" is required than never get off the ground because engineering something is too difficult. Think of excel like lego. Someone can quickly build something out of lego. Now if someone tried to build a cathedral from le…

There's actually an interesting gap between 'building some model in Excel' and 'moving on into a programming model where code and data are separated'. Like generating model code in some normal programming language from a spreadsheet.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#19

Post by adrianN »

eterm wrote: post #15
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing complex modelling in Excel is not a good idea. There is no way to do proper software engineering, so bugs are common and hard to find. For examples, see http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm

Except "proper software engineering" would mean whatever is being built simply never gets built. In many cases it's better to get somewhere quickly with excel then work out if "proper software engineering" is required than never get off the ground because engineering something is too difficult. Think of excel like lego. Someone can quickly build something out of lego. Now if someone tried to build a cathedral from le…

Just like I wouldn't want to live in a house built from LEGO, I'm somewhat wary of Excel models as the basis for investment strategies in major banks. The problem with the quick and hacky solution is that it's never replaced, because that would cost money, and the current solution "looks like it works".

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#20

Post by Marcus316 »

WA wrote: post #13
ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (wh…

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it.

I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed is planted.

I almost didn't post this reply, either.

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