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Whatever works for you

marco.org

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Re: Whatever works for you

#11

Post by alextp »

pnathan wrote: post #7

The flip side to this is as computer professionals, what we do with a computer and how we have built our workflow significantly accelerates our work with a computer. E.g., easy file versioning and sync is fundamentally a solved problem, if you are willing to take the initial hit of workflow modification (git, sftp, etc). So it's okay to teach people how to do it faster and better.

This suggests that it's worthwhile to educate the young in not just doing the same things with computers that everybody knows how to do (Office-style and web browsing) but inculcating habits (versioning, say) which will make life much easier in the long run.

This, however, would make the education system not agnostic, and drastically favor some companies.

Re: Whatever works for you

#13

Post by Splines »

adamio wrote: post #6

There's a difference between evangelizing a setup to someone for selfish reasons (to bring more users hoping developers follow, to make it easier to troubleshoot), and for reasons the other person just doesn't know or grasp yet (using POP instead of IMAP is causing your phone and pc to be out of sync)

Just to add, I don't mind someone evangelizing their setup, since they may have solved a problem that I didn't know there was a solution for.

Anything that reduces the "don't know what I don't know" bucket is a good thing.

Re: Whatever works for you

#14

Post by JadeNB »

alextp wrote: post #11
pnathan wrote: post #7

The flip side to this is as computer professionals, what we do with a computer and how we have built our workflow significantly accelerates our work with a computer. E.g., easy file versioning and sync is fundamentally a solved problem, if you are willing to take the initial hit of workflow modification (git, sftp, etc). So it's okay to teach people how to do it faster and better.

This suggests that it's worthwhile to educate the young in not just doing the same things with computers that everybody knows how to do (Office-style and web browsing) but inculcating habits (versioning, say) which will make life much easier in the long run. This, however, would make the education system not agnostic, and drastically favor some companies.

> This, however, would make the education system not agnostic, and drastically favor some companies.

Why? Perhaps you mean that there is versioning software, like git, that is so prevalent that it may be regarded as having dominated the ecosystem, so that that's what we have to teach; but that seems no different from teaching Java or, for an even more extreme example, the RSA cryptosystem.

(I know that there are objections to teaching Java, but I've never heard—which is not to say it doesn't exist!—the complaint that it favours Oracle.)

Re: Whatever works for you

#15

Post by endlessvoid94 »

Kylekramer wrote: post #5
tomstuart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's important to realise that not everyone has the same priorities, or the same constraints, as you do. Marco says he's happy to relinquish some control in order to have things work the way they're supposed to, but he recognises that other people may not have the freedom or the desire to make the same trade-off. This recognition is called empathy, and it's a useful trait for people involved in prod…

And I'd buy it more if his actions followed his words. I listened to his podcast once, and the Android/Google bashing was so pervasive it continued even to the point they were making fun of it during an ad that mentioned a company had an Android app (something to the effect of "They even have an Android app, if you are stuck with an Android"). An ad! People paid money to his show to have their work/customers belittle…

> People paid money to his show to have their work/customers belittled.

From another perspective, people paid money to his show to hear his opinions. If he said something you didn't like, I'd hope you decided to stop listening (or take his opinions into account when choosing technology).

Why else did people pay his show?

Re: Whatever works for you

#16

Post by luigi »

There's a difference between trying to help a guy solve a specific problem and trying to evangelize him to switch to your preferred platform.

There are tons of resources on the Web devoted to syncing Outlook with the iPhone. Maybe someone more tech savvy (like Marco) could have helped. Instead he said he "couldn't help him". He really meant "I don't want to try to help you".

Re: Whatever works for you

#17

Post by pacomerh »

That's fine I hope other people adopt this mentality, and I'm talking fanboys for whatever platform. Whatever works for you applies to everything, I use the computer to make music and I know other people who also do the same and use different platforms and I always see people saying "Oh you should use pro-tools to really make good music" Can you believe that?, hehe. The operator is what matters.

Re: Whatever works for you

#18

Post by lifeisstillgood »

luigi wrote: post #16

There's a difference between trying to help a guy solve a specific problem and trying to evangelize him to switch to your preferred platform. There are tons of resources on the Web devoted to syncing Outlook with the iPhone. Maybe someone more tech savvy (like Marco) could have helped. Instead he said he "couldn't help him". He really meant "I don't want to try to help you".

The trade off lies in the amount of effort marco will spend trying to learn Outlook, understand which resource on the web is wrong, misguided, lying or just out of date, and the level of frustration his (father-in-law?) can bear, as opposed to say, going for a drink and a walk on Thanksgiving. At a certain point just saying I dont know how gives the other person a data point on how much effort their choices will involve. I have wasted days before now trying tofix things I should have simply said "I don't know - its R&D from here on in, these are my rates"

Re: Whatever works for you

#20

Post by yock »

I've started adopting a similar soft approach along these lines myself. My wife and I are Ubuntu Linux users at home, but our families know us as simply computer savvy. Often enough someone will call us with Windows-specific questions, which I'll try and answer to the best of my ability; however, when faced with what sounds like a research project I err on the side of stupidity.

"No, I don't know why your new smartphone won't sync with all three of your business accounts as well as your personal email."

So far, this kind of answer has been far better received than spending hours troubleshooting frustrating corner cases from trying to shoehorn off-the-shelf gadgets into situations they probably weren't meant for anyway. At worst, that makes me lazy, but I'm okay with that as long as I'm not known as the ill-tempered son-in-law who won't just help out his aunt and uncle without coping an attitude.

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