Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The end of dumb software

sethgodin.typepad.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: The end of dumb software

#11

Post by jvdh »

It is stupefying that this article is written now, and there is not a single reference to semantic web, or artificial intelligence research.

This problem has been identified decades ago, years of research have gone into it, and some solutions have been identified. Granted, most solutions are not workable, precisely because they try to be too smart, which ends up not working either.

But just saying "why is my meeting scheduled at 2am?" or "why doesn't it recognize names?" or calling out "This is the end of dumb software!" is being dumb yourself. Seth could've at least done a little bit of research.

Re: The end of dumb software

#12

Post by silentbicycle »

Tichy wrote: post #9

Unfortunately, often it ends up being very annoying when the computer tries to be smart. Not to say it can't be done, but the PC's helping hand is not always welcome.

Yeah, when a program tries to be smart and repeatedly, helpfully "corrects" what you're doing, it often just gets in the way or corrupts your work.

Word is the first example that comes to mind (for myself, and many people). One such situation is they way that git just punts on hard merge decisions - coming up with accurate heuristics for complex merging is very difficult, but the programmer responsible for the merged content can usually make the decisions easily. This frees git up to focus instead on storing and propagating those decisions well.

Re: The end of dumb software

#13

Post by iamwil »

[deleted] wrote: post #7
patio11 wrote: post #2

The web/cloud does not automatically make software "smart". Programmers make software smart. Everything else is an implementation detail. Your addressbook does not automatically hook up with trusted friends to update because you just glossed over about five or six Certifiably Hard Problems such as a) proving identity, b) disambiguating names, c) trust, and d) doing it all with a GUI which will not cause a big-thinker…

[deleted]

Sometimes the assumptions that you make to make software smart will make users go postal.

I once had a coworker who was a smart guy. He helped design the guidance system for the HARM missiles. But one day he called me over to his office to ask for help. Ends up Microsoft Word was automatically injecting text while he was typing and he didn't know how to get it to stop.

The smart software's injects were correct given a specific type of paper for the general populace, but not for his edge case.

Re: The end of dumb software

#14

Post by zeynel1 »

The first issue is not related to dumbness. It is handled usually with a pop up window that shows you the entire text when hovered.

Second issue can be handled as an option: "all my appointments are in business hours."

Maybe Seth Godin wants that infamous paper clip back: "I see you are drafting a letter. Let me help..."

Re: The end of dumb software

#16

Post by morphir »

This has been solved. The solution is called DCI. Data Context Interaction. A new paradigm where you design your software according to the end users mental model. Understand DCI and you should be able to craft software that makes more sense per usability. Trygve Reenskaug has explained why the traditional MVC is flawed.

ref. http://www.artima.com/articles/dci_visionP.html

Re: The end of dumb software

#17

Post by mattmanser »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #5

All the problems he's describing could be solved in about five minutes, if he were using Emacs' org-mode, bbdb, and VM-mode or Gnus to read mail. But only if he'd spent a couple hours learning them first. There are tradeoffs with every kind of software. That little screenshot he posted is beautiful ; time spent making a program beautiful is time not spent making it functional. The ability to run these little utility…

Normal people don't use command lines as it's not discoverable, they can barely type, it's a pain, easy to forget, etc.

And compared to 1998 when the article you cite was written, normal people also have supercomputers sitting in their living rooms where time to launch for 1,000s of lines of code is instant, for all intents and purposes.

We have APIs, Flash, Silverlight, WPF, Java and many, many more to take away the pain of writing GUI code.

"time spent making a program beautiful is time not spent making it functional"

Try telling that to all the people who bought an IPhone. It's time to man up and accept the fact that a good UI and hence UX is essential to modern programming.

But feel free to go on living in 1998. I see the appeal, you get to point at your emacs screen and do the old 'all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead...' ;)

Re: The end of dumb software

#18

Post by KC8ZKF »

mattmanser wrote: post #17
byrneseyeview wrote: post #5

All the problems he's describing could be solved in about five minutes, if he were using Emacs' org-mode, bbdb, and VM-mode or Gnus to read mail. But only if he'd spent a couple hours learning them first. There are tradeoffs with every kind of software. That little screenshot he posted is beautiful ; time spent making a program beautiful is time not spent making it functional. The ability to run these little utility…

Normal people don't use command lines as it's not discoverable, they can barely type, it's a pain, easy to forget, etc. And compared to 1998 when the article you cite was written, normal people also have supercomputers sitting in their living rooms where time to launch for 1,000s of lines of code is instant, for all intents and purposes. We have APIs, Flash, Silverlight, WPF, Java and many, many more to take away the…

Command Line or GUI is a false dichotomy. For example, both of you cite Emacs as a command line tool, but I haven't used Emacs in a terminal for years. The Emacs I use today is a Cocoa application with pull down menus, drag and drop, etc. (I still wouldn't call it pretty, or a good example of user interface, but not because it is a CLI.)

Re: The end of dumb software

#20

Post by watt »

zeynel1 wrote: post #14

The first issue is not related to dumbness. It is handled usually with a pop up window that shows you the entire text when hovered. Second issue can be handled as an option: "all my appointments are in business hours." Maybe Seth Godin wants that infamous paper clip back: "I see you are drafting a letter. Let me help..."

his point, for the second issue, is that the option should be on by default. and that makes sense.

however, the sad thing about article is that it shows Seth does not understand software development. There is no people who make "desktop" vs "web" software. Mostly this is the same group of people: software developers, and we all are alike - only difference is the delivery platform.

And the specifics of the selected delivery platform does not provide any qualitative difference for code that runs on it. Basically: you can make crappy desktop apps, and crappy web apps. The address book does not become good magically, because it is rendered as HTML page.

To finalize my point, the default state of software is "crap". Anything else must be engineered on top of the underlying "crap". The "why my software does not do (blindingly obvious) thing X" articles are amusing (function as bug reports, or invent insightful features), but are orthogonal to actual development of software, unfortunately.

Software will continue to slowly evolve, there is no qualitative leap coming.

Post reply on HN