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

Stop Ruining It

seths.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 170 posts

Re: Stop Ruining It

#131

Post by bitwize »

andai wrote: post #85
fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

A little while ago I ran Windows XP in a VM, inside Windows 10. I noted that when I pressed the start key, the start menu opened. I noted that when I pressed Win+E, an explorer window opened. Fully rendered. After a single video frame. On Windows 10, the same thing happens, only several hundred milliseconds later, and then you get to enjoy watching the UI elements get painted in one at a time. Twenty years of progres…

Few years back I was complaining to a coworker: "I just love opening Teams and watching it draw its subwindows in one by one, like a Windows 1.0 app on an 8086."

First flat design, now sluggish window redraws... Windows is getting retro hipster. Will 26H2 take away overlapping windows?

Re: Stop Ruining It

#132

Post by NagatoYuzuru »

Unless the company and team’s KPI or OKR system changes, things will stay this way. You need something to report on to your superiors. But to you, these things are just another job.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#133

Post by winrid »

solid_fuel wrote: post #119
hunter2_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably that's to keep hardware sales up, e-waste be damned. You won't notice it taking 8 times longer when you have 8 times as many cores, or whatever.

No I think it's a consequence of so much of the industry abandoning caring about the craft in favor of just shipping whatever garbage checks off their Jira tickets. This is the same attitude that leads to vibe coding. It's the idea that the code doesn't matter and the only thing of any importance is the business attached to the product. It's stupid and shortsighted, but the entire industry seems pretty damned nearsig…

It's mostly the result of hiring too many stupid product managers and engineers that don't give a shit.

Even if you didn't read the code if you cared even an ounce you wouldn't ship this crap.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#134

Post by denkmoon »

graemep wrote: post #21
Hugsbox wrote: post #6

> Trust isn’t something a brand builds with an ad campaign. It’s what’s left if the marketers don’t ruin it. So much this. Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses? I'm assuming they wouldn't run them anymore if not, but they feel so out of touch these days that it's really hard to imagine them really working on anybody. Sorry for the side-tangent, just felt like that last bit of the post really drov…

Its always been hard to know. "about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half." dates back more than a century Some spend is just in case. Some spend is for prestige (we are on TV!). Some is for vague reasons that cannot be measured.

> Some spend is for prestige

I cannot describe the disgust I feel seeing my employer's logo on a fucking F1 car.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#135

Post by bambax »

fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

The problem with Windows is the users aren't the buyers, so they don't matter.

I hate Windows 11 immensely. At home I use Mac, Linux and... Windows 7. But at my current client I have to use Windows 11. I have no choice; I can either accept that or leave.

So at this point Windows could send small electrical shocks with every keystroke, it would not make a difference whatsoever.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#136

Post by vjk800 »

andai wrote: post #85
fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

A little while ago I ran Windows XP in a VM, inside Windows 10. I noted that when I pressed the start key, the start menu opened. I noted that when I pressed Win+E, an explorer window opened. Fully rendered. After a single video frame. On Windows 10, the same thing happens, only several hundred milliseconds later, and then you get to enjoy watching the UI elements get painted in one at a time. Twenty years of progres…

I'm forced to use the Microsoft ecosystem at work and the sluggishness of it is a major source of procrastination. I find myself putting off small tasks forever, because waiting for word files to open, browsing folder structures in Teams, etc. are all mildly painful experiences. I suspect a lot of people do this, and maybe all of them don't even realize why they are doing this. The effect of sluggish user interfaces on overall productivity is probably well underestimated.

The same goes to some extent to anything with a web interface, for example Databricks.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#137

Post by pjmlp »

fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

Tabs are great, especially in laptops.

Modern Explorer is a WinUI/UWP app, nothing to do with Electron, it could be worse.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#138

Post by vjk800 »

munificent wrote: post #60
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when it happened, but there was a definite inflection point some time in my software career, where we all stopped asking "What does the user want to do with their computer?" and moved over to "What do we want the user to do with our software? And, it's been downhill since then. We stopped treating the user as the driver of the car, and pushed him into the passenger seat. Now users are just along for the…

> I'm not sure when it happened I know exactly when it happened: when people stopped buying software. When you had to walk into a store, pick up a box, read the bullet points on the back, and pay a decent chunk of cash for that program, you were incentivized to do at least a little research and ensure you were getting something useful. You would be stuck with it (and with exactly it in the form you bought it, without…

> I know exactly when it happened: when people stopped buying software.

Things are not, however, much better for software that people actually buy. That is, paid-for apps in Android and Apple app stores.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#139

Post by exmadscientist »

munificent wrote: post #60
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when it happened, but there was a definite inflection point some time in my software career, where we all stopped asking "What does the user want to do with their computer?" and moved over to "What do we want the user to do with our software? And, it's been downhill since then. We stopped treating the user as the driver of the car, and pushed him into the passenger seat. Now users are just along for the…

> I'm not sure when it happened I know exactly when it happened: when people stopped buying software. When you had to walk into a store, pick up a box, read the bullet points on the back, and pay a decent chunk of cash for that program, you were incentivized to do at least a little research and ensure you were getting something useful. You would be stuck with it (and with exactly it in the form you bought it, without…

I think it's not so much about the money as the "When you had to walk into a store... [and] be stuck with it" part. That is, the problem was actually automatic/Internet-enabled updates.

With the physical model you chose your software and it didn't stop working. (It might stop being useful, but that's a different story.) No option to patch later meant a company couldn't ship trash: word would get out and people just wouldn't buy it. (Windows ME, anyone?) Now you can get the rug pulled out from under you on all of your tools, and things "ship" as garbage with a massive "day 1 patch" (and a "day 2 patch" and...) and honestly often never get finished. At least not before they're "retired" and you're "updated" to some dumpster fire that's nothing like what you wanted, and still doesn't even work, and you can't do anything about it.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#140

Post by FinnLobsien »

munificent wrote: post #23
FinnLobsien wrote: post #9

As someone who works in marketing, this is extremely true. Right now, LLMs are causing a lot of one-time cashing in of trust. I've seen this pattern a bunch: 1. Person builds trust on X/LinkedIn or via an insightful blog/newsletter (substitute your channel of choice here) for a few years because they have unique opinions, interesting stories from personal experience, are entertaining/charismatic, or share data/insigh…

> a lot of one-time cashing in of trust. I agree completely, but this is part of a larger pattern in society lately around short-term thinking. It seems like everyone is trying to cash ASAP and fewer people are investing or building long-term. Between crumbling social institutions, climate change, governmental chaos, and increasing economic inequality, I think people just don't believe in the future as much as they u…

I agree with what you’re talking about but I don’t agree this is analogous.

I’m talking about a one-time cashing in of trust one already has built up, not saying whatever the algorithm demands to go viral.

These people already have the thing others are expecting from content creation!

I think this is different from the short-term phenomenon you describe where people want to get rich quick via crypto/prediction markets/wallstreetbets/etc.

It’s much more like you already have enough to retire on, but cash it all out because your cousin’s tattoo artist’s stepson recently got a bachelor’s in finance and they won’t charge any management fees.

Post reply on HN