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Stop Ruining It

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Re: Stop Ruining It

#151

Post by everdrive »

elevation wrote: post #22
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…

> Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs Hey now! The `nautilus' file browser on linux got me hooked on tabs and for years it's been a glaring deficiency of File Explorer. Many tasks involve a collection of directories, and tabs can be ideal for reducing demand for screen space. I concede the the current Windows implementation is poor but I hope they improve it, rather than dumping tabs entirely.

People's workflows will vary but I never find myself using tabs in Dolphin. (ie, the KDE file manager) If I'm dragging and dropping, I want to see both the source and the destination, so I usually just open two windows and tile one on the left an one on the right. This always works great and is a lot like Norton Commander, which seems relevant.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#152

Post by small_scombrus »

brailsafe wrote: post #125

> Curiosity isn’t simply what’s left after a complete education. It’s still there if the system doesn’t ruin it. Yes, but also some people are shockingly incurious and approach academia and life through a depressingly hollow transactional lens from the beginning. Though if it was there to begin with, there's a good chance it'll be stripped away through the structuring of courses to be measurable first and intriguing…

> some people are shockingly incurious and approach academia and life through a depressingly hollow transactional lens from the beginning

I feel like that's a result of prior bad experience. Noone goes into university, or even primary school a blank slate.

It's very easy to fall into a trap where education is transactional if that's what was modelled to you or that's how previous teachers treated you

Re: Stop Ruining It

#153

Post by everdrive »

No, we've got to ruin everything. We might make another $0.05 in the next 6 months if we make our product worse for years. There is NO WAY to avoid this problem, and so we must make things worse no matter what all the itme.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#154

Post by TremendousJudge »

wl wrote: post #117
rightbyte wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be funny if the "improvement dial" measured amplifier gain in a linear scale. Except just being bogus, what could it show that "improves" the signal? It can't lower the noise.

From the manual: > The Improvement Factor is an average of the Voltage Output and the THD output. It gives you a factor of how much the AC power is improved by the P20. Which also doesn't make much sense to me. So the lower the THD, the less improvement? And averaging that with the 120 V output? So the 230 V European version has a higher improvement factor?

I think the measure goes like this: the higher the dial, the more you feel you are getting your money's worth out of your 10k usd purchase. it's a fantastic feature, really

Re: Stop Ruining It

#155

Post by DrScientist »

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…

> Companies are longer trying to maximize users, they are trying to maximize usage.

I think this is an important point - so making the software less effective, so tasks take longer, increases 'engagement'.

There is a separate problem I think and that's who is now designing the UI.

As software shifted to the web - where early web apps were very simply interactive documents - designers from the print sphere moved over. This changed the focus from task based workflow thinking in UI design to a much greater emphasis on the visual layout/design of the page, and it seemed like a whole generation's learning about UI design got replaced with a whole generations learning about typography and visual impact.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#156

Post by everdrive »

vjk800 wrote: post #138
munificent wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

network effects from how the rest of the industry has reorganized itself.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#157

Post by iamacyborg »

vjk800 wrote: post #136
andai wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> at work

A lot of performance issues are down to MDM software.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#158

Post by Ntrails »

winrid wrote: post #133
solid_fuel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix it.

Except, they hired all these people and expect them to do Stuff. What are they supposed to do?

Re: Stop Ruining It

#159

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

ryandrake wrote: post #48
mft_ wrote: post #40

In a similar vein, I've argued in many a corporate meeting that there's no such thing as "empowerment". People start out wanting to achieve things, change things to be better, do a good job. The active issue is disempowerment , created by other people (usually but not always senior) within the organisation. So the question isn't "how to empower people", but rather "how to prevent disempowerment of people". This isn't…

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, but there was a definite inflection point

I know when. 2007 January 9. Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#160

Post by dreamcompiler »

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…

I can understand companies other than Microsoft using Electron because of the byzantine APIs required to make a native GUI app in Windows. But why would Microsoft do this? Have they forgotten how to use their own software??

Wait, never mind. Stupid question.

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