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

People expect technology to suck because it sucks

tonsky.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 437 posts

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#291

Post by rovolo »

ghostpepper wrote: post #226
efitz wrote: post #83

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically softw…

I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if y…

Isn't alt-BS "delete word"? cmd-BS is "delete to beginning of line" for me.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#292

Post by newsbinator »

burlesona wrote: post #197

It’s interesting, there are a lot of little bugs in software today, but I think it’s easy to forget that common bugs used to be a lot worse. In the 90s it was pretty common to have a kernel panic and hard crash, blue screen of death, etc. Data loss was common. Folks who lived through that have such a strong compulsion to hit CMD-S every few minutes, that a lot of cloud software today offers a “save button” that actua…

> Folks who lived through that have such a strong compulsion to hit CMD-S every few minutes, that a lot of cloud software today offers a “save button” that actually doesn’t do anything because the document auto saves as you type anyway.

This describes me.

And I often wonder if the presence of the "save button" is what causes the compulsion: in web apps that auto-save, I trust/assume they're auto-saving, and feel more free.

In web apps that have the save button, it's always occupying some part of my mental capacity to keep hitting it after significant edits.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#293

Post by cblconfederate »

vkou wrote: post #288
cblconfederate wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try using some old software. Like windows 7 or vim or emacs , or PHP or old reddit. Due to their age , they 've accumulated a lot of fixes to their bugs. They may look weird and old , but they waste less of my time.

They waste less of your time, because they are either doing different things from what their new versions do, or you have more experience working around their problems. [1] I'm glad someone mentioned reddit in this subthread. I exclusively use old reddit, because I use reddit to read, and comment on text forums. The new reddit design is hot garbage for this usecase. But what it's not hot garbage for is scrolling thro…

i didnt say devs hate users, i said they don't care.

> because reddit wants to be

It used to be that devs would add features to please users and apps didn't have an agenda about what they "wanted to be". And what prevented reddit from introducing a "meme feed mode" for subreddits that are full of memes? People seem to have forgotten that they can make incremental changes, not every update needs to be a full rewrite.

> new additions, like the search omnibar are,

See this isnt even new, windows 7 had a much more compact start menu without ads and with a search bar. They didn't add to that, or improve or that, they literally made it terrible. And my Photos app keeps crashing all the time, it's ridiculous. It didnt use to crash in win7.

Another is the old Skype, the new one is still missing features that worked in the old one.

But most of all, what's missing is snappiness, not because my computer is slow, but because the new apps use frameworks in which it's impossible to have low latency.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#294

Post by cblconfederate »

heavyset_go wrote: post #269
cblconfederate wrote: post #265

When i find bugs or 'featues' that make me waste time i blame developers. They clearly don't care anymore. So ordinary users have resorted to quiet desperation through learned helplessness. Like all those 'redesigns' that remove features and turn what used to be a few memorized keystrokes to an agonizing series of scrollers, popups and "UX" animations. I just think developers don't care anymore. They don't yell enoug…

I disagree. The role of software engineers has become so commoditized that engineer input doesn't mean much to management, and for every engineer that goes against a decision, there are another dozen who will do what needs to be done without complaints. I see this as a symptom of the lack of democracy in the workplace.

Maybe if they cared more there would't be only one in a dozen who cares? It's my speculation but i think the culture of jumping from company to company every 2 years to maximize "total compensation" does not allow one to jump from being a code monkey to programmer.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#295

Post by alsetmusic »

ghostpepper wrote: post #226
efitz wrote: post #83

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically softw…

I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if y…

Option-Delete is whole word delete.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#296

Post by alsetmusic »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #199
jmholla wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt-Left is back and Alt-Right is forward. Sadly, their equivalents on Mac are also for navigating to the beginning and end of the line so if you're in a text box you lose that control. Your alternative is handy. I wonder if it also works on Linux.

Command-[/] for history navigation and command-{/} for switching tabs are macOS conventional keybindings that work almost anywhere there’s a concept of history or tabs. they may work on Linux in an attempt to support Mac users.

This is backwards. Mac OS inherited EMACS keybindings.They work in dialogs, etc.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25275598/a-list-of-all-e...

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#297

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

alsetmusic wrote: post #296
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Command-[/] for history navigation and command-{/} for switching tabs are macOS conventional keybindings that work almost anywhere there’s a concept of history or tabs. they may work on Linux in an attempt to support Mac users.

This is backwards. Mac OS inherited EMACS keybindings.They work in dialogs, etc. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25275598/a-list-of-all-e...

I could be wrong, but I don’t think these are emacs keybindings: although, the Cocoa text input system definitely is heavily influenced by emacs, both in design and in this sort of detail.

The emacs-derived keybindings use Control on macOS, the Mac ones use Command

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#298

Post by dublin »

adamsea wrote: post #181
hrktb wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, but feel like we are biased by what we accepted as normal in our formative years, and that filter doesn’t apply on what we are discovering now that we’re grown up professionals. For instance books have been with us for centuries, and honestly most of them suck. Paper pages are thin and sometimes cut your finger (how many times did you get cut by an ebook ?), most are weak to liquids yet our world is fille…

We’ve also had centuries to improve the technology of books and I think that makes a difference. Although the weaknesses you cite seem like problems in search of a solution. No one ever expected books to have variable font size ... why would they? Lastly let’s recall the book five hundred years ago is dramatically different from the book of today. For example your point about liquids is now in many ways resolved by t…

It's worth noting that it took 75 years after Gutenberg's press before some disgusted printer came up with the idea of page numbers. As the saying goes, all progress depends on the unreasonable man, who eventually becomes disgusted enough to make things change. Quality matters, pride in design and workmanship matters, and it's not at all bigoted to point out that China, which now manufactures most of the stuff in our 21st century world (or at least the components of it), has a culture of designing and producing absolute dung. We should not accept unacceptable quality just for apparently low prices.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#299

Post by heavyset_go »

cblconfederate wrote: post #294
heavyset_go wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The role of software engineers has become so commoditized that engineer input doesn't mean much to management, and for every engineer that goes against a decision, there are another dozen who will do what needs to be done without complaints. I see this as a symptom of the lack of democracy in the workplace.

Maybe if they cared more there would't be only one in a dozen who cares? It's my speculation but i think the culture of jumping from company to company every 2 years to maximize "total compensation" does not allow one to jump from being a code monkey to programmer.

I think jumping from company to company is another symptom of the lack of workplace democracy. Why stick around at an employer that only sees you as a commodity and won't take your concerns into consideration over their bottom line?

Unionized workers report higher levels of happiness, have better benefits and higher compensation, and get a say in how their work is done. They also stick around longer because they have better job security.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#300

Post by delinquenz »

ghostpepper wrote: post #226
efitz wrote: post #83

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically softw…

I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if y…

Gnome Notes has similar behavior: Whenever you use Ctrl + BS, the note you are currently writing it gets put into the trash, even though you just wanted to delete a word quickly. You can recover the note so it's not the worst possible behavior, but it still sucks.
Post reply on HN