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Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

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Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#301

Post by Dalewyn »

soraminazuki wrote: post #273
Dalewyn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is we only have so little time and yet so much to do. For the vast majority of people, understanding technology is simply not worth their time. They have other, more important things to worry about. You don't know nor care to understand how telephones and cars and electricity work. Nor how and where the food in the supermarket comes from. Water comes out of the faucet because faucets dispense water. You ha…

The same can be said for education in general. Many people openly state that it's not worth their time. But most of us would agree that "life's short, ain't nobody got time for education" approach would be devastating for society. The problem with technology is that people are using it everywhere without having any clue of what it does, let alone how it works. Common sense stops working the moment anything tech becom…

The thing is Joe Average is going to reply "So what?", and they have a point: Invasive tracking, DRM, illegal mass surveillance, banning encryption, literally none of that affects them insofar as whether they can do whatever it is they want on their computer.

Those things and more negatively affect us as power users, but those things are all complete non-issues for the common man and consequently not worth their time to care.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#302

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #174
azangru wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just pick up Excel Pandas are free; Excel is not.

Excel is installed on my work computer. How do you install pandas and will IT let me install it?

> How do you install pandas and will IT let me install it?

Okay, if we're doing arbitrary restrictions then Excel isn't available for my OS.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#303

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #302
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is installed on my work computer. How do you install pandas and will IT let me install it?

> How do you install pandas and will IT let me install it? Okay, if we're doing arbitrary restrictions then Excel isn't available for my OS.

Office runs on wine.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#304

Post by gumby »

agloe_dreams wrote: post #194
gumby wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For normal people (non-programmers) computers are pretty terrible. I don’t know — they pull a supercomputer out of their pocket and use it dozens of times a day.

That's only because the supercomputer was designed around making it as good for the 'normal' person as possible. Sure it can do so so much more...but the user does not need to know a damn thing about how it works under the hood to use it. Even just making a note with an iPhone requires nearly every last stack of technology invented by man so that the user pressed 'notes' and taps letters on the screen. Custom silicon…

so...you agree with me?

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#305

Post by soraminazuki »

Dalewyn wrote: post #301
soraminazuki wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same can be said for education in general. Many people openly state that it's not worth their time. But most of us would agree that "life's short, ain't nobody got time for education" approach would be devastating for society. The problem with technology is that people are using it everywhere without having any clue of what it does, let alone how it works. Common sense stops working the moment anything tech becom…

The thing is Joe Average is going to reply "So what?", and they have a point: Invasive tracking, DRM, illegal mass surveillance, banning encryption, literally none of that affects them insofar as whether they can do whatever it is they want on their computer. Those things and more negatively affect us as power users, but those things are all complete non-issues for the common man and consequently not worth their time…

I'm sorry, what? There's a lot to unpack here. You think basic human rights and equality are only relevant for computer power users? That the erosion of privacy or due process isn't an issue for ordinary people? That people aren't affected by security issues unless they have a software engineering degree? That anti-consumer practices doesn't affect consumers?

I'm not buying any of that.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#306

Post by throwing_away »

andrewf wrote: post #285
CWuestefeld wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man pages started out as a problem. If you don't already know a lot of foundational stuff, it's very difficult to bootstrap yourself with it. There are so many things that say something like "see man fizzlewizzle (3)" or something. I've been a developer for nearly 40 years (mostly in Windows, barely dabbling in linux) and I've yet to figure out what the heck that number means, or how I might predict what the correct…

"man man" explains the section numbers.

Maybe we need a fork of `man` that reads the page in a sexy tts voice while showing minecraft footage on half the screen.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#308

Post by Dalewyn »

soraminazuki wrote: post #305
Dalewyn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is Joe Average is going to reply "So what?", and they have a point: Invasive tracking, DRM, illegal mass surveillance, banning encryption, literally none of that affects them insofar as whether they can do whatever it is they want on their computer. Those things and more negatively affect us as power users, but those things are all complete non-issues for the common man and consequently not worth their time…

I'm sorry, what? There's a lot to unpack here. You think basic human rights and equality are only relevant for computer power users? That the erosion of privacy or due process isn't an issue for ordinary people? That people aren't affected by security issues unless they have a software engineering degree? That anti-consumer practices doesn't affect consumers? I'm not buying any of that.

Joe Average doesn't care whether his communiques are encrypted, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) what "encrypted" means. All Joe cares about is whether he can talk with whoever's on the other side: Their spouse, a friend, a business acquaintance, whoever.

Joe Average doesn't care if he's the subject of invasive tracking, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) what "tracking" means. Can he read Twitter and Facebook? Can he watch Youtube? Can he shop on Amazon? Yes? That's all that matters.

Joe Average doesn't care about DRM, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) what "DRM" stands for. All Joe cares about is whether he can listen to the album he bought, watch the movie he bought, play the game he bought. Can he? Yes? That's all that matters.

Joe Average doesn't care about illegal surveillance, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) where the cameras even are. Does the surveillance get in the way of doing whatever he wants to do? No? That's all that matters.

Basically: Life is short, we only have so much time and so much to do. We straight up don't have the time to give an individual shit to each and every thing in our lives.

For most people, a computer is an appliance; it serves a purpose and there is next to no need nor desire to devote any additional time or thought to it. We as power users must respect that reality even if we don't necessarily subscribe to that world view.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#309

Post by soraminazuki »

Dalewyn wrote: post #308
soraminazuki wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, what? There's a lot to unpack here. You think basic human rights and equality are only relevant for computer power users? That the erosion of privacy or due process isn't an issue for ordinary people? That people aren't affected by security issues unless they have a software engineering degree? That anti-consumer practices doesn't affect consumers? I'm not buying any of that.

Joe Average doesn't care whether his communiques are encrypted, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) what "encrypted" means. All Joe cares about is whether he can talk with whoever's on the other side: Their spouse, a friend, a business acquaintance, whoever. Joe Average doesn't care if he's the subject of invasive tracking, Joe probably doesn't even know (nor care) what "tracking" means. Can he read Twitter and…

It sounds more like you've mistaken the average Joe for the obedient, privileged, and unempathetic Joe. You're making a blanket claim that any social problem that involves a technological solution is insignificant, be it about human rights, democracy, or fraud and abuse. That defense of tyranny and oppression can hardly be framed as respecting other's viewpoints.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#310

Post by pksebben »

remram wrote: post #195
leoedin wrote: post #105

The problem is mainly one of discoverability. The non-programmer in the examples says "simple" when they mean "discoverable". The programmer says "simple" when they mean "not much code complexity". Of course you disagree. All the examples - installing and using a package manager, running a command line program - are "simple" from a software point of view, but they're not at all "discoverable". To understand the steps…

Reminds me of Rich Hickey's classic talk "Simple made Easy": https://paulrcook.com/blog/simple-made-easy Simple and easy are not the same thing.

man, that's a good talk. I've got some decompilecting to do in a few places.

I loled at the beginning, when he talks about (in 2011) how "all I see on hacker News is people talking about how great and awesome all this new stuff is and nobody ever questions it, asks if this stuff is adding more problems". The culture must have shifted in the interim.

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