Everything's broken and nobody's upset • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#311

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

The way software is sold right now is inherently broken. You pay for it before using it, so companies justifiably spend their efforts on developing new whiz-bang features to get you to attract you to buy something new, rather than fixing and rationalizing the features that already exist.

I have a hunch (that's all, though) that if there were never any up-front purchase cost for software, and instead it was all, say, monthly-subscription-based, that there would be a bigger focus on quality. "Hmm, frustrated users are cancelling their monthly subscriptions because sync doesn't work? Well, maybe we should work on that instead of adding glossy cover flow..."

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#312

Post by danielweber » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:05 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #45

nodata wrote: post #42

We need public open bug tracking. For everything. No more "put your bug in here, trust us, we'll fix it". They won't. They'll say you're the only one with the problem. Everyone will be so uninspired they won't report bugs.

Well, you could use Linux if you really care for open bug tracking...

So wait a few years and find them all closed? Jwz's experience: http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#313

Post by WildUtah » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:05 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #225

danielweber wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who sells laptops these days that aren't loaded up with a bunch of bloatware? I'd like to look at the System Process List right after boot and have there be no more than 20 entries, knowing exactly what each thing does.

Sellers of preloaded Linux laptops. LinuxCertified, System76, etc.

And to mention the obvious:

Apple.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#314

Post by SLuijk » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:13 PM UTC

SageRaven wrote: post #247

barking wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait, kids change everything!

Yup. They can then have the kids wash the dishes. ;-)

It takes a few years to get to that stage :(

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#315

Post by icebraining » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:34 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #298

icebraining wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With package managers and text-based configuration, setting up my system from scratch takes 5 minutes of manual time (and some more unattended). I just keep a git repository that contains my dotfiles, /etc and the output of 'dpkg --get-selections'.

In five years most of your config files will confuse then-recent programs. Then you will perhaps discard some.

Not really. Programs don't tend to read the configuration files of others, and they don't tend to change their own configuration files that much either. Since I started using Debian, six years ago, I probably had to modify three or four files and maybe delete a few more. Time that is more than paid off by the time savings of some of these configurations.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#316

Post by jsz0 » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:37 PM UTC

My computing experience became far more zen like when I gave up on ugly hacks and pointless tweaks. I just use the software how it's designed to work. Path of least resistance. Vast majority of the time this approach works great. Not sure if that's the root of his problems or not but it definitely sounds like it to me because these were the exact types of problems I would encounter after running some hacky app or using unsupported/undocumented features.

For example I've had the same iPhoto library for about 5 years now. The only issue I ever had was importing duplicate photos (my fault) and then running a hacky app that was supposed to magically fix this. Nope. It just trashed my iPhoto Library file. If I had manually deleted the duplicates I wouldn't have had any problems. I've had countless address book/calendar syncing issues for the same reasons. I gave up on trying to hack together a system that works now I'm fine with these different services being islands. I don't need every contact I've made in the last 20 years on every device I own.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#317

Post by lsc » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:37 PM UTC

autophil wrote: post #74

lsc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the terrifying state the planet is in, we should all be upset. Eh, really? What I find so amusing about people like you and me (and OP) whining about how imperfect the world is that the world has gotten so much better, even in our lifetimes. And yeah, if you are a white American-born male, it might not seem that way- in fact, the world might not have gotten better for you. If you aren't skilled, it almost certa…

I'm talking about the BIG things: our planet and ecosystem, clean water, liberty and human rights, they are all becoming irrepairably broken.

>I'm talking about the BIG things: our planet and ecosystem, clean water, liberty and human rights, they are all becoming irrepairably broken.

food prices aren't BIG? I mean, they aren't big for you and I, sure, but for most of the rest of the world, there is nothing bigger.

And really? you are seriously saying that the average person's level of personal liberty and human rights is lower now than it was 30 years ago?

Like I said, that might be true if you are white and male and born in the US... or if you are anything and live in the parts of the middle east we are at war with, but for the vast masses of humanity, the world has gotten rather more free. /they/ now can compete with /us/ for jobs, which is an incredible improvement. (well, it's an incredible improvement for them. For the least skilled of us, well, it kinda stinks. Me? I think it makes things a lot more interesting, and it vastly increases my potential customer base.)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#318

Post by pjscott » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:40 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #123

cstross wrote: post #30

Reading his laundry-list of paper cuts, it looks like many of them (around 50%?) relate to one particular issue: synchronisation. It keeps coming up, time and again, from his email woes (seriously, folks, didn't we solve this one back in 1980?) through to the borked address books, contact lists, and photo streams. Sync software usually takes a conservative approach to deleting or merging records, and leaves duplicate…

I'm going to take an even harder line: Sync is a fundamentally broken. The only solution is to switch to technologies where merging data is a primary core feature. Thus why I use text files and git to manage the vast majority of my data. The sooner people realize that sync isn't fixable (or a good idea in many cases), the sooner real solutions appear.

You can do sync the Right Way, but it's non-trivial. Programs like Google Docs and Etherpad do really good sync for text documents, because they've put serious mental effort into figuring out how to get sync to work correctly under (almost) all possible circumstances. If ten people make conflicting edits to a single region of the document and then sync, their documents will provably reach a consistent and reasonable state.

Many of the same methods can be applied to other types of synchronization, but it's more effort than most people can spare when they're in a hurry to get something released.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#319

Post by jamesbritt » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:40 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #205

mej10 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, mine literally just has a dial that is only used to turn it on and off. No buttons, switches, anything. You just turn the dial like 0.2cm and it turns on. I can't imagine being OK with wasting time washing dishes by hand.

It's therapeutic, for me anyway.

Kind of like that for me. It takes ~10 minutes to prepare French press coffee, and since I can't really get too involved in anything away from the kitchen during this I find that I might as well wash whatever dishes are in the sink.

My sink is right by the kitchen window and I can look out past our rose bushes and watch assorted wildlife gambol and frolic. (Mostly bunnies and birds.) Kind of idyllic I suppose if you ignore the all-same-look suburban houses.

If there are a lot of dishes I'll wash certain things and load others into the dishwasher for later. But I sort of like washing dishes in my house.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#320

Post by anuraj » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 8:44 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #263

anuraj wrote: post #189

Over the years we have failed to develop software as a true engineering discipline. The way a structural engineer can design and certify a structure as sound, I dream one day we will be able to do for software.

Not at all. We have developed software as a true engineering discipline. It's only applied where it's really needed, and can be economically justified. For example, avionics and some safety-critical industrial control systems.

If you are referring to the extensive methodology and formal verification systems used in mission critical software, it is still prone to error and is still not viable for most projects. So the engineering aspect has to still evolve and find cost effective means of ensuring quality software. It should be possible with little more effort and application of mind and is an excellent business opportunity as well.