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Free software scares normal people

danieldelaney.net

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#391

Post by impure-aqua »

f33d5173 wrote: post #190

People want features, and they're willing to learn complicated UIs to get them. A software that has hyper simplified options has a very limited audience. Take his example: we have somebody who has somehow obtained a "weird" video file, yet whose understanding of video amounts to wanting it to be "normal" so they can play it. For such a person, there are two paths: become familiar enough with video formats that you un…

The walled gardens got a lot more appealing.

When we moved to Canada from the UK in 2010 there was no real way to access BBC content in a timely manner. My dad learned how to use a VPN and Handbrake to rip BBC iPlayer content and encode it for use on an Apple TV.

You had to do this if you wanted to access the content. The market did not provide any alternative.

Nowadays BBC have a BritBox subscription service. As someone in this middle space, my dad promptly bought a subscription and probably has never fired up Handbrake since.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#392

Post by simonask »

tombert wrote: post #355
sudobash1 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I'm not interested in re-teaching her every bit of software, and she's not interested in relearning every bit of software. I don't see Windows as having much of an edge there. Lots of things seem to change on Windows just for change's sake. I get so tired of the churn on Windows versions and finding how to disable the new crummy features. If you want to avoid relearning all the time, something simple like XFCE…

And Linux won't arbitrarily irrevocably brick your computer because of an automatic update. In my opinion, having your computer bricked because of an automatic update is a very large change to adapt to. I feel the need to constantly reiterate this; if someone who works on Windows Update reads this, please consider a different career, because you are categorically terrible at your job. There are plenty of jobs out the…

> And Linux won't arbitrarily irrevocably brick your computer because of an automatic update.

To the average user, it absolutely will. Unless they happen to run on particularly well-supported hardware, the days of console tinkering aren't gone, even on major distros.

What's fixable to the average Linux user and what's fixable to the average person (whose job is not to run Linux) are two very, very different things.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#393

Post by TeMPOraL »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #356
nradov wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most organizations the problem is lack of urgency rather than lack of developer hours. The developers sit in isolated siloes rather than going out and directly engaging with business units. This is mostly a management problem but there are plenty of individual developers who wait to be told what to do rather than actively seeking out better solutions for business problems.

This usually comes back to maker time vs manager time. If you want a developer to write good code quickly, put them in an isolated silo and don't disturb them. If you want a developer to engage with the business units more, be prepared for their productivity to drop sharply. As with all things in tech, it's a trade-off.

I think that's the lesser problem. The bigger problem is the attitude of IT is wrong from the start. When they start doing something, they want to Do It Right. They want to automate the business process. But that's the wrong goal! You can spend years doing that and go all the way to building a homegrown SAP, and it will still suck and people will still use their half-assed Excel sheets and Access hacks.

IT should not be focusing on the theoretical, platonic Business Process. It never exists in practice anyway. They should focus on streamlining actual workflow of actual people. I.e. the opposite advice to the usual. Instead of understanding what users want and doing it, just do what they tell you they want. The problem with standard advice is that the thing you seek to understand is emergent, no one has a good definition, and will change three times before you finish your design doc.

To help company get rid of YOLOed hacks in Excel and such made by interns, IT should YOLO better hacks. Rapid delivery and responsiveness, but much more robust and reliable because of actual developer expertise behind it.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#394

Post by asimovDev »

le-mark wrote: post #275
gspencley wrote: post #98

A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to. My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows. She hated it and begged for us to get a dedica…

> When I was forced to use a Mac for work, I honestly considered looking for a different position because it was just that painful for me. I share this aversion. I have a Mac book work sent me, sitting next to me right now, that I never use. Luckily I’m able to access the vpn via Linux and all the apps I need have web interfaces (office 365).

won't you get in trouble for using a personal device for accessing work resources?

Re: Free software scares normal people

#395

Post by lilerjee »

One of my product design principles:

Concise

Focus only on the parts that are really needed, necessary, or the most important; hide the currently unnecessary or secondary, or simply remove the truly unnecessary and secondary; remove all unnecessary

Maybe it can help you

Re: Free software scares normal people

#396

Post by aniforprez »

eviks wrote: post #378
fschuett wrote: post #127

> Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to be useful for simple tasks. To be fair, the Audacity UX designer made a massive video about the next UX redesign and how he tried to get rid of "modes" and the "Audacity says no" problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38 So this problem should get better in the future. Good UX (doesn't necessarily have to have a flashy UI, but just a good UX)…

the "modal disruption" is misguided - he cites as the challenge a very poor implementation in a MS app where the modes were barely visible!!! That's not a proof that modes are bad, just a statement that invisible information makes it hard for the users to adapt! Brushes (another mode he cites as great) are great precisly because their state is immediately visible in your focus area - your primary pointer changes Now…

Having actually used Audacity, the modes were horrid and not at all intuitive to use and everything demonstrated in the video only looked like vast improvements (aside from the logo). I am failing to see how adding handles wastes space that could be used for any extra information especially when the tradeoff is an incredible degree of customisation for my UI. In terms of precision, they're working on accessibility issues but I'm not sure how this change is any special than any other UI.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#398

Post by pjmlp »

makeitdouble wrote: post #307
DrewADesign wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, the development world does not intuitively understand the difficulty of creating good interfaces (for people that aren’t developers.) In dev work, the complexity is obvious, and that makes it easy for outsiders to understand— they look at the code we’re writing and say “wow you can read that?!” I think that can give developers a mistaken impression that other peoples work is far less complex than it is. With…

> creating good interfaces (for people that aren’t developers.) This is the part where people get excited about AI. I personally think they're dead wrong on the process, but strongly empathize with that end goal. Giving people the power to make the interfaces they need is the most enduring solution to this issue. We had attempts like HyperCard or Delphi, or Access forms. We still get Excel forms, Google forms etc. Ha…

Delphi and Access are pretty much still around, even if they are seldom reason of a HN front page post.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#399

Post by csin »

array_key_first wrote: post #279
Qem wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.

The inverse is also true. If you prioritize the first five minutes, your software is worthless in any industry that matters. And that's why designers are using Photoshop and not Microsoft paint.

See, I feel this is where programmers just don't "get" good UI design.

Photoshop is good UI design. A normie can use photoshop the same way they use MS paint.

Albeit it just loads slower.

A normie doesn't need all the bells and whistles. They can just use photoshop like a glorified MS paint.

You can't do that with GIMP. It's actually really fucking annoying, if you try to use GIMP to do a MS paint job.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#400

Post by lukan »

DrewADesign wrote: post #335
zahlman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that can give developers a mistaken impression that other peoples work is far less complex than it is. Not at all. Talented human artists still impress me as doing the same level of deep "wizardry" that programmers are stereotyped with.

That might be the case for you, but something doesn’t need to be universally true for it to be true enough to matter. Find any thread about AI art around here and check out how many people have open contempt for artists’ skills. I remember the t-shirts I saw a few sys admins wearing in the nineties that said “stop bothering me or I’ll replace you with a short shell script.” In the decades I worked in tech, I never sa…

I believe it comes from low self esteem initially. Then finding their way into computers, where they then indeed have higher skills than average and maybe indeed observed that the job of some people could be automated by a shell script. So ... lots of ungrounded ego suddenly, but in their new guru ego state, they extrapolated from such isolated cases to everywhere.

I also remember the hostility of my informal universities IT chat groups. Newbs were rather insulted for not knowing basic stuff, instead of helping them. A truly confident person does not feel the need to do that. (and it was amazing having a couple of those persons writing very helpful responses in the middle of all the insulting garbage)

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