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

Free software scares normal people

danieldelaney.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 641 posts

Re: Free software scares normal people

#501

Post by duxup »

hobs wrote: post #496
duxup wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're asking the mechanic to do X and they understand the mechanic is just doing X and NOT venturing to fix your problem. I guess that is fine. I agree though it sets up a weird dynamic where folks might come back to the expert and complain a problem isn't fixed, but that's not what they asked for / they broke the typical expert and customer dynamic.

In my experience the best thing is to then convince the expert you are right, using your own expertise. If your mechanic is too stupid to recognize the problem after you explain it then you don't have a mechanic, the set of hands you are directing is basically unskilled labor.

How do you know you're right if you haven't fixed it?

That seems like a way to just be a stuck in the mud and wrong the whole time.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#502

Post by chasd00 »

nradov wrote: post #343
marcus_holmes wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nightmare stories to tell of Access Forms from my time dealing with them in the 90's. The usual situation is that the business department hires someone with a modicum of talent or interest in tech, who then uses Access to build an application that automates or helps with some aspect of the department's work. They then leave (in a couple of cases these people were just interns) and the IT department is then cal…

Of course this is ultimately the IT department's own fault for not responding quickly enough to legitimate business requirements. They need to actively look for ways to help rather than processing tickets.

This has been my experience. Usually a department gets nowhere for months dealing with IT and then goes shopping for consultants. I make my living bringing things online for directors and other biz leadership who just couldn’t get IT off their ass.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#503

Post by RobotToaster »

nradov wrote: post #343
marcus_holmes wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nightmare stories to tell of Access Forms from my time dealing with them in the 90's. The usual situation is that the business department hires someone with a modicum of talent or interest in tech, who then uses Access to build an application that automates or helps with some aspect of the department's work. They then leave (in a couple of cases these people were just interns) and the IT department is then cal…

Of course this is ultimately the IT department's own fault for not responding quickly enough to legitimate business requirements. They need to actively look for ways to help rather than processing tickets.

Which is ultimately the c-suite's fault for not requiring that and allocating a budget for it.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#504

Post by chasd00 »

csin wrote: post #364
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO they just don’t care enough. They want people to use it but it is not the end of world if it stays niche

[flagged]

I think, statistically, it’s likely no one is a “hot chick” otherwise the phrase wouldn’t exist. I get what you’re saying though, personalities and natural talent/gifts pull people to a specialty that makes sense to them and therefore they get good at it.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#505

Post by cenamus »

analog31 wrote: post #270
cenamus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, there are enough people here that believe that. Other engineering disciplines are simpler because you can only have complexity in three dimensions. While in software complexitiy would be everywhere. Crazy to believe that

There are many more than three "dimensions" if I may use the term loosely, in software or hardware engineering. Cost, safety, interaction between subsystems (developed by different engineering disciplines), tolerances, supply chain, manufacturing, reliability, the laws of physics, possibly chemistry and environmental interactions, regulatory, investor forgiveness, etc. Traditional engineering also doesn't have the op…

I think the poster literally meant x, y and z in terms of dimension

Re: Free software scares normal people

#506

Post by RobotToaster »

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…

> Find any thread about AI art around here and check out how many people have open contempt for artists’ skills.

I don't think that's entirely true, what I usually see is people that think AI art is just as good as many artists.

You can be impressed by something and still think a machine can do it just as well. People that can do complex mental arithmetic are impressive, even if that skill is mostly obsolete by calculators.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#508

Post by alistairSH »

squeedles wrote: post #10

Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one. Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I j…

Eh, not sure I agree.

Taking the Handbrake example, providing a default "simple" interface (as Magicbrake does) would be trivial to implement, maintain, and defend. The existing default "super user" interface could be just a toggle away (and make the toggle sticky so a power user doesn't have to touch it but once).

I used to work with an engineer who loved to remind us that a "perfect" interface would have a single button, and that button should be delivered pre-pushed. Always seemed like wise words to me.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#509

Post by TeMPOraL »

KronisLV wrote: post #467
TeMPOraL wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it tells us that "good design" is stupid. Remotes are fine . Except the modern ones that have a touchpad and, like, 8 buttons, four of which are ads . People can handle many buttons just fine. Even one year old kids don't have a problem with this , which becomes apparent if you ever watch a small child play. The only people who have a problem here are UX designers high on paternalistic approach to users.

> Remotes are fine. Maybe? But, like, what's the value added by a bunch of useless bullshit buttons that will never be used? Greebles to make the customers think they're buying something cool? Just put a menu one in there for the 1% of the times when you actually have to use the functionality there and don't do the equivalent of putting 30 widgets in your weather homepage. It's not like anyone is losing their life or…

Those buttons have functions. Many of them useful. Like with every other appliance or toy, people find the minimum amount of functionality they need/like, and rarely go beyond it. Fortunately, when an interface is static - like a physical remote, and unlike the modern best practice on computers - it's easy to just ignore things you don't care about. Human visual system is great at this, it literally costs ~0 cognitive burden to ignore the 90% you don't need on a static interface.

Related problem is that software business, and through it UI/UX, is obsessed about gaining new users, so everything is designed for ease of onboarding, at the expense of ergonomics and efficiency of continued use. It's backwards and dumb, and subscriptions should theoretically prevent this, but the truth is, software products are pretty much unique (there's rarely an actual competitor to switch to with the same set of features you need), and most products die or get killed before they move past the growth phase, so incentives align to catering for first-timers instead of already paying users.

And then UI/UX gets trotted as some industrial design wisdom, and this kind of backwards approach starts infecting design of physical products...

Re: Free software scares normal people

#510

Post by Jedd »

I note TFA mentions 'normal' people 8 times, but never uses the word 'average'.

Whereas I think they are in fact describing 'average' people.

I suspect most HNers self-assess as normal, but are also self-aware enough to acknowledge (rightly or wrongly) they're not average.

Certainly I have felt overwhelmed with the 'why have they broken so many conventions?' sensation with, invariably, audio apps on microsoft platforms - but OTOH the implied expectation that all software should have a comparably broken UI as mildly modern microsoft word versions expresses a collective poverty of expectations.

Post reply on HN