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Free software scares normal people

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#541

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

prepend wrote: post #254
pfannkuchen wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t there a lot more compensation available in software? Like as a developer, you can make a lot of money without having to even value money highly. I think in other fields you don’t generally get compensated well unless you are gunning/grinding for it specifically. “For the love of the art” people in visual arts are painters or something like that, probably. Whereas with software you can end up with people who don…

I think most OSS projects are started by unemployed people as hobbies. Or ego projects to get jobs.

I'm unemployed (retired), and it's a hobby (that I take quite seriously).

Ego is likely involved. I love my babies, but what others think of my work isn't that important (which is good, because others aren't very impressed).

I make tools that I use, mostly.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#542

Post by latexr »

vladms wrote: post #499
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…

> Nothing wrong with Mac OS X In fact, when I had a similar experience I ended up making a short list (which I since lost) of things that seemed terribly wrong UI wise. True, overall Mac is just different. The issue that I have with that ecosystem is the too many people consider it "perfect" and don't even consider discussing issues and complaining about things. Every product has pluses and minuses, but if you the us…

> too many people consider it "perfect" and don't even consider discussing issues and complaining about things.

That is becoming less and less true. More and more of the most ardent Apple fans have been complaining about the direction of macOS for years. Developer sentiment is low.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#543

Post by pseudalopex »

DrewADesign wrote: post #337
LtWorf wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, the development world does not intuitively understand the difficulty of creating good interfaces Nor can the design world, for that matter. They think that making slightly darker gray text on gray background using a tiny font and leaving loads of empty space is peak design. Meanwhile my father cannot use most websites because of this.

The dozens of people I know that design interfaces professionally can probably recite more of the WCAG by heart than some of the people that created them. You’re assuming that things you think “look designed” were made by designers rather than people playing with the CSS in a template they found trying to make things “look designed.” You’re almost certainly mistaken.

No. I worked with designers who designed low contrast and low density interfaces. I read articles written by designers. I used products of companies like Apple.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#544

Post by latexr »

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…

> or stick to your walled-garden-padded-room reality where somebody else gives you a video file that works.

That’s not always a possibility. See for example:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21262302/ap-test-fail-iph...

Those people didn’t need or want Photoshop or a complicated program with tons of options to convert image formats form anything to anything. Even a simpler app like Preview implies knowing where to look for the conversion part and which format to pick. They could have done instead with a simple window which said “Drop File Here”, and if it’s an HEIC, convert to JPEG. Could even have an option to delete the original, but that’s bout it.

There’s an Alfred workflow which is basically that. It does have some configuration, but the defaults are sensible and doesn’t let you screw up the important part of “detect this format which is causing me trouble and produce a format which will work”

https://alfred.app/workflows/alfredapp/heic-to-jpeg/

Re: Free software scares normal people

#545

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

WD-42 wrote: post #143
renewiltord wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most fields just don’t have the same culture of collaborative everyone-wins that software does. Artists don’t produce CC art in anywhere close to the same influence as engineers produce software. This is probably due to some kind of compounding effect available in software that isn’t available in graphics. Software people love writing software to a degree where they’ll just give it away. You just won’t find artists d…

I think the collaborative nature of open source software dev is unlike anything else. I can upload some software in hopes that others find is useful and can build on top of it, or send back improvements. Not sure how that happens with a painting, even a digital one.

Art tends to be a solitary vocation.

But professional graphic designers, train to work in product-focused teams. They also are able to create collaborative suites of deliverables.

Most developers will find utility in the work of graphic designers, as opposed to fine artists.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#546

Post by abustamam »

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…

I could see the case for having multiple front-ends to do exactly one thing.

In the case of handbrake, I'd just see how I personally use it. Am I doing one thing 99% of the time? Maybe others are too. Let's silo that workflow.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#547

Post by presbyterian »

latexr wrote: post #542
vladms wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing wrong with Mac OS X In fact, when I had a similar experience I ended up making a short list (which I since lost) of things that seemed terribly wrong UI wise. True, overall Mac is just different. The issue that I have with that ecosystem is the too many people consider it "perfect" and don't even consider discussing issues and complaining about things. Every product has pluses and minuses, but if you the us…

> too many people consider it "perfect" and don't even consider discussing issues and complaining about things. That is becoming less and less true. More and more of the most ardent Apple fans have been complaining about the direction of macOS for years. Developer sentiment is low.

I've been a huge Mac fan for a decade or more, at least, and not only is Tahoe the least popular release I've seen, it's the first one where the majority of people I hear from dislike it. It's bad enough that I haven't updated still, I'm waiting a few point releases at least to see how they fix it up, and I'm trying out Linux distros to see what I'll start using if I have to move away.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#548

Post by ghaff »

skydhash wrote: post #521
TeMPOraL wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with hackish solution is that they get put in places they don’t belong. In other professions, there’s regulation in place to prevent these kind of shortcuts. That's an illusion. The reality is, it's all hacky solutions on top of hacky solutions. Even in manufacturing: the spec may be fixed, and the factory line produces identical products by the million - but the spec was developed through an ad-hoc pro…

We could do this. And if you take a look at some solutions like the old VisualBasic/Delphi/Unix scripts, the philosophy is the same: Create small software quickly that solves some user/business needs. Systems like Java/.Net and their IDEs, as all as current mobile SDK, they run against that need. A bit of tangent: I think the idea of coddling users is what’s leading to the complexity of all those system. We’re buildi…

Well, except you end up with 20 different incompatible tools with different workflows.

I'm not really arguing for mega-tools with locked-down workflows. But there's usually some happy-ish medium between chaos and rigid monoliths.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#549

Post by Arainach »

DarkLynxes wrote: post #475

The handbrake UI is not designed for "power users", the handbrake UI is designed to make available all the options the underlying technology provides, so that you may leverage it to the fullest. If you don't want that, it provides you with presets. I do understand that many users are too lazy to read a manual, do a google search, or put any minimal amount of effort in solving an issue, but making software worse or mo…

People don't want to have to read manuals and become experts on every task. They want tools to get something done so they can focus their limited time and attention on things they care more about.

I'm the kind of person who wants to understand how everything I touch works (and the kind of person that does a lot of video recompression and cares about quality and filesize tradeoff) and even I hate Handbrake's UI. Every time I set up a new machine I spend an hour or two looking for an internet guide to what settings mean what to configure a preset, and then I use that preset basically exclusively. I'd much rather have a couple of drop targets, one of which is "Bluray 1080p quality".

Re: Free software scares normal people

#550

Post by abustamam »

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…

I grew up with windows. Used it until after college when I was gifted a MacBook pro for dev work. I used parallels to keep a windows box close by (I think I only ever used up to Vista), but then eventually I just went full Mac and got used to the interface and key bindings. It's a fine interface, not amazing, not terrible, but I can get around. And every job I've had basically required a Mac anyway.

Years later, I built a gaming machine so obviously I needed Windows. Got Win10 and eventually upgraded to 11 and it's just so jarring how unusable it is.

In older windows I could click on my computer to see all my drives and files. Now I have no idea where it is so I just click on the little folder icon at the bottom which opens I think my home directory, then I have to click on somewhere else to see my C and D drives. I can probably make a desktop shortcut or something but point being is that it's un intuitive. And powershell is not a great terminal, and I haven't found one for windows.

SO, after learning that gaming works well on Linux, I recently switched to Ubuntu, and I haven't looked back. Gaming, AI workflows, everything I need works just perfectly, and if it doesn't I can easily customize things to work the way I want it to. I'm not treated as a criminal for installing software on my computer. It's awesome.

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