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Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

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Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#61

Post by zeveb »

mentos wrote: post #14

Imagine facebook is a spherical magnet with ten thousand small lead balls clung to it. If you're trying to create a better magnet it can't just be the same as facebook's. Putting the same magnet near facebook's will only collect a small handful of peripheral users. If you want to capture the critical mass you have to energize a magnet with an attractive force so great that it will begin to vibrate users close to the…

> Imagine facebook is a spherical magnet with ten thousand small lead balls clung to it.

It'd be pretty impressive to get lead to exhibit magnetism…

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#62

Post by nanny »

thedevil wrote: post #29
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks.

Some of the worst ones:

* Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error

* Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and was purposely implemented in Excel for the purpose of bug compatibility.

* Can't handle dates before 1900

* Despite the use of 15-figure precision, Excel can display many more figures (up to thirty) upon user request. But the displayed figures are not those actually used in its computations, and so, for example, the difference of two numbers may differ from the difference of their displayed values.

In addition, it is completely useless for handling any type of delimited file. By default it supports csv. If you want to edit a pipe-delimited file, you have to dig into the language settings of Windows, change the default delimiter, and open the file. Then, you cannot edit comma-separated files without changing it back first. So, there's no way to convert one to the other. Same problem with tab delimiters. EDIT: one person has mentioned the import data feature, but that doesn't solve the problem. You cannot edit and save anything other than commas without changing the Windows language settings.

It also trims off leading zeros from fields in csv files. If you open a csv file with leading zeros in some rows (say, from ZIP codes or SSNs), they won't be displayed in Excel. Then, when you save it, even without editing it, all the leading zeros will be gone.

It changes date formats. Save a csv file with a date in it in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Open in Excel: it's displayed in MM/DD/YYYY. Hit Ctrl-S. Re-open the file in a text editor and you'll see that the file has changed.

It also doesn't preserve quotes correctly in csvs.

Besides all this, there are many other stupid terrible things about it, like changing behavior based on scroll lock (can you think of one other program that does this?), making it impossible to look at many tall rows using the mouse scroll wheel, etc.

Excel is easily one of Microsoft's most egregious offenses in the world of software.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#63

Post by mercer »

WA wrote: post #33
Marcus316 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it. I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed…

I'm glad you posted :) I also use it as a devlog. If I want to remember some commands for example. Sometimes, I even plan entire days in my JOURNAL.TXT. For longer thoughts, I use a journaling app. But the nice thing about a textfile is: You can search in it very easily, you can make backups, and there's never any regret for having written something in it.

I can strongly recommend Notation Velocity for these use cases (or rather, nvALT[1]). It's perfect for creating massive amounts of short snippets, stores them as plain text files, has a pretty novel full-text search and navigation interface (using basic vim bindings even!), and a whole bunch of other features that doesn't clutter things up (markdown, for one, as well as basic wiki-like linking between notes).

My current NV 'library' contains more than 1600 files, ranging from command snippets to journal entries to on-the-go wifi passwords to project meeting notes and lists and whatnot. On top of that I have two separate libraries that contain more sensitive data.

Oh, and using Dropbox or the like, you can sync the notes between computers, and with SimpleNote (as well as some other apps) you can access all of it on your mobile device.

[1]: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#64

Post by scruple »

soylentcola wrote: post #51
Marcus316 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it. I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed…

Fellow comment discarder here. You wouldn't guess by some of the long-winded replies I've made across various sites but that's a big part of it I think. I often write comments as if I'm having a conversation in my head so there's not a clear structure like you'd find in an essay or "proper" written piece. Then I start thinking of all the ways someone could miss the point and end up rambling. See? Almost doing it now.

Yeah. I find that I usually don't submit my comments (despite writing them out and over-editing them, typically in a JOURNAL.TXT style file, as well) because I start thinking about how they'll be perceived or interpreted, how they'll be judged. Which is also essentially why I've been 'shy' my entire life around strangers. That and I genuinely feel like 90% of the time I'm not adding much substance to the topics (which is exacerbated on HN).

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#65

Post by scholia »

qihqi wrote: post #47
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

The shittiest aspect of Office is the price.

Let's say someone who earns $50,000 a year uses Office for 5 hours a day while making a living. It's also a purchased copy so it lasts at least 6 years. What's that worth?

How does it compare with the cost of, say, one Starbucks a day?

If you employ somebody on that salary for 6 years (so add extra employment costs including taxes, insurance, office space and perks), what percentage do you save by not paying Office's shitty price?

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#66

Post by mikestew »

someguydave wrote: post #50
fumar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Office (by the way 2016 is a pretty solid software suite) is not thriving because of institutional knowledge. Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications (learn how to use it) and apply the same learnings to the rest of the suite, personal knowledge with a small learning curve. Also, tools like Excel are malleable and useable for most users in a compan…

> Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications My experience is that 'users in business settings' absolutely refuse to consider any alternatives, mainly because of two 'fear factors': 1.) "Everyone else in my industry uses Microsoft Office products so I must as well" 2.) (Usually unstated explicitly) "Learning an alternative is going to cost me time and money and…

Absolutely; no one uses Office because they can "quickly pick up any of its applications". People use Office because they already "picked up" its applications. LibreOffice? Lemmee see here, I'm a bookkeeper/lab research assistant/factory supervisor that just wants to get my shit done and go home. There's this FOSS thing that mostly works but sometimes doesn't, or this Microsoft thing that I already know how to use and "works" perfectly (because it for sure can read its own format), and I don't give two poops about "Freedom!". I'm going to send a requisition to the boss for another Excel license.

For a lot of people, they don't want to learn alternatives ('cuz that's on my time, since they boss ain't training me), and the cost of the license isn't coming out of their pocket. Of course they use Office. That's not an unreasonable choice.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#67

Post by thedevil »

nanny wrote: post #62
thedevil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

For the 14 years during which I used excel daily, the first 4 items you listed didn't affect me and the last two never mattered. I used text-to-columns to very nicely parse pipe-delimited files. The leading zeros issue I bumped into several times and was a minor irritation to fix.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#68

Post by skewart »

dahart wrote: post #21

I've just learned this lesson the hard way. I had my own terminology for it, so it's helpful and educational to learn words and phrases that others will understand and use. But absolutely, I'm exactly the type of person the article is talking about, I have experience and an amazing team, and our "improvements" have more or less failed spectacularly. We learned that design ideas that are "better" than the status quo o…

Without knowing anything about your product or market it's really hard to say, but my gut reaction is to be skeptical that the incremental improvement strategy would work out better.

Is there anything other than a "better" design that differentiates your product? Or, if not, can you acquire your customers differently, at a point where they aren't already habituated to doing things the bad old way?

Ultimately I would say your best bet is to get back to basics and spend a ton of time listening to customers and watching them use your product, and your competitors' products. You might have changed the wrong things about the design? Or maybe there's some other pain point they actually have, but no one even thinks it's possible to do things differently because they're so used to the status quo.

I would also be very mindful of incentives of various people, including both the users and the purchasers. Users in workplaces don't necessarily want something that is faster or more efficient to use (in a business setting they might have job secuirty, pay, andceven self-worth tied to knowing how to use a very complicated system). Buyers who aren't users very often buy based on specs more than design or ease of use (easier to rationally explain decision to higher ups). Consumers often buy/engage for how things make them feel, or for satisfying one of a few very basic desires (which they might not want to admit).

Not sure how applicable, or new, this is go you. These are just thoughts that come to mind.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#69

Post by collyw »

geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Its a shitty database, and a shitty data entry solution, which is what it was used for in my last workplace. But people know how to use it and will use it for all sorts of things that its not particularly good for.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#70

Post by maratd »

nanny wrote: post #62
thedevil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

The purpose of software isn't to be correct or even predictable. It's to satisfy the needs of the user. The user in this case, isn't you. It's corporate clients who make decisions for tens of thousands of employees. They have various needs, however esoteric and strange. I promise you that all of the behavior you cited was implemented at the request of a client.

Ideally Microsoft should craft custom versions for specific clients, but that is its own nightmare. They tried that with Windows and it didn't go too well.

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