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

Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#71

Post by tedunangst »

draw_down wrote: post #68
phkahler wrote: post #4

On a more practical note, why would you want to have seconds on the clock? I find that most of the time I don't want to know the time to a precision of better than 5 minutes. That may just be me, but when someone asks the time and I read it off my phone as 3:56 it really bothers me and sometimes I convert that to 5-to-4 just to avoid what in most cases is arbitrary extra precision. Sure there are times when minutes c…

I mean, come on. It's a clock! Surely seconds are relevant. I understand that everyone might not want to see them, but this isn't a great argument for leaving off a feature that is surely useful in other circumstances. The article is interesting, but I don't think these sort of technical explanations Chen gets into should be accepted as valid reasons to leave out a feature. They're interesting in context, but we shou…

Lots of broken clocks in my house... Alarm clock, microwave, stove, wall, ... none of them show seconds.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#72

Post by corndoge »

movedx wrote: post #61
mschuster91 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the JS ecosystem learns things! They implement tree shaking and other stuff to improve performance! Obviously real programmers learned all this decades ago - same for the "NoSQL" followers who after years of struggling with piles of cr.p finally (re)discover what a true ACID-capable database is... I'm just waiting for the JS world to rediscover threads and proper multitasking, but given the track record I don't e…

You'll probably get down-voted for your choice of language, but I agree. I actually feel what's going to happen is the JS community will start implementing WebASM and other very low-level mechanism to improve the speed of slow software components and, given enough time, will eventually just have entire binary applications being delivered through the browser (automatically installed, without asking you.) We'll go from…

I agree with you. Actually I think that at this stage, the browser should be viewed as a sandbox that can fetch and execute arbitrary binaries; then we can finally get past all the hacks that Web tech (js/dom/html/css/templates) is using to approximate that and actually build it for that express purpose, which should lead to better security (since we aren't pretending about what's happening -- it's untrusted code execution) and a better UX overall.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#73

Post by tedunangst »

kakarot wrote: post #58
Coincoin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just click on the clock, it will pop a window with seconds in it.

It depends on how often you find yourself timing things at that level of fidelity. For me it's quite often and having seconds always displayed really helps out. Especially when developing software and checking things like compile times, load times, etc

If you find yourself measuring compile times frequently, I think you'll be much happier with a command that actually times the operation than trying to eyeball it from the status bar. I can't imagine staring at a compilation and being unable to look away lest I miss the finish.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#75

Post by kakarot »

tedunangst wrote: post #73
kakarot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how often you find yourself timing things at that level of fidelity. For me it's quite often and having seconds always displayed really helps out. Especially when developing software and checking things like compile times, load times, etc

If you find yourself measuring compile times frequently, I think you'll be much happier with a command that actually times the operation than trying to eyeball it from the status bar. I can't imagine staring at a compilation and being unable to look away lest I miss the finish.

Well it's more out of curiosity and I don't specifically measure compile times often. I develop in a variety of domains and for some things a fuzzy count of how many seconds something takes is useful. If keeping track of things with finer grained tools is required, that's fine. Whichever is the most productive for the given problem.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#76

Post by megablast »

mschuster91 wrote: post #55
throwaway2016a wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switch between two external displays at work then go home and plug the computer into a single external display. Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be. The only major issue I've had is sometimes bluetooth gets confused and it takes me a few minutes to get my track pad connected when I switch between home and work. (by a few I…

> Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be. Hyperswitch combined with SizeUp works wonders in this case (you use Hyperswitch to directly target individual windows and SizeUp to properly full-screen them). Why Apple still doesn't have proper keyboard-only management for windows (Cmd-tab only allows to select the foreground app, not…

> SizeUp to properly full-screen them

Ew.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#77

Post by megablast »

coin wrote: post #69
phkahler wrote: post #4

On a more practical note, why would you want to have seconds on the clock? I find that most of the time I don't want to know the time to a precision of better than 5 minutes. That may just be me, but when someone asks the time and I read it off my phone as 3:56 it really bothers me and sometimes I convert that to 5-to-4 just to avoid what in most cases is arbitrary extra precision. Sure there are times when minutes c…

> why would you want to have seconds on the clock? * Timing things, such as software execution * Starting a phone interview on time * Timing a trade just before the market closes

> Starting a phone interview on time

Down to the second?

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#78

Post by eridius »

throwaway32617 wrote: post #59
throwaway2016a wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have really bad luck with Macs. As a MacOS user for seven years I can't say I've ever had that issue. Certainly not enough to need the seconds to be an indicator. I've had my system completely lock up maybe four times and those times my mouse refusing to move was enough of an indicator. Heck, right now it's been two and a half months since I've rebooted... and probably a year since I've rebooted because it f…

You must not work in an organization that insists on installing security software for you. If I have >2w uptime on my machine I generally have to restart for some reason or other. It's like people have forgotten that computers can and should have more uptime than that. A faulty update from one of our security software vendors caused a once-per-hour kernel panic and forced reboot for a day or two. It was really nice.…

My Macs regularly go for 30-60 days before I restart them, and when I do restart, it's not because the computer is misbehaving.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#79

Post by stefco_ »

mschuster91 wrote: post #55
throwaway2016a wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switch between two external displays at work then go home and plug the computer into a single external display. Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be. The only major issue I've had is sometimes bluetooth gets confused and it takes me a few minutes to get my track pad connected when I switch between home and work. (by a few I…

> Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be. Hyperswitch combined with SizeUp works wonders in this case (you use Hyperswitch to directly target individual windows and SizeUp to properly full-screen them). Why Apple still doesn't have proper keyboard-only management for windows (Cmd-tab only allows to select the foreground app, not…

> Apple still doesn't have proper keyboard-only management for windows

False. Cmd-~ will switch windows within an app. Control- and Control- will move left and right between spaces (including fullscreen apps). I use these hundreds of times a day.

I do wish we had more robust features, like keyboard-based window placement/resize. As far as I can tell, third-party tools are the only way to enable that. But I find the above perfectly adequate for 90% of what I do.

Re: Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

#80

Post by tracker1 »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #66
mschuster91 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Common features like centering a QComboBox aren't there Well, browsers didn't have proper vertical centering for UI elements for ages, too. Not to mention it's between a PITA and impossible to do "simple" things like styling a file upload button (only works via pseudo CSS on Chrome) or cross-browser styling of a scrollbar (usually people tend to handroll JS stuff, which is expectedly slow and unintuitive). > You're…

What saddens me is that instead of improving the web software development process with tried and tested methodologies, the inverse happened, and the web and its terrible software ecosystems and perpetrators are somehow seen as the "cool kids" of software development. When observer pattern is seen as the holy grail of modern web development, you know we are in trouble.

The observer pattern isn't sold to everyone... The thing is, Web browsers have been nearly as diverse as OSes both historically and recently... But, you get a mostly compatible UI and runtime engine that's installed on pretty much every personal computing device out there. There's a lot to be said for that.

As to the "cool kids", they exist in every corner of things that get done by people. I think WebASM will open up to higher-level tools once it's widely available, and signalling between the UI layer and WebASM code becomes easier to deal with.

Post reply on HN