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People expect technology to suck because it sucks

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Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#81

Post by _qulr »

The problem is with the idea of "continuous delivery". Many people fail to understand that technological advances only increase productivity if the innovations, the great leaps forward, are relatively rare, with long periods of stability and refinement in between.

There's always an adjustment period, where people have to spend time learning a new technology, and any issues with the new technology need to be resolved. The gains in productivity happen mainly after the adjustment period. But we've eliminated the periods of stability and are constantly pushing for more "innovation", which means we're in constant periods of adjustment and resolving problems, where the promise of increased productivity is never fully met.

The worst idea ever in technology is regularly scheduled updates. Innovation has never and will never happen on a schedule. This is simply greed-driven, promotion-driven, pointy-haired-boss-driven development.

Produce something new and great... but then let us all enjoy the new thing for a while. Novelty for its own sake is not productive.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#82

Post by katsume3 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
katsume3 wrote: post #30

I try to train my systems to behave just the way I like them. It's no different than coding: you are bending tech to your will. I don't see the difference in configuring a brand new Virtual Machine and that of coding a new piece of software. For me, the definition of non-sucky technology is the ability to configure, tinker, and otherwise mess with systems to make them do your bidding. This is why I love computers, be…

The definition of non-sucky technology is not having to waste time on any of that. If you think tinkering and configuring are fun you should stay as far away as possible from software design, because you have no insight into what most users expect from tech.

> If you think tinkering and configuring are fun you should stay as far away as possible from software design

You overlook that not giving the user options to configure their systems is bad practice as it can force all manner of dark patterns on them, and they are left constrained in that software, unable to bend it to their will. Let them tweak, I say!

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#83

Post by efitz »

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically software engineering tools (build systems, etc.) are some of the worst. I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#84

Post by kps »

bobochan wrote: post #47

This is one of the strangest takes that I have ever read. I can remember my dad's turn on the waiting list finally coming up so that it was his turn to bring the HP calculator home from the government lab where he worked for the weekend. It was an absolute marvel. The whole family sat around the kitchen table for hours as he talked about RPN and showed us how the calculator worked. It was magic. Almost 50 years later…

Quoting from https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm:

2.02 ln ex resulted in 2 rather than 2.02. When the bug was discovered, HP had already sold 25,000 units which was a huge volume for the company. In a meeting, Dave Packard asked what they were going to do about the units already in the field and someone in the crowd said "Don't tell?" At this Packard's pencil snapped and he said: "Who said that? We're going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem".

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#85

Post by Jtsummers »

wwright wrote: post #59
airza wrote: post #16

I feel like the slow decline of software quality has been in lockstep with the gradual transition from (expensive and non-measurable) manual software/hardware testing and QA to automated frameworks and rollout-based quality assurance. I constantly encounter broken functionality, buggy or unpleasant UIs, just as the author has. It feels like many of these problems could be avoided if you just had one person whose job…

I work somewhere that primarily relies on manual testing rather than automated testing. It definitely does not make the software more reliable here, at the least. :-)

There're three kinds of manual testing:

1. Manual testing that should be manual (exploratory).

2. Manual tests that are new and haven't been automated yet (but will be).

3. Manual tests that should be automated.

(3) is the one many people see and suffer through (I know I have). They need to be automated to free up time for (1), which is where many issues are actually discovered. But if (3) dominates your time, you can never get to (1) and you'll constantly ship broken things (or more broken than they should be).

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#86

Post by OminousWeapons »

brundolf wrote: post #76
airza wrote: post #16

I feel like the slow decline of software quality has been in lockstep with the gradual transition from (expensive and non-measurable) manual software/hardware testing and QA to automated frameworks and rollout-based quality assurance. I constantly encounter broken functionality, buggy or unpleasant UIs, just as the author has. It feels like many of these problems could be avoided if you just had one person whose job…

I would tell a slightly different version of this story, focusing in on "rollout-based quality assurance". I would say that effortless, automatic updates are to blame. When you can always just push an update, the impact of a given bug goes way down. It's no longer mission-critical to exterminate flaws before shipping; a totally broken feature becomes a mere annoyance. So project prioritization shifts from polishing a…

I agree that games used to have far fewer bugs when shipped, but it's not true that games never received updates back in the day. I distinctly remember queuing on file sharing sites as a kid in the early 2000s to download half-life updates and updates for other games.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#87

Post by brundolf »

derefr wrote: post #79
brundolf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tell a slightly different version of this story, focusing in on "rollout-based quality assurance". I would say that effortless, automatic updates are to blame. When you can always just push an update, the impact of a given bug goes way down. It's no longer mission-critical to exterminate flaws before shipping; a totally broken feature becomes a mere annoyance. So project prioritization shifts from polishing a…

> Until around 2007, games received no updates. Ever. Once a game shipped, it was shipped. There wasn't even a mechanism for installing an update from physical media. Sure, but they still (sometimes) released (a few) extra revisions of a game. They were just targeted at people who bought physical copies after the revision date, rather than at existing customers. Or said updates came on the 1.0 version of the game as…

I'm sure this happened occasionally, but it wasn't advertised. Nobody was buying a new copy to get an update. Reviewers weren't revising their reviews in accordance (something which does actually happen now). It was still absolutely mission-critical to get things as polished as possible the first time around.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#88

Post by brundolf »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #86
brundolf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tell a slightly different version of this story, focusing in on "rollout-based quality assurance". I would say that effortless, automatic updates are to blame. When you can always just push an update, the impact of a given bug goes way down. It's no longer mission-critical to exterminate flaws before shipping; a totally broken feature becomes a mere annoyance. So project prioritization shifts from polishing a…

I agree that games used to have far fewer bugs when shipped, but it's not true that games never received updates back in the day. I distinctly remember queuing on file sharing sites as a kid in the early 2000s to download half-life updates and updates for other games.

I suppose my statements above should be mostly limited to games on consoles, not PC. That's what I had in mind.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#89

Post by pas »

Jtsummers wrote: post #63
jjoonathan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then you'd have to raise the price to pay for the testing and the jokers a block down the street who YOLO'd their competing product into the marketplace without testing would grab all your sales. You'd be out of business and your competitors would be laughing their way to the bank while the customers still suffered constantly from a broken product.

If it were only for novel products this would be a reasonable argument. See Netscape's rush to release their browser as an example of what you're talk about. But the worst part is that this is an issue with established products that have secured their market, and will even receive money every year from their customers. They have both the money and the time to pace themselves and test things properly, but they don't.

Can you name a few of those who really truly have time but don't take their time? Also it seems there's always an opportunity cost. So time is always "of the essence".
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