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

Stop Ruining It

seths.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 170 posts

Re: Stop Ruining It

#91

Post by marcosdumay »

ryandrake wrote: post #48
mft_ wrote: post #40

In a similar vein, I've argued in many a corporate meeting that there's no such thing as "empowerment". People start out wanting to achieve things, change things to be better, do a good job. The active issue is disempowerment , created by other people (usually but not always senior) within the organisation. So the question isn't "how to empower people", but rather "how to prevent disempowerment of people". This isn't…

I'm not sure when it happened, but there was a definite inflection point some time in my software career, where we all stopped asking "What does the user want to do with their computer?" and moved over to "What do we want the user to do with our software? And, it's been downhill since then. We stopped treating the user as the driver of the car, and pushed him into the passenger seat. Now users are just along for the…

It's when Apple made an image editor with less functionality than everything else, and it became popular because it could do less.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#93

Post by CagedCoder »

fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

I was really excited when I saw tabs were coming to the file explorer, but I can't tell now if I don't like tabs in file explorer or if I don't like all the other things that made file explorer worse when tabs got added

Re: Stop Ruining It

#94

Post by devmor »

ubercow13 wrote: post #73
fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

Tabs and breadcrumbs are both useful features though, that almost every other OS/DE file manager has supported since forever

As someone forced to use MacOS Finder regular, and who hates Dolphin/Nautilus/etc, I agree with the OP on this one. I don't need tabs or breadcrumbs in my file explorer.

I need clear, well defined data in the windows and a path.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#95

Post by IAmBroom »

blt wrote: post #65

Sound systems do have an omnipresent "only as good as your weakest link" feeling. A lossless source (or analog, whatever your preference) and great speakers/amps can't overcome a bad sounding room - or a piece of music that was mixed/mastered poorly.

But MP3 players have proven that adding another weak link can still enshittify more.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#96

Post by processing »

SoftTalker wrote: post #53
graemep wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its always been hard to know. "about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half." dates back more than a century Some spend is just in case. Some spend is for prestige (we are on TV!). Some is for vague reasons that cannot be measured.

Except for targeted online ads based on browsing/search history or other spying, most advertising is just brand/product awareness, hoping to create a memorable impression.

looking at running sneakers yesterday of a new brand I've never come across before - looked pretty interesting and bookmarked for later...within minutes of visiting the site I was seeing retargeting ads for the brand. Instant turn-off - no longer interested.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#97

Post by 2cheeze4u »

fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

Tabs on file explorer is one of the most useful feature updates in Win 11.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#98

Post by smcg »

Unless Seth gets the ear of some high-up executives, I don't think this article will change anything. The workers "ruining" products have to do their job, and often don't have much input into these decisions.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#99

Post by sumtechguy »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #42

I think codebases and optimizations are a lot like this. A lot of people seem to think the way to make things work better and faster is to add elaborate caching layers and layers and retries and GPUs and multi threading and... I find the opposite tends to be true. Make things fast and reliable by doing as little as possible. If an API is flakey, make it not flakey, don't cache the result and add a retry loop.

Start simple add the rest later when you needed it. How will you know you need it later? At 3AM. If it makes you feel better add a comment what will be needed when it breaks.

I see over and over wildly overdone code. When all I really wanted was some simple if conditions and a couple of loops. But that doesnt scale to XYZ per ns. Does it need to?

Boring wins almost every time.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#100

Post by sumtechguy »

smcg wrote: post #98

Unless Seth gets the ear of some high-up executives, I don't think this article will change anything. The workers "ruining" products have to do their job, and often don't have much input into these decisions.

those story points do not earn themselves!
Post reply on HN