We'll test it after it's deployed



  • We're in the middle of a multi-group deployment. I'm on a conference call with 20+ people.

    Another team forgot to do testing, so it's holding everyone else up.

    Some high level person blurts out, officially: just deploy it, and do the QA testing after it's deployed.

    *wow*



  • @snoofle said:

    and do the QA testing after it's deployed.
     

    Look on the bright side - once you deploy it live, look at just how many people you've got doing all that testing for you! Sure they'll all have constructive feedback to provide about the quality of the product!

    img:facepalm.jpg

    img:y_u_no_test.gif



  • @snoofle said:

    Another team forgot to do testing, so it's holding everyone else up.Some high level person blurts out, officially: just deploy it, and do the QA testing after it's deployed.

     

    As in "Manager's kid brother forgot to QA, so just deploy it; we can blame the bugs on the programmers."

     



  • @AndyCanfield said:

    As in "Manager's kid brother forgot to QA, so just deploy it; we can blame the bugs on the programmers."
     

    You can blame the programmers for putting the bugs in, but I'd happily blame the Manager's kid bro for not testing to determine the effects these bugs could have (if any) when the code goes into production.

    There's a reason we have testing, after all - no matter how they wanna spin it, the quality of the released product is directly influenced by testing and omitting testing simply indicates they didn't care.



  • @snoofle said:

    We're in the middle of a multi-group deployment. I'm on a conference call with 20+ people.

    Another team forgot to do testing, so it's holding everyone else up.

    Some high level person blurts out, officially: just deploy it, and do the QA testing after it's deployed.

    wow

    Your company is on the Path of Success:

    1. Stop doing QA
    2. Let power users do free technical support for your product and give them an official acronym like "MVP"
    3. Setup a bug tracker website, call it Connect and redirect anyone who complains about a problem to that website (including MVPs)
    4. Focus your efforts on building irrelevant operating systems designed exclusively for mobile devices even if your main market is desktops and laptops


  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Your company is on the Path of Success:

    1. Stop doing QA
    2. Let power users do free technical support for your product and give them an official acronym like "MVP"
    3. Setup a bug tracker website, call it Connect and redirect anyone who complains about a problem to that website (including MVPs)
    4. Focus your efforts on building irrelevant operating systems designed exclusively for mobile devices even if your main market is desktops and laptops

     

    Microsoft still does QA.  The equivalent to this scenario would be if they just plopped out one of the early betas as the RTM version.  MVPs get more than an acronym (we also get this nifty crystal thingamajig*). As for 3, I don't see how a bug tracker is a bad thing. Do you think they shouldn't have a bug tracker? Should they not track bugs? Should they not try to get all bug reports in one place in a consistent format? What are you trying to say here? If somebody REALLY wants to escalate a bug, they could go to one of the MVP summits and talk directly to the product team about it.

      And... well actually I've not tried win8 yet but the last point could very well be completely accurate. I'm trying to reserve judgement until I've actually used it, personally.

     

    *Worst case scenario, free paperweight!

     



  • @BC_Programmer said:

    MVPs get more than an acronym (we also get this nifty crystal thingamajig*).

    Cool, we've got ourselves an MVP.

    Hey if I give you a 4$ ring, a secret handshake and a direct access to my product team in India (Sanjit and Samir), could you take the night shift on my helpdesk and support the users of my iEbayWatchListFree iPhone app on the phpbb forum configured by my Community and Social Networks Team Lead and VP of QA (Sanjit)? You would also have to continuously get rid of the p0rn spam on the forum because while Sanjit is a great guy he tends to forget things like enabling content moderation. Who knows, maybe after a few years you could get an opportunity to join the development team (Samir is a bit of a wuss but I heard he does a terrific tandoori chicken).



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Your company is on the Path of Success:

    1. Stop doing QA
    2. Let power users do free technical support for your product and give them an official acronym like "MVP"
    3. Setup a bug tracker website, call it Connect and redirect anyone who complains about a problem to that website (including MVPs)
    4. Focus your efforts on building irrelevant operating systems designed exclusively for mobile devices even if your main market is desktops and laptops

    Are you seriously suggesting Microsoft doesn't do QA? Seriously?

    ... is there a website where non-delusional IT people gather?



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @BC_Programmer said:

    MVPs get more than an acronym (we also get this nifty crystal thingamajig*).

    Cool, we've got ourselves an MVP.

    Hey if I give you a 4$ ring, a secret handshake and a direct access to my product team in India (Sanjit and Samir), could you take the night shift on my helpdesk and support the users of my iEbayWatchListFree iPhone app on the phpbb forum configured by my Community and Social Networks Team Lead and VP of QA (Sanjit)? You would also have to continuously get rid of the p0rn spam on the forum because while Sanjit is a great guy he tends to forget things like enabling content moderation. Who knows, maybe after a few years you could get an opportunity to join the development team (Samir is a bit of a wuss but I heard he does a terrific tandoori chicken).

      

    1: I only got an award. I got it "after" what they deemed the award for (whatever the fuck that is, apparently I got it for C#, which baffles my mind, really), so it wasn't like they said "hey, help people for a year and we'll give you this nifty trinket". Just one day they were like "hey, you won this" and I was like, "k". And waited for the E-mail telling me they had made a horrible mistake and that I hadn't or something, but then it showed up in the mail and I had clearly beaten the system.

    2. I didn't even become a Member of any MS-hosted site until after I got the award... only to realize it's completely dead anyway. I'm not even a moderator on any of the sites I do frequent, unless having MVP gives you moderator powers on the MS forum they linked me too, which I doubt.  surely your passive-aggressive scorn applies to the moderators on this forum just as much as it would in your fictitious scenario.

    3. There are forums and other sites where people can get help for every single application or programming language you can think of. Hell there are still people helping each other with that freakin Clipper thing from like 30 years ago. If somebody asks a question in the "Coding Help" if TheDailyWTF relating to a MS-created language, are they doing Microsoft's "support" work? Is that how it works? Should all Delphi-related blogs, articles, and forums be shut down because they are "doing Embarcedaro's (or however it's spelled) Job"? What about Java? are developers who devote their time to helping others really morons for doing Oracle's tech support for free? Or maybe, they, you know, want to help other people with their Java programming issues. It's ironic, because on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Open Source, which many people like to consider a community that helps, and this is some sort of pinnacle of software ideals. And yet, somehow, that idea of "community" is not allowed to translate to any commercial product userbase.

     At it's core, it's a slippery slope argument. It applies equally to pretty much any software product, since they all have their own communities, forums, people blogging about "hey here's how I got X working in Y".




  • @BC_Programmer said:

    surely your passive-aggressive scorn applies to the moderators on this forum

    Wait a minute, there are moderators in this forum? I guess you are right because I saw a few spam posts going away but I never noticed a post being removed because the content was unpleasant (and I'm not meaning only mines).

    @BC_Programmer said:

    Should all Delphi-related blogs, articles, and forums be shut down because they are "doing Embarcedaro's (or however it's spelled) Job"?

    No, they should be shut down because Delphi sucks.

    @BC_Programmer said:

    It's ironic, because on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Open Source, which many people like to consider a community that helps, and this is some sort of pinnacle of software ideals. And yet, somehow, that idea of "community" is not allowed to translate to any commercial product userbase.

    Something that makes sense on one end of a spectrum and does not make sense on the other end? That does not qualify as "ironic", it's perfectly normal. The open source community is working hard to make FOSS that anyone can use while Microsoft is working hard to make money and have more people buy their products. It's totally up to you to help Microsoft make more money but don't expect a Nobel prize for that. It's like going to Walmart and pick up litter in their parking lot for free to "help fellow Walmart customers". If Walmart hands you down a Walmart t-shirt afterwards and call you an MVP then congratulations but don't expect people to be impressed because you could have put your skills to a better use.

    The only reason that could really explain doing MVP work is to gain visibility and build a consulting business or try to get hired by Microsoft. This plan could work but one should be mindful of the cost in lost opportunities for all those hours spent supporting Microsoft products and should make sure that this is a good business approach (which I doubt).



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @BC_Programmer said:
    surely your passive-aggressive scorn applies to the moderators on this forum

    Wait a minute, there are moderators in this forum? I guess you are right because I saw a few spam posts going away but I never noticed a post being removed because the content was unpleasant (and I'm not meaning only mines).

    That's why they aren't called censors.


  • @blakeyrat said:

    ... is there a website where non-delusional IT people gather?
     

    Sure, though i can't post a URL here, as it kinda defeats the point of not having delusional people there.

     



  • The first rule of Fight Club...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    is there a website where non-delusional IT people gather?
     

    I wouldn't know, I haven't met any.

    These are people who _chose_ to work in IT after all.

     



  • @DCRoss said:

    These are people who _chose_ to work in IT after all.
     

    Obligatory cartoon:




  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    No, they should be shut down because Delphi sucks.

    Obviously facetious, but that's hardly a reason to have things shut down. I mean, if we did that there would be nothing left on the internet at all, because for everything, somebody, somewhere, things it sucks.

     

    @BC_Programmer said:

    It's ironic, because on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Open Source, which many people like to consider a community that helps, and this is some sort of pinnacle of software ideals. And yet, somehow, that idea of "community" is not allowed to translate to any commercial product userbase.

     

    Something that makes sense on one end of a spectrum and does not make sense on the other end? That does not qualify as "ironic", it's perfectly normal.

    Ok, fair point. My use of the word "ironic" was probably not stellar there, but what I mean is that one of the very pillars of Open Source is about the communities that pop up around the products; hell, one of the big points proponents of Linux pull out of their ass is that "they can ask on a forum" What you are sort of saying here is that the right for people to gather (online... or otherwise, I suppose) and form communities surrounding a product is only valid when that product is Open Source. (Either that, or the argument you made would apply equally to Open Source Project communities). As an example, Most of the people who help on the Firefox or Ubuntu or Mint forums are not Firefox, Ubuntu, or Mint Developers and do not work for Mozilla or Canonical.

     

    The open source community is working hard to make FOSS that anyone can use

    They've been spinning their wheels on that one for as long as I can remember, they are certainly making efforts, but the fragmented nature of the community and the passing whims of preference tend to toss a monkey wrench in the works. Also, from what I can tell most of the more successful Open Source Projects, such as Firefox, Chromium, Linux, and so forth tend to have some sort of corporation or organization providing the funding (Mozilla, Google, and  various companies for Linux, such as Red Hat and Canonical  . I'm sort of in the same segment as Blakeyrat on this one- The vast majority of OSS projects I use are anything but easy to use. Eclipse is downright silly, MonoDevelop is a poor substitute for Visual Studio, and almost everything else has some issues. Though arguably that's true for any Software product regardless of the licensing of it. The fallacy with OSS is that "if you have a problem you can fix it yourself". well, technically, you can, but reasonably, it's out of most peoples reach. 

    while Microsoft is working hard to make money and have more people buy their products.

    Actually, I think I get this now. This makes sense. Of course Open Source supporters would shum free support for any sort of system- The entire philosophy of how Software would work in a mystical Utopian magic pixie land is that the software is free, but the support is not. But this is something of a catch-22, if the companies that help write and fund a product's only revenue stream is with support, what incentive do they have to make the product easy to use?

     

    It's totally up to you to help Microsoft make more money but don't expect a Nobel prize for that.

    I would argue that helping a person fix their Windows Installation for free get's Microsoft Less money than their alternative of buying another computer entirely, or even another copy of windows. Hell there have been times somebody was trying to decide what Edition of Windows to buy when they got the money for it, but in the meantime they had an unusable Machine,   so I suggested they try a few Linux alternatives in the meantime, to at least be able to use the machine in the meantime. They ended up sticking with it and not buying Windows, so I doubt I helped MS make more money that way either. And the product for which I got the award, C#, is more or less source license agnostic because it has both free and proprietary implementations. 

     

    It's like going to Walmart and pick up litter in their parking lot for free to "help fellow Walmart customers"

    I'm not sure if that is a accurate analogy. I would say it is like if you see an old lady having trouble trying to get a shopping cart out, and you ask "Do you need some help", which will often be met with "yes please". In my case, I would help dislodge the cart or explain that, no, her 50 year old silver dollar does not work as the deposit in the lock mechanism. In your example, you would demand a payment up-front for services rendered, or just say "well too bad, I don't work here". 

     

    If Walmart hands you down a Walmart t-shirt afterwards and call you an MVP then congratulations but don't expect people to be impressed because you could have put your skills to a better use.

    While I can see what you mean, I would argue that your analogy is coloured to purposely exclude the "human" factor. As another example, if you see a elderly person struggling to get a large bag of sugar in their cart in the super market, would you help, or just ignore it? Is it really the store staffs' job to serve as personal assistants? I'm not really sure. of course if there is an employee nearby, hopefully they would make an effort to help, but if there are none around, do you just tell yourself "not my problem" and move on?

    The only reason that could really explain doing MVP work is to gain visibility and build a consulting business or try to get hired by Microsoft. This plan could work but one should be mindful of the cost in lost opportunities for all those hours spent supporting Microsoft products and should make sure that this is a good business approach (which I doubt).

     

    See, here's the misunderstanding. What the hell is MVP work? About half of the assistance I give on the forums I am members of relate to OSS. I just don't follow the logic that punishing the users by withholding information is either ethically correct or that punishing the users of a product will somehow punish the vendor of that product, nor do I really see how punishing a vendor will somehow benefit the users. It's a slippery slope "the ends justify the means" argument, based on the premise that if everybody ran Open Source software, the world would be a mystical fairy-tale paradise, the Dodo would suddenly exist again, and the worlds problems would all be solved. But there is no basis on which to come to that conclusion, and it seems that the goal isn't necessarily to give people the best software tools for their task, but to make sure that those tools are Open Source. it seems the plan for this is something like this:

     1.Withhold information and refuse to assist those who use Proprietary ebil softwarez

    2. ???

    3. FOSS WINS!

     It seems that what you are saying is that nobody should ever help another person with software-related problems if that person is using proprietary software, which makes sense from the business perspective for Open Source, since denying support to those using your ebil nemesis proprietary software and dangling the carrot of "well, you know if you use Fedora, I would totally help you install Photoshop" (despite the white lie there, I guess) would probably have more people switching to Linux. But isn't this coercion? If Linux and Open Source are about choice, surely there is a choice to not use it at all, is there not?

    I guess the problem I have here is that the support strategies involved seem to revolve around how to help Open Source, not how to help people.

     


     



  • @BC_Programmer said:

    In my case, I would help dislodge the cart or explain that, no, her 50 year old silver dollar does not work as the deposit in the lock mechanism.

    Wait...

    You have to BUY shopping carts? Man everywhere not the US sucks.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    The open source community is working hard to make FOSS that anyone can use while Microsoft is working hard to make money and have more people buy their products.

    And yet the for-profit companies remain head-and-shoulders above the open source products. If the FOSS community is trying to make "software that anyone can use", they're fucking shit at it. So far all they've demonstrated is that they can build half-decent software if some corporation is footing the bill (but then is it really the FOSS community?) and they can make extremely half-assed almost-functional copies of existing software made by for-profit corporations.

    Meanwhile, the open source community throws away helpful tools like Mono/C# because "ewwww I think I saw Microsoft pick its nose and touch it!" And the guy who just wanted to save everybody some time by finally giving the community a fucking half-decent language for once is like their greatest enemy. Even though most open source projects are still using archaic languages (C/C++) and archaic tools (VIM/EMACS/if you're lucky, Eclipse).

    Debuggers? What are debuggers? Testing? Yeah, I did testing: it ran on my machine and kind of worked, so I'm shipping it. It might be fucking broken as hell but "release early and release often" philosophy says we release the buggy shit missteps to give people a chance to hate our software before its even done! SUCH A WISE PHILOSOPHY!

    Want to install the program? "/configure /make install" is obviously the best and most usable way to do it, for Linux is making "software anyone can use!" Want to uninstall the program? Well it shoved files into 48,034 subdirectories and is completely intermixed with every other program on the system so... you can't, fuck you. Oh but don't worry we solved that problem with package management! You want a commercial program? Fuck you, we don't let it in, it has to be installed the stupid way. You want a program not in the package database? Fuck you, it has to be installed the stupid way. You installed something the stupid way? Fuck you our package manager doesn't know about it and will break the fuck out of it the instant you update.

    Look, if the FOSS community is truly trying to create "software anyone can use", they've been doing nothing but failing for 20 years. They can kind of sort of keep up with Microsoft and Apple, if only by completely ripping them off. But they've never truly succeeded at their goal, and there hasn't been a single original successful user-facing open source project that wasn't just a ripoff of a commercial product. Something like the Office 2007 Ribbon interface, or the iPhone touch screen interface, or the Kindle, could never have been developed the open source way.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You have to BUY shopping carts? Man everywhere not the US sucks.

    Not really, it's mostly at supermarkets and stores that have the shopping carts outside. You basically have to stick a dollar into the locking mechanism to dislodge this chain that connects it to the cart in front of it. Then when you put the cart back, you plug the lock back in and you get the dollar back.

     I've never really understood what the point was, though. 



  • @BC_Programmer said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    You have to BUY shopping carts? Man everywhere not the US sucks.

    Not really, it's mostly at supermarkets and stores that have the shopping carts outside. You basically have to stick a dollar into the locking mechanism to dislodge this chain that connects it to the cart in front of it. Then when you put the cart back, you plug the lock back in and you get the dollar back.

    I've never really understood what the point was, though.

    It's a deterrent that is meant to prevent scum from hauling away shopping carts and throwing them into the bushes, rolling them onto the streets and into traffic, etc.



  • @Ragnax said:

    @BC_Programmer said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    You have to BUY shopping carts? Man everywhere not the US sucks.
    Not really, it's mostly at supermarkets and stores that have the shopping carts outside. You basically have to stick a dollar into the locking mechanism to dislodge this chain that connects it to the cart in front of it. Then when you put the cart back, you plug the lock back in and you get the dollar back.

    It's a deterrent that is meant to prevent scum from hauling away shopping carts and throwing them into the bushes, rolling them onto the streets and into traffic, etc.

     

    There's a by-law in my city requiring them to have protections for that reason. Most of them installed the chain as above (two slots so you could use a $1 or $2 coin) but obviously it didn't work very well. Now there's a wheel with a built-in lock that when it goes past a certain point it will lock. That's a better solution for everyone: no need for a coin to unlock it, no fumbling to get it back, the "scum" probably stole the coin anyway so they don't care as much about it, so it physically can't be removed from the car park, without using a spanner and swapping wheels over.

    Of course the lock point at my local shopping centre is between the main building and the overflow carpark, so I guess that makes it a WTF.

     



  • @Ragnax said:

    It's a deterrent that is meant to prevent scum from hauling away shopping carts and throwing them into the bushes, rolling them onto the streets and into traffic, etc.
     

    It also encourages trolley users to return the trolley to a designated point to reclaim said coin, reducing the amount of staff required to do trolley collection. It seems quite effective in one of my local supermarket - there's no chance of a discarded trolley taking up a parking space or drifting aimlessly into the roadway.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Look, if the FOSS community is truly trying to create "software anyone can use", they've been doing nothing but failing for 20 years. They can kind of sort of keep up with Microsoft and Apple, if only by completely ripping them off. But they've never truly succeeded at their goal, and there hasn't been a single original successful user-facing open source project that wasn't just a ripoff of a commercial product. Something like the Office 2007 Ribbon interface, or the iPhone touch screen interface, or the Kindle, could never have been developed the open source way.
    Funny you should mention Apple, because Darwin, the basis for OS X, is open source.

    Also, I fail to see what product Apache HTTPd would be ripping off. Sure, on the front-end side of things, open source hasn't been very successful, but on the back end, it's a different story. If you don't see that, you either need glasses, or get rid of the bottle.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    ... is there a website where non-delusional IT people gather?
    Yeah, it's right between the websites for "Justin Bieber fans with a great taste of music" and "porn-loving feminists"...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Anonymouse said:

    "porn-loving feminists"
    50 Shades of Grey - The Website...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    hasn't been a single original successful user-facing open source project that wasn't just a ripoff of a commercial product.



    firefox introduced tabs to the browser and everyone copied them ...

    they fucked it up though, dropped the ball...



    but generally i agree, 99.99% foss apps are borderline unusable, often buggy as hell and unsupported (unless you count "if you cant make it work, then you are too stupid to use my app" replies to your support questions) ...



    i disagree on package managers ... they are truly a great idea and have been partially copied by the commercial companies in the form of "app stores" ...

    you have no fuckin idea where the angry birds are installed and you should not care as long as the "package manager" (or in this case the os, appstore etc.) can remove both the birds and their droppings when you click uninstall ...

    although the "apps" will never go that far to have dependancies and dependancy management ... noone is stupid enough to do that ...



  • @PJH said:

    50 Shades of Grey
    You know, I wonder what would happen if somebody wrote a "50 Shades" fan-fiction...



  • @Nelle said:

    firefox introduced tabs to the browser
     

    Opera.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Nelle said:

    firefox introduced tabs to the browser and everyone copied them
    Your memory's playing tricks. Firefox wasn't the first browser to have tabs.



  • @dhromed said:

    Opera



    @PJH said:
    Your memory's playing tricks. Firefox wasn't the first browser to have tabs.



    i stand corrected



  • @Nelle said:

    i disagree on package managers ... they are truly a great idea and have been partially copied by the commercial companies in the form of "app stores"
     

    I've always been sort of on the fence as far as Package Managers go. They are a great concept- a central location to get all your needed software, but there are a few inherent issues with it, as I can see. First, you have to rely on the repository. I've got Firefox 12 installed here, and it insists that it's "Up to date" as does the package manager when I use "apt-get upgrade" but there is a FF 13. Of course I can go to the mozilla site, download the new version, and install it that way, but isn't that the "problem" with windows that package managers allegedly solve? Another issue is that, as blakey mentions, a lot of products aren't listed in repositories, which takes you back to the old standby of having to download and compile the source code manually.

     I think the comparison is somewhat inaccurate and flawed, in many respects; with Windows, Microsoft [i]does[/i] have a package management system and a set of repositories- it's called Windows Update. It would certainly be [i]possible[/i] to have that work in the same centralized way- for example, Office updates sometimes pop in through Windows Updates- but it doesn't work with other vendors software simply because that puts both said vendor and MS in a bit of an awkward relationship; MS has software for a wide variety of functions, so most software that would be listed would be competing with some MS product. A good example might be something like, say, WordPerfect, which competes directly with Word. It puts the strain of "supporting" that application on MS servers, and if MS were to charge companies to list their software on it, it would be considered "evil corporate shenanigans". And if something happens to go wrong and mess up one of those vendors programs, all eyes will be on MS for sabotage. The only way to really have a package management system for windows that 'works' as well as on Linux/FreeBSD would be with a third party, but that would give you a lot of the same problems as a Linux Package Manager- it doesn't have [i]everything[/i], so you will still need to do some software installs and updates yourself, and there will always be some lag-time between when a program is released/updated to when the maintainers stick it on the repository. I believe there were some products released around the windows 95 era that acted much like Package Managers on Linux, but they only supported a relatively small number of programs and features- and it cost money, too.



  • @Nelle said:

    firefox introduced tabs to the browser and everyone copied them ...

    they fucked it up though, dropped the ball...

    There was a period of about, oh, maybe a year and a half between when Firefox was a ripoff of IE6 and when they became a ripoff of IE7 that they were kind of doing original shit.

    They've fucked us all over in the long term, however, by establishing that tabs should be an application feature when it obviously should be a window manager feature (like it was in BeOS-- oh yeah Firefox I got your fucking number!) Now Microsoft, Apple, et. al. are stuck in a situation where if they introduce window manager tabs it'll confuse the fuck out of all the users since applications like Firefox will have tabs-within-tabs which behave differently.

    @Nelle said:

    i disagree on package managers ... they are truly a great idea and have been partially copied by the commercial companies in the form of "app stores" ...

    Where the fuck did you learn to write? On what planet is a ellipsis used to end a-- well I guess the only word would be "sentence", although they don't look like any sentences I'm used to. Are you 10?

    Sorry, anyway. I'm not saying they're a bad idea, but the only reason they're necessary is that Linux lacks a sane way of installing software otherwise. Package managers weren't invented because some guy said, "hm, we should design a way to install and manage applications from scratch and make it easy and robust", they were developed because some guy said, "wow installation on Linux bites ass, how do I make it very slightly more usable while not actually fixing any of the underlying problems that make installation on Linux bite ass?"

    So all the fundamental problems are still there and the package manager is simply a thin veneer needed to make Linux look not-quite-as-awful-as-other-OSes. This especially apparent when you install software from somewhere other than your system's package manager, as the package manager will quickly corrupt the installation next time you run an update. And you have to install software from somewhere other than the system's package manager, because the system's package manager doesn't include commercial software, and can't handle software shipped on disk, and can't handle software whose installer was built for a different package manager.

    @Nelle said:

    they are truly a great idea and have been partially copied by the commercial companies in the form of "app stores" ...

    Yes, but they got there by accident and not by design. And the fundamental problems in the OS that the package manager is covering over still exist in the OS. The reason Windows and Mac OS (in its various incarnations) could get by so long without app stores is because the designers of those systems spent more than 17 nanoseconds thinking, "how should programs be organized in a sensible way?" Where the Linux "designers" just said, "fuck it, shove all the files in the same huge-ass directories and don't worry about keeping track of what program they support. Time to booze up!"



  • @PJH said:

    @Nelle said:
    firefox introduced tabs to the browser and everyone copied them
    Your memory's playing tricks. Firefox wasn't the first browser to have tabs.

    Oh yeah and while we're on the subject, Firefox wasn't the first browser with add-ins either. Fucking IE 5 had add-ins. They were called "toolbars", but they were the exact same fucking concept. Firefox's major skill seems to be convincing Linux geeks that it was first to develop features it wasn't first to develop.

    (To be fair, you can credit them for being the first to have a centralized way of finding and installing add-ins.)



  •  But Firebug was the first one that didn't slurp ass!



  • @dhromed said:

    But Firebug was the first one that didn't slurp ass!

    I won't deny that.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Nelle said:
    i disagree on package managers ... they are truly a great idea and have been partially copied by the commercial companies in the form of "app stores" ...
    Where the fuck did you learn to write? On what planet is a ellipsis used to end a-- well I guess the only word would be "sentence", although they don't look like any sentences I'm used to.

    Ellipses can also be used for denoting something like a pause when speaking, though that would imply something like Nelle trying to gather their thoughts so as to complete the "sentences" that you are complaining about.



  • @locallunatic said:

    Ellipses can also be used for denoting something like a pause when speaking, though that would imply something like Nelle trying to gather their thoughts so as to complete the "sentences" that you are complaining about.
     

    It is stupid and bad form. Write like a proper person.



  • @dhromed said:

    It is stupid and bad form. Write like a proper person.

    I won't deny that.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I won't deny that.

    Now be honest. Do you have a "I won't deny that" keyboard shortcut?



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I won't deny that.

    Now be honest. Do you have a "I won't deny that" keyboard shortcut?

    I won't deny that.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    I won't deny that.

    Now be honest. Do you have a "I won't deny that" keyboard shortcut?

    I won't deny that.

    I will!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So all the fundamental problems are still there and the package manager is simply a thin veneer needed to make Linux look not-quite-as-awful-as-other-OSes. This especially apparent when you install software from somewhere other than your system's package manager, as the package manager will quickly corrupt the installation next time you run an update. And you have to install software from somewhere other than the system's package manager, because the system's package manager doesn't include commercial software, and can't handle software shipped on disk, and can't handle software whose installer was built for a different package manager.

    TL;DR version: Wrong.

    First, I'm under the impression most OSes these days have package managers.  The commercial ones, however, have a sufficiently polished look that you don't really compare them to the OS wart-UI package managers you're complaining about.  MacOS's package manager doesn't handle the concept of keeping track of the vendor-provided packages; they let their website do that.  But, then, rpm and apt don't bother with that, either - the distros provide front ends that do that part, like yum and aptitude.  I haven't worked with Windows so much that I can say much about its package management, but it's obviously aware of what packages are installed come patch time.  So it's not really a matter that the other OSes don't have package managers; it's a matter of feature set and implementations.

    Second, every Linux distro with which I've worked in the past decade had a way to make your code into one of their packages.  I've only seen one where it was well-documented, and the only place I've personally seen that documentation was in a vendor-controlled training class, but the documentation did exist.  According to rumor, it also exists online, but I haven't really looked, because I have a handy reference on my desk.

    Even without actually making a package for your code and installing that, it's not very difficult to fake out most of the Linux package managers I've seen - IIRC, only one of them really used a real database, the others preferring simple text files instead, frequently per-package.  (Special mention: one of them was documented to use a database.  The code to maintain the database was strewn throughout the package manager code base like a bad dream, making it pretty clear there was clear interest in actually moving to a real database.  However, the code wasn't encapsulated, wasn't consistent, and wasn't finished - I only recall seeing one block of read code, which was if (0)ed out.)

    Third, alien.  I haven't actually used it, but I've heard quite a few people rave about it.

    Fourth, most of the "vendor's upgrade broke my local programs" issues I've seen were caused by the admins or developers making changes to files "owned" by the vendor's packages, that were then overwritten.  This is kind of like getting an after-market engine in your car, then buying a newer model of your car, and complaining that they didn't transfer your after-market engine from your trade-in.  This problem doesn't exist as much in the Windows and MacOS worlds because you can't make changes to nearly as many system-owned files.  But when you *do* update a system .dll as part of your code, and Microsoft issues an update to that .dll, it breaks there, too.

    The more legitimate issues I've seen here were generally from a library your program depended upon being upgraded to a version that wasn't backwardly compatible to what you were using - and that happens on Windows and MacOS too - just not as often, because they don't update the system libraries quite so often…

    @blakeyrat said:

    Where the Linux Unix "designers" just said, "fuck it, shove all the files in the same huge-ass directories and don't worry about keeping track of what program they support. Time to booze up!"

    TL;DR version: Yep

    Sigh.  Sometimes, I wish I lived in a world in which one could claim this was not a fundamental truth of the unix world - every instance of the unix world I've encountered, Dynix, HPUX, AIX, Solaris, SunOS, NeXTSTeP, Ultrix, Xenix, Minix, Lunix, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSewer, OSF/1, and probably at least half a dozen others besides Linux.

    Now, I understand it: it's a symptom of colon separated PATH variables.  Having program directories per application would require one have a shell that could include a wildcard in the path.  I know of only one shell which attempts to provide that feature, and because the original author is very opposed to protecting his work from corporate interests ("If you'd like, I can distribute it to you under any open source license except any version of the GPL"), it's kind of an outcast.

    Actually, *ideally*, it would be supported in the OS, so all shells would handle it without even realizing it, and adding a new executable directory in the right place would update in real time, rather than requiring each running shell to re-evaluate its path variable (not just a rehash - that only makes it look again at the directories that are already listed in $PATH, it doesn't make it look for directories that should be added to $PATH).  But it doesn't even work like that in Mac OS X, last I checked.  The GUI plays at having the feature, but it doesn't, really.  The application directory contains directories that the GUI recognizes as being applications.  When you launch one of these, if it has helper scripts it needs, it either modifies its own idea of the path to add its helper script directory to the path, or it invokes those helper scripts with either full or relative path names to specify the exact script, rather than making use of the path.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    This especially apparent when you install software from somewhere other than your system's package manager, as the package manager will quickly corrupt the installation next time you run an update. And you have to install software from somewhere other than the system's package manager, because the system's package manager doesn't include commercial software, and can't handle software shipped on disk, and can't handle software whose installer was built for a different package manager.

    I would believe that this has happened to people, and that package managers weren't always as good as they are now. OK, maybe the "software shipped on disk" thing is accurate, but there's no reason for any of that other stuff. I have several third party applications installed that work with my package manager. I get the updates directly from the original source repository. But I don't have to run a separate update manager for each one.

    The lack of a package manager is one of Windows' biggest missing features, and would help enormously with respect to keeping third party applications and plug ins up to date.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    This especially apparent when you install software from somewhere other than your system's package manager, as the package manager will quickly corrupt the installation next time you run an update. And you have to install software from somewhere other than the system's package manager, because the system's package manager doesn't include commercial software, and can't handle software shipped on disk, and can't handle software whose installer was built for a different package manager.

    Whilst this used to be the norm, nowadays it tends to be more of an exception.

    Many Linux apps/services tend to find their way into the official repos for distributions of choice, or offered as a distro-specific package for download if they've not made it into the distro-managed repos. I've installed many packages using apt-get or yum rather than manually compile, and whilst I've had conflicts occur it tends to be a rare case nowadays.

    @boomzilla said:

    The lack of a package manager is one of Windows' biggest missing features, and would help enormously with respect to keeping third party applications and plug ins up to date.

    <pedant> As mentioned before, Windows does have a package manager (add/remove software) but whilst it can be used to uninstall third-party packages it won't search distros to download and install. It does a fair job of resolving dependencies and pre-requisites, from my (limited) experience. </pedant>

    A bit ago I mentioned a package manager for Windows that works like apt/yum and someone followed up with another suggestion. Can't find the thread, though.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Cassidy said:

    @boomzilla said:
    The lack of a package manager is one of Windows' biggest missing features, and would help enormously with respect to keeping third party applications and plug ins up to date.

    <pedant> As mentioned before, Windows does have a package manager (add/remove software) but whilst it can be used to uninstall third-party packages it won't search distros to download and install. It does a fair job of resolving dependencies and pre-requisites, from my (limited) experience. </pedant>

    Is there any way for 3rd party software to use it to manage updates? Because that's what I'm saying that Windows is lacking. The proliferation of custom update checkers should be embarrassing. It obviously contributes to lots of problems with out of date software.

    C'mon, MS, join the 21st century.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Is there any way for 3rd party software to use it to manage updates?
     

    Erm.. oh, okay. I see what you mean: "yum update" etc. No. Well, not yet - it seems to be a per-application setting. ADOBE? SHUT THE FUCK UP. I KNOW THERE'S A PDF READER UPDATE!

    Let's agree upon "Windows has a package manager, but it doesn't offer as many facilities as other package managers on other platforms may". 


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Cassidy said:

    Let's agree upon "Windows has a package manager, but it doesn't offer as many facilities as other package managers on other platforms may".

    The maddening thing is that they've integrated Office into their package manager (i.e., automatic updates). I'm slightly surprised that the EU or somebody hasn't gone after this with the anti-trust stick.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Is there any way for 3rd party software to use it to manage updates?

    Is there any way for closed-source software to use a Linux package manager to manage updates? No? Aww.

    @boomzilla said:

    Because that's what I'm saying that Windows is lacking.

    Not because of a technical lack, or a lack of desire, but simply the need to avoid being sued by the fucking EU for every fucking thing ever. Linux people who cheered on stupid abusive anti-Microsoft lawsuits are the cause of most Microsoft "missing features".

    @boomzilla said:

    The proliferation of custom update checkers should be embarrassing.

    If Microsoft did provide one third parties could use, do you seriously think Adobe would? Instead of shipping their own? Honest question.

    @boomzilla said:

    C'mon, MS, join the 21st century.

    They'll "join the 21st century" when their competitors stop "competing" using the legal system.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Cassidy said:
    Let's agree upon "Windows has a package manager, but it doesn't offer as many facilities as other package managers on other platforms may".

    The maddening thing is that they've integrated Office into their package manager (i.e., automatic updates). I'm slightly surprised that the EU or somebody hasn't gone after this with the anti-trust stick.

    Wait what?

    10 minutes ago you're screaming for Microsoft to let any application use Windows Update, now you're saying they should be sued for letting Office use it?

    Fucking shit man. I know you're Boomzilla, but... this is retarded even for you. Please seppuku immediately.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Is there any way for 3rd party software to use it to manage updates?

    Is there any way for closed-source software to use a Linux package manager to manage updates? No? Aww.

    Yes. I use Debian based distros mainly, where there is a specification for a repository. You add the vendor's url to your list of repositories and from then on, whenever you check for updates, that repo is included. From the user's point of view, everything gets updated in the same place. For instance, here's Opera's .deb repository. If you read that page, you'll note that if you download and install using their .deb package, it automatically adds itself to you auto-updates.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Because that's what I'm saying that Windows is lacking.

    Not because of a technical lack, or a lack of desire, but simply the need to avoid being sued by the fucking EU for every fucking thing ever. Linux people who cheered on stupid abusive anti-Microsoft lawsuits are the cause of most Microsoft "missing features".

    The problem is that they already have most of what they need, as evidenced by Windows updating itself. And other Microsoft software using the same update mechanism. It's possible that legal issues have prevented them from opening it up to others, but that seems silly. Of course, there was a lot of (incorrect) noise about IE using non-public APIs, which is similar to what Office actually does with respect to updates.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    The proliferation of custom update checkers should be embarrassing.

    If Microsoft did provide one third parties could use, do you seriously think Adobe would? Instead of shipping their own? Honest question.

    Maybe. I believe that a lot of vendors would definitely take advantage of it. It would definitely have made their lives easier to not have to come up with ever more hare brained updating schemes.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    C'mon, MS, join the 21st century.

    They'll "join the 21st century" when their competitors stop "competing" using the legal system.

    I 100% agree with the sentiment about using the legal system, but that's a retarded excuse, especially when we keep hearing about how the latest exploit du jour targets some unpatched third party software.


Log in to reply