Where's the outrage?
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@accalia said:
Okay, Propose a project, with a sensible goal that will improve matters in this regard, and provide a mechanism that I can contribute to it, and i'll contribute towards the success of such a project.
You're obviously passionat here, that's good. Now you just need to focus that passion towards crating a solution.
That would involve him actually doing something, instead of getting drunk on expensive alcohol purchased with his fat IT industry paycheck, then wrapping himself in his fake internet persona and going to forums to rant about how IT industry is awful.
be that as it may or may not be, He asked for a bone, i gave him one. he wants change, lets have him lead that change.
and yes, i was serious there, If blakey actually starts such a project i will contribute towards its success.
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Usability is hard, let's go shopping.
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they want to put an image surrounded by text and things slide all over the place
This; so very, very much this. I've spent hours fighting Word just to get one image positioned correctly.
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Also because usability studies are outside of their area of expertise,
And it's IMPOSSIBLE to learn new things. That's why nobody's learned Node.JS and our new forum software is written in code to the 1972 C spec.
and would involve investing the money they don't have.
Oh yeah, that $0.00 is real expensive. Usability studies only cost time, the time they're already giving away for free.
a piece of piss to embed in a website.
What does "a piece of piss" imply? It's difficult to embed?
Doing that kind of thing is a completely different skillset and mindset than doing technical side of app development.
Good! If there's ONE THING developers need, it's to spend less time talking to computers and more time talking to human beings. You know those strange flabby creatures the software's for in the first place.
So when we are talking about the realm of one man projects, you'll get a certain set of skills, but not all that a large company would put together. And the reality is that if these skills don't include programming of the "disgusting nerdy autistic" mindset, as you and blakey would put it, nothing gets made.
So companies like Microsoft and Apple can pull it off but open source projects can't. Huh! It's almost as if open source is a shitty and useless and stupid development model that doesn't work!
How do you know? Maybe there's a huge amount of overlap that nobody realizes because it's shit on as being the useless discipline of "making shit pretty" by devs?
Only shitty open source devs. Real software developers understand the importance of an applications user experience.
So unless you have some way to make that shit interesting or obviously useful or appealing in some way, status quo will remain.
It's obviously useful now, so apparently your "strategy" here isn't working, Patton.
This; so very, very much this. I've spent hours fighting Word just to get one image positioned correctly.
How!? You just drag it.
Maybe the problem here is software developers don't fucking know how to use Word. What the hell. I learned this shit in like middle school.
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Real software developers understand the importance of an applications user experience.
The more I work, read about people's experiences, and use products, the more I feel "real software developers" are a dying breed, undervalued and failing to reproduce.
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I blame the internet.
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I blame the pervasiveness of the idea that, because one can learn to code without attending university, formal instruction is worthless and everything you ever need to know for software development can be self-taught before you leave high school.
I learned a lot at uni, and I learned a lot from attending formal courses and reading books after uni, and I also learned a lot on the job. It's all valuable, and some things are hard to learn on your own, as you have to reinvent the wheel.
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Preaching to the choir here.
Even Microsoft has adopted open source development models which, as Cartman82 helpfully pointed-out, do not fucking work. If Apple and Microsoft have both given-in, who's left to give a shit? Samsung? Hah! No, it's hopeless.
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let's go shopping
Only if you are paying! I desperately need new shoes! I have not one pair that goes well with these new jeans ... unacceptable.
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What does "a piece of piss" imply? It's difficult to embed?
"a piece of piss" implies that something is extremely easy.
I guess it's not a common phrase in the US, judging by Urban Dictionary it seems to mainly be a British/Australian thing.
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Another part of the problem is that universities don't teach history of computer software. I mean they'll teach some vague history where they do the thing I accused accalia of earlier: skipping directly from DOS to a modern OS without anything in between.
But where's the class where you use a Commodore 64? Then install GEOS on it? Then move on to Mac Classic, run though say 1.0 of it, 6.0 of it, 9.0 of it... doing a project on each OS, then go and check out IBM's OS/2 and Windows 3.11 for a week or two, then move on to some more esoteric things like BeOS and maybe an extra-credit course on something like the Apple LISA or Xerox Star?
Who's teaching HyperCard? HyperCard was fucking revolutionary, and still now decades later, there's NOTHING like it for helping new computer users create their own software. Nothing even remotely like it.
Where's the class that shows off the Windows 2000 default settings (with the hiding of menu items) and discusses why hiding the menu items to put the computer into a "easy mode" was a bad stupid idea which didn't work? And which, if taught, might have prevented Google from making the EXACT SAME UI MISTAKE IN GMAIL.
If there's no history, you can't build on the history. If you don't teach the value of learning the history before diving-in to a project (a.k.a. actually using competing forum software before starting on your own), then developers won't do it. And no matter how experienced and "respected" they are, well, we still end up with the Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers phenom.
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re HyperCard - MSFT is trying a bit with Sway. Still needs a lot of work to make it anything like the genius that was HyperCard....
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How!? You just drag it.
Try positioning an image at the the top of a column. Notice that it is almost, but visibly not quite aligned with the text at the top of the adjacent column. Move it 1 mm to align with the text. This causes the text that it's invisibly attached to to move slightly, and suddenly the image jumps to the previous page. Undo. Move the image 1/2 mm. Ok, it didn't jump, but your picky client-from-hell (my ex-wife) says it's still not aligned. Move it a little more. It jumps. Undo. Move it half that distance. Ok.
Notice a misspelled word somewhere on the previous page. Fix it. Deleting the incorrect letter changes the text spacing enough that the picture jumps to the previous page, and inserting the correct letter doesn't fix the picture position. Spend another 10 minutes getting the picture back where it belongs.
Repeat (O(n2) or worse) for every picture in the document.
Using absolute positioning on the page can help, but not eliminate, the problem. Even if you specify that the pictures are positioned absolutely on the page, they are still attached to the text closest to the picture. If the paragraph spans a page or column boundary you're in for pain; if it moves even slightly, they are prone to being positioned absolutely relative to the wrong page.
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re HyperCard - MSFT is trying a bit with Sway.
Hm, I'll have to play with that for awhile. Haven't heard of it before.
They have a pretty good environments for kids in Kodu and Project Spark. So they're definitely trying, and the work they're doing is God's work. And, like Apple back with HyperCard, they've giving the products away for free, which is great.
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This causes the text that it's invisibly attached to to move slightly, and sudden the image jumps to the previous page.
So right-click it and put it in "float" mode instead of "inline" mode. I think I have those terms right.
Notice a misspelled word somewhere on the previous page. Fix it. Deleting the incorrect letter changes the text spacing enough that the picture jumps to the previous page, and inserting the correct letter doesn't fix the picture position.
If it matters that much what page its on, put in a manual page break.
Anyway, whatever, I don't want this thread to turn into a "people who don't know how to use Word bitch and moan about Word" thread. If you want to bitch and moan about Word, go somewhere else. Like the nearest oubliette.
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I don't want this thread to turn into a "people who don't know how to use Word bitch and moan about Word" thread.
Fair enough, but earlier you wrote:
@cartman82 said:
This is the answer to that question.Which leads to those infuriating moments in Word where your'e trying to "trick" one of those invisible markup elements to stick to a certain element.
... what does that even mean? I guess there's a little weirdness around tables sometimes.
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Hm, I'll have to play with that for awhile. Haven't heard of it before.
It's still very early and only like hypercard in the sense of having "cards" and "embedding" various things into it. No flow control (yet). But maybe someday?
They also have PowerApps.
And Project Siena
Microsoft "Project Siena" - Official app in the Microsoft Store
Microsoft Project Siena (code name) is a breakthrough technology that enables your business experts, analysts and imagineers to create transformative business apps. With Siena, they can now build custom apps with rich visuals, filled with custom intelligence and functionality, with no programming...
So at least they're trying.
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They have a pretty good environments for kids in Kodu and Project Spark. So they're definitely trying, and the work they're doing is God's work. And, like Apple back with HyperCard, they've giving the products away for free, which is great.
That reminds me, now that I have a version of Windows >= 8, I should go install Spark.
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Oh yeah, that $0.00 is real expensive. Usability studies only cost time, the time they're already giving away for free.
Who the fuck are you to decide what will people do with their spare time?
You know what this reminds me of?
Imagine a cobbler. He knows how to cobble, and make shoes. Maybe he works for a big company, and does a little hobby hobbling on the side. His products are not as nice as the big brands, but whatever. He likes doing it, it makes him happy.
In fact, he likes to hobble so much, he decides he's gonna give some of his shoes away to the poor.
But then, some rich fuck who never does anything for anyone comes along and goes "Whoa whoa there, buddy. You can't just cobble these crappy shoes like that. You need to do a study of which feet size is the most prevalent among the poor. Then, research the latest industrial designs and material sciences, so your customers don't feel inferior to the people who paid for really fancy branded shoes. Oh, and if someone wants to complain or needs help, better schedule some office hours too. Big brands do it, so you must too!"
But hobbler doesn't know or cares anything about studies or design. He doesn't like doing any of that stuff in his free time. All he wants is to do his hobby and share it with the world.
"WELL THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH! IN FACT, IF YOU REALLY CARED, YOU'D MAKE HOUSE CALLS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS! YOU'D FIT THE SHOES YOURSELF! YOU'D LICK THEIR FEET IF THEY'RE FILTHY! ANYTHING ELSE MEANS YOU HATE YOUR CUSTOMERS! YOU DONT HATE YOUR CUSTOMERS, DONT YOU!?" yells the rich lazy asshole (all with the fake crocodile tears pouring down his face), and storms out.
Then on his way home, some crippled bum asks him for help getting up. "FUCK YOU PAY ME!"
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Right; but then at the same time they've ported all of their .net and ASP stuff into the open source crapfest, destroyed backwards-compatibility with both .net Core 5 and Entity Framework 7, have failed to fix all the Intellisense and strong-typing breaks that the
asyncandawaitkeywords have introduced (not to mention there's leftover typing errors with LINQ still, after all these years, that neither Intellisense or the compiler will detect.) They still don't have a GUI for many/most of the operations Nuget supports in VS2015. Not to mention the general chintziness of VS2015 autocomplete, where they seem to have completely eschewed any notion of making their text animations look good at all. (I blame ReSharper for that one; ReSharper got C# developers used to the idea that code windows should animate like utter ass.)So they're trying in one area, but back-sliding in another.
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Who the fuck are you to decide what will people do with their spare time?
I don't give a shit what they do.
I'm just applying the saying, "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right".
If you're going to make software, slap your name on it, and release it to the public, don't you want to make good software? That's all I'm saying.
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If you're going to make software, slap your name on it, and release it to the public, don't you want to make good software? That's all I'm saying.
and if their definition of "good software" differs from yours?
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I don't give a shit what they do.
I'm just applying the saying, "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right".
If you're going to make software, slap your name on it, and release it to the public, don't you want to make good software? That's all I'm saying.
The best I could. But there are limits to what a single person or small team can do.
At some point, you just need to accept this is as good as it gets without a big team with million dollar budgets.
Does that mean OSS creates worse software than commercial? Very often yes. In case of user-facing apps, almost always yes.
And that's OK. I mean, if you invest 10 times the human effort, you get a better product. Why is this even a debate?
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The best I could. But there are limits to what a single person or small team can do.
Of course there is. That's not the point.
If you know you can't do the project because you don't have the manpower, don't release the shitty shit and subject us all to it. Just leave it on your own private HD where it won't make everybody believe the software industry is full of jackasses who can't right good software to save their own ass.
Does that mean OSS creates worse software than commercial? Very often yes. In case of user-facing apps, almost always yes.
Then why are they released? If you know they're bad, why the fuck are you flinging them at the public!? Why are you putting your name on it? I can only assume because you're proud of it, right? Why would you be proud of creating shit?
And that's OK. I mean, if you invest 10 times the human effort, you get a better product. Why is this even a debate?
It's not a debate, it's you missing the point.
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Then why are they released? If you know they're bad, why the fuck are you flinging them at the public!? Why are you putting your name on it? I can only assume because you're proud of it, right? Why would you be proud of creating shit?
Can it get the job done? Can a user accomplish thing X using your software, that they couldn't accomplish without it?
If yes, then you did a good deed for this user and your software should exist in the world.Can a fellow developer look at your source code and learn how to code something?
If yes, and you add appropriate disclaimers for ordinary users, you did a good deed and your software should exist in the world.If you want better software, pay for it. Otherwise, take what handouts volunteers are willing to give. Bitch about it, whatever, but don't say it shouldn't exist.
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Can it get the job done? Can a user accomplish thing X using your software, that they couldn't accomplish without it?
Right but 99.999% of these pieces of shitty software do not meet that qualification. Git certainly doesn't, and yet it's released anyway. Explain that.
Can a fellow developer look at your source code and learn how to code something?
Oh, is this maybe the criteria that Git falls under? But oh wait:
If yes, and you add appropriate disclaimers for ordinary users,
There's no disclaimer, so nope. Never mind.
So explain to be why Git is released?
The thing is I'm actually ok with the rules you're laying out here, but you're the only open source fan I've seen ever express these rules, and they certainly aren't being followed by any popular open source products. Not even Linux itself, not even to name some of the lesser products.
If you want better software, pay for it.
I do.
Bitch about it, whatever, but don't say it shouldn't exist.
I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, I'm saying it should be good. Again, you seem to be missing the point here.
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Real software developers understand the importance of an applications user experience.
I would love to live in your fairy tale world.
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Nah; it's a "no true Scotsman" type of thing. That's how I define "real software developers" so that sentence is by definition true to me.
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The more I work, read about people's experiences, and use products, the more I feel "real software developers" are a dying breed, undervalued and failing to reproduce.
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No independant cobbler worth their shit puts together shoes that are unattractive or poorly fitting. Before the industrial revolution, it was common to have craftsmen know the ins and outs of the entirety of their job; it's the factory mentality that says "I know my widget and you know yours and never the twain shall meet".
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What does "a piece of piss" imply? It's difficult to embed?
So it is easy to embed.
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don't release the shitty shit and subject us all to it
If you don't like it, don't use it. Nobody subject you to anything, except yourself.
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and if their definition of "good software" differs from yours?
YMBNH
Rule number one: blakeyrat is always right.
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Rule number one: blakeyrat is always right.
that's not rule one.
Rule one is "Do not act incautiously towards unarmed wizened old men"
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Where's the class that shows off the Windows 2000 default settings (with the hiding of menu items) and discusses why hiding the menu items to put the computer into a "easy mode" was a bad stupid idea which didn't work?
I don't get how you can say that and be such a Ribbon booster at the same time. The Ribbon hides every menu item behind a wall of hieroglyphics that all look the same, requiring the constant use of tooltips to figure out what anything does. How is that not a bad stupid idea?
NINE YEARS since that fucking thing first appeared and still my eyeballs skid straight past the Undo arrow and the Help circle and I have to go "oh yeah, those aren't even on the menus any more". And Tools > Options is where now? Oh, it's been shredded and then swept up behind that pseudo Start button with all the other stuff they couldn't figure out what to name a Ribbon tab for. SO MUCH HATE.
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Imagine a cobbler.
Nonononono. It's more like the cobbler only cares about making his shoes shiny and full of decorations and shit, but decides making soles is boring, so he decides to just stuff a bunch of cardboard painted black in their place. And then you get those shoes, you're very grateful to the cobbler for giving such nice and shiny shoes for free, but once you start wearing it the cardboard falls out and your feet get frostbitten and you die of gangrene.
And then when your mourning wife decides to find the cobbler and chew him out, a bunch of idiots gather around and tell her to stop complaining, because you got the shoes for free.
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Small or single person team aren't the same thing. @blakeyrat is complaining about the quality of Microsoft's oss, as if releasing the code reduced it's quality by magic.
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But hobbler doesn't know or cares anything about studies or design. He doesn't like doing any of that stuff in his free time. All he wants is to do his hobby and share it with the world.
Meanwhile, the commercial producers have all started outsourcing their manufacturing to China, and the durability of the shoes they sell at such vastly inflated prices is going inexorably to shit. The hobbler's shoes don't look quite as slick, and they take a little breaking in, but once that's done they fit comfortably and they last for fucking YEARS. Many people have come to prefer them to the commercial shoes; so many people, in fact, that sales of commercial shoes have started to take a hit.
And the rich fuck who never does anything for anyone just can't stand seeing all those poor people getting around in fifteen-year-old shoes that still work perfectly well for them. It makes him livid. After all, he tried them once for five minutes and got a blister.
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Then why are they released?
I "release" (what's "released" anyway, just available on the internet, something that was already arbitrarily marked as 1.0, something that made a press release about releasing?) all things I'm not getting paid for because there is absolutely no reason not to. That's software that is either a) an experiment/research thing or b) something I made for myself for very specific thing (e.g. Git falls into that category as well; that's why it's "released" — it was made for the kernel developers for developing the kernel because alternatives did not cut it). And almost none of things have an ambition of becoming a "product", and I don't bother with the boring parts that aren't useful for me like GUIs and whatnot. How evil.
Because see, open source is not a development model. It's a philosophy. And it's about sharing code, nothing more, nothing less. Because even if it's not a neat 59.99€ ready-to-use-by-literally-everyone package, the bits and pieces of it are often useful to other developers. It's also why initial design is very rarely driven by usability studies and user surveys and whatnot: because the only user it's intended for is the developer themselves.
By all means call out big projects on not getting their shit together, but assuming any single open source project is striving to be that is a fundamental mistake. And telling people to not release their code is more harmful than the released code could ever be, even if the code is bad.
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they last for fucking YEARS
Until he makes a model called "FAIRY 3.0" that replaces shoelaces with FAIRY MAGIC AUTOSIZE that is always too tight and makes your feet hurt.
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why? (paraphrase)
Because every fucker writing these softwarez needs to write their own. Or WYSIWYG Version (current -1) doesn't support some arbitrary feature, so rather than adding that feature they go "FUCK IT THAT IS USELESS" and make their own. No one learns from the past because they throw out the past an make something new. And then the NEXT version has some arbitrary feature that doesn't work, so... (etc etc)
And the worst part of all of this is it feels like I'm the only one who's actually speaking-out about this insanity. To commandeer a political joke that was stale when I was a baby, where's the outrage? Where is it?
Bitch, please, I've been raging against retarded as shit UI for a long time. Usually you're the first to reply with "you just do understand new tech and are afraid of it". So in this instance, you get a
. Rage all you want, but don't think you're the special only one.
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The more I work, read about people's experiences, and use products, the more I feel "real software developers" are a dying breed, undervalued and failing to reproduce.
Well unfortunately most companies don't value you being able to see the bigger picture in any project. A lot of companies I have worked at have strictly forbade it.
it's the factory mentality that says "I know my widget and you know yours and never the twain shall meet".
Most people see their jobs as a means to an end and a lot of developers do as little as possible to get the job done. They won't read anything, they won't bother bettering themselves ... they just don't want to get bollocked.
A lot of people I have worked with that did stuff outside of the purely techy stuff just didn't have any ability to think critically about anything. There are a lot of people that call themselves designers because they know the keyboard short cuts in photoshop.
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Help circle
To be fair if you press help in any Microsoft Application and expect something useful you deserve everything you get.
So it is probably best if it is never found.
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Most people see their jobs as a means to an end
Again, industrial revolution mindset vs independent craftsman mindset. My point is just that you can totally do things the other way, it's not like all of human nature everywhere since the dawn of time was in this industrial mindset. There are other ways we could have structured our society in IT, but we chose not to. If we want, we could choose something else.
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Right but 99.999% of these pieces of shitty software do not meet that qualification. Git certainly doesn't, and yet it's released anyway. Explain that.
You can do version control without a version control tool? What you mean like copy-pasting timestamped directories on to an FTP server?
So explain to be why Git is released?
Because it was made, it works and a lot of people find it useful.
Why shouldn't it be released? Because you don't like it?
The thing is I'm actually ok with the rules you're laying out here, but you're the only open source fan I've seen ever express these rules, and they certainly aren't being followed by any popular open source products. Not even Linux itself, not even to name some of the lesser products.
I'm not a fan of OSS. Nor do I make OSS.
I am neutral.
I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, I'm saying it should be good.
That's like saying "all people should be good" or "there should be peace in the world".
I mean, yeah. OK. No argument there.
"Software should be good." -- Blakeyrat
You heard it here first folks! Spread the Word!
Introducing Microsoft PowerApps
Urban Dictionary: piece of piss
