Software disenchantment

[Tsaukpaetra]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra What happens if you open Settings?

[pie_flavor]

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

[M_Adams]

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra ...yeah, not having the feature at all is always an option. Didn't think of that. You got me. Unless you mean they should all switch to vector graphics?

Nah, fractal compressed images...

[Tsaukpaetra]

article @M_Adams linked said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra ...yeah, not having the feature at all is always an option. Didn't think of that. You got me. Unless you mean they should all switch to vector graphics?

Nah, fractal compressed images...

Fractal video compression ratios of 25:1–244:1 have been achieved in reasonable compression times (2.4 to 66 sec/frame).

66 seconds per frame?!?! What the brick???

[Tsaukpaetra]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

And that's where the settings (such as they are) are. And?

[M_Adams]

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

article @M_Adams linked said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra ...yeah, not having the feature at all is always an option. Didn't think of that. You got me. Unless you mean they should all switch to vector graphics?

Nah, fractal compressed images...

Fractal video compression ratios of 25:1–244:1 have been achieved in reasonable compression times (2.4 to 66 sec/frame).

66 seconds per frame?!?! What the brick???

Yep! The reason is you are basically (here I start hand waving a bunch because in depth details are ) decomposing the image into multiple functions that when interleaved “randomly” for enough iterations , generate the original image. That’s a hard slog.

[blakeyrat]

Every time I see the title of this thread I think about the song Word Disassociation so I'm linking it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRisDso99s0

Ok done.

[masonwheeler]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

I mean some people do it for "fun" and more power to them, but no software that is given to the general public to actually use should be from developers who wrote it for "fun". That's how you get Git.

Not at all. Git was written to solve a very specific problem. The way we get the mess that is associated with Git today is way too many people taking a highly specialized tool and trying to apply it to a general-purpose scenario to which it's ill-suited.

[blakeyrat]

@masonwheeler That's A problem with Git, but it's not the main problem with Git, which is that it was coded by people who's attitude towards their users was "fuck you! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"

[masonwheeler]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@boomzilla said in Software disenchantment:

It is to the extent that developing software is really open ended problem solving.

Ok.

But any problem can be broken down into steps, yes? Who's to say there's a monopoly, that only software developers are capable of that.

Breaking down a problem into steps, within the specific context of getting a computer to do what you want it to do, is probably the most simple and succinct definition you can come up with of what a software developer actually does. And yes, it is its own very specialized domain of knowledge. People not understanding the nuances of how computers work, what their strengths and weaknesses and limitations are, is how we get both bad software and bad legal policy. (GDPR, EU copyright directives, the ongoing push for "safe encryption backdoors," etc.)

[masonwheeler]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

Do you realize how much work it requires to create?

Nobody here brought up "amount of work" until just now.

Even if it took him his entire lifetime, the answer is still "sure why not?"

Because we're talking about ideals here--by the standard you set out--and what you just described is far from ideal. The best we've been able to do, judging by objective results at least, is the exact opposite of that: specialization and division of labor. It means that we recognize that Fred the Architect would be wasting his time and effort building tools if he's better at architecting than building tools and there's a tool-builder who is better at tool-building than at architecting. You get more utility out of letting the tool-builder build tools for him to architect with, than you would out of having both of them build tools and architect individually.

That's how we built the modern world. You really want to undo it?

[masonwheeler]

@HardwareGeek said in Software disenchantment:

No. Vim users don't think like that, either.

#NotAllVimUsers

[blakeyrat]

@masonwheeler Yes yes earlier this week everybody said I was a dumbass stupid moron idiot thanks for coming back and making sure you repeated all that, yes I am stupid, I am horrible, I am the worst person ever, so glad you're telling me so.

[HardwareGeek]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@masonwheeler That's A problem with Git, but it's not the main problem with Git, which is that it was coded by people who's attitude towards their users was "fuck you! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"

While that may be a pretty good description of Linus's attitude toward people in general — users, colleagues, everybody — git was written for a very specific set of users who were comfortable using it as written. It was when it started being used by people who were never its target users in ways it was never intended to be used that the problems started. His attitude toward other users may not be friendly, but it's also not entirely unreasonable, given his sole focus on the Linux kernel. Git is a tool to facilitate kernel development, nothing more. If it happens to be useful to other people, too, whatever. If not, "Go away; I didn't write it for you."

[blakeyrat]

@HardwareGeek But guess what. I have to use it every day. So fuck him. And fuck you for defending him.

[pie_flavor]

@blakeyrat No, fuck the person who's making you use it. This is like the countless front page stories where someone is asked by management to bodge a fix and they promise it's only for this, and then six months later everyone uses it for everything. It's not the developer's fault.

[pie_flavor]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@masonwheeler Yes yes earlier this week everybody said I was a dumbass stupid moron idiot thanks for coming back and making sure you repeated all that, yes I am stupid, I am horrible, I am the worst person ever, so glad you're telling me so.

He wanted to make sure you realized it, though, because you never really acknowledge that you're wrong outside of shitposting like this.

[pie_flavor]

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

And that's where the settings (such as they are) are. And?

You know, there's a reason I capitalized Settings. What happens when you open the Settings app? The one labeled Settings and not Control Panel?

[Jaloopa]

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

There's plenty of GUI. I'm doing my best to get rid of it, but doing so seems to mean moving to Linux

What's wrong with Server Core?

[Tsaukpaetra]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

And that's where the settings (such as they are) are. And?

You know, there's a reason I capitalized Settings. What happens when you open the Settings app? The one labeled Settings and not Control Panel?

There exists no such thing, I removed it because it is not needed.

[Tsaukpaetra]

@Jaloopa said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

There's plenty of GUI. I'm doing my best to get rid of it, but doing so seems to mean moving to Linux

What's wrong with Server Core?

IIRC it doesn't run UE4 servers because not everything is built for 64 bit. Additionally, I'm not entirely sure the ODBC drivers got properly set up.
Additionally I haven't had time to rewrite things to run shit through powershell.

[pie_flavor]

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

And that's where the settings (such as they are) are. And?

You know, there's a reason I capitalized Settings. What happens when you open the Settings app? The one labeled Settings and not Control Panel?

There exists no such thing, I removed it because it is not needed.

[boomzilla]

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@masonwheeler Yes yes earlier this week everybody said I was a dumbass stupid moron idiot thanks for coming back and making sure you repeated all that, yes I am stupid, I am horrible, I am the worst person ever, so glad you're telling me so.

#ItTakesAVillage

And you're our idiot.

[Tsaukpaetra]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Software disenchantment:

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@Tsaukpaetra That's Control Panel.

And that's where the settings (such as they are) are. And?

You know, there's a reason I capitalized Settings. What happens when you open the Settings app? The one labeled Settings and not Control Panel?

There exists no such thing, I removed it because it is not needed.

Thus suitably demonstrating my idea has merit! Incontrovertible proof!

[Bulb]

@Zecc

Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.

Only in software, it’s fine if a program runs at 1% or even 0.01% of the possible performance.

That argument is actually bullshit. In each and every field of endeavour, we, as humans, generally only do what is good enough.

Making more efficient engines saves a lot of money, so we do. Building with less material saves a lot of money, so we do. Making more efficient software doesn't save much money, so we don't. Except when it does, because it has to run on cheap embedded hardware ­– then we also do!

There is a lot of simple crap where being better does not pay off, so nobody tries.

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Magus said in Software disenchantment:

You don't know many developers. I've seen many fall down the Unix hole.

Probably because it solved their problem that they couldn't solve otherwise. Also known as using software that's easiest to use.

Well, it exists and gets the job done.

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

Our entire programming ecosystem is thoroughly fucked up, incredibly overcomplicated and overly reliant on broken half-assed CLI tools. But none of this is because it was designed to be hard. More often than not, it's the opposite - it's because software was designed to be easy for everyone - or rather, because the design goal was to be easy for everyone, but the developers lacked skill to really make it so, and ended up with PHP.

Unix is very much embodiment of the Worse Is Better approach. Back then in Bell Labs they were trying to write a great operating system, Multics, but they couldn't get it off the ground. So Thompson and Richie sat down a cobbled together Unix instead. It was intentionally hard on the application programmer. There are zillions of cases where shit happens, so here you have, and the signals are utter pain to work with. But it shipped. Shipping Is A Feature. And it had all these tools for text manipulation – it was passed up as an office package after all – and they were horrible kludges, but they allowed to get things done with a bit of shell duct tape. It still needed a developer versed in the shell to do that, but anything else did as well and for all the ugly in Bourne shell, it does allow getting things done quickly, so it spread. It got things done.

[topspin]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

@blakeyrat No, fuck the person who's making you use it. This is like the countless front page stories where someone is asked by management to bodge a fix and they promise it's only for this, and then six months later everyone uses it for everything. It's not the developer's fault.

You're way too young to remember when there were front page stories.

[Bulb]

@masonwheeler said in Software disenchantment:

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

I mean some people do it for "fun" and more power to them, but no software that is given to the general public to actually use should be from developers who wrote it for "fun". That's how you get Git.

Not at all. Git was written to solve a very specific problem.

No, Git was very much written to solve a general purpose problem of software development where branches exist. It does it so well, that almost everybody switched to it. The UI is a bit ad-hoc, but it exists and gets the job done, which can't be said of most of the other options (ok, Mercurial and Bazaar mostly do as well, but there is less tooling for them).

@blakeyrat said in Software disenchantment:

@masonwheeler That's A problem with Git, but it's not the main problem with Git, which is that it was coded by people who's attitude towards their users was "fuck you! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"

Git is coded by people who very, very, very deeply do care about the users (and not least because they are users too). They, however, do care more about the power users. Everybody uses Git because it is powerfull. Powefull and simple don't go together. Git chose powerfull and it turned out to be a good choice. You'd prefer simple. Fine, you can't please everyone.

[topspin]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

Everybody uses Git because it is powerfull. Powefull and simple don't go together.

From what I've read (I haven't tried), mercurial is almost as powerful while being much simpler to use.

And while you get shit for admitting it, I've read a lot about it and understand the basic concepts, but for everything unusual I just google whatever I have to type in. It's basically exactly like xkcd://git.

[Bulb]

@topspin said in Software disenchantment:

mercurial is almost as powerful while being much simpler to use.

… and you can use mercurial as git client and vice versa though the one repository I wanted to actually use it on had some problems with very, very funky branch names.

[Bulb]

@topspin said in Software disenchantment:

From what I've read (I haven't tried), mercurial is almost as powerful while being much simpler to use.

Yes, the mercurial UI was a bit more designed at the start. The Git one kinda happened and there was fixed due to backward compatibility.

[MrL]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

It does it so well, that almost everybody switched to it.

Hah, this is complete bullshit. People switch to git with exactly zero thoughts about it. They heard it's popular, they heard big companies use it, someone told them 'use git', or they just encounter it at work. There's zero consideration about its features, strong/weak sides and zero comparison with other products. Most people I meet at work don't even know that there is anything else.

Git is coded by people who very, very, very deeply do care about the users (and not least because they are users too). They, however, do care more about the power users.

They care about themselves as users, period.

Everybody uses Git because it is powerfull.

No, most people use 'clone', 'commit', 'push', advanced super users use 'branch'. Everything beyond that is a 'don't touch' stuff. And there's a good reason for it: if you want to write software, get the shit done week after week, you don't want your tools to get in the way. You want things to be simple - write code, click a button and go home.

[pie_flavor]

@topspin I've read all of them.

[pie_flavor]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

UI is a bit ad-hoc, but it exists and gets the job done

... what?
There is no UI. It syntax highlights in Vim sometimes, and that's about it.

[HardwareGeek]

@pie_flavor said in Software disenchantment:

There is no UI.

That's ridiculous. Users interact with it, and it does stuff in response. That can't happen without a UI. It's not a GUI, but it is a UI. What's more, it does have a GUI, more than one. They're third-party, but you can't say they don't exist. (Well, you can, and did, but you're wrong.)

Filed under: It's not good to channel Blakey.

[Gąska]

@HardwareGeek there's also first-party git GUI, which sucks more than entire rest of git combined.

[Bulb]

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

Hah, this is complete bullshit. People switch to git with exactly zero thoughts about it.

Definitely not the case here. People use Git here because the seniors lobby for it. Because the seniors, who remember CVS, and Subversion, and have to publish the work in TFS anyway, still choose to use Git, even just for themselves, because it has the features that nothing else does.

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

No, most people use 'clone', 'commit', 'push', advanced super users use 'branch'. Everything beyond that is a 'don't touch' stuff.

Yes, unfortunately there are many such people.

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

And there's a good reason for it: if you want to write software, get the shit done week after week, you don't want your tools to get in the way. You want things to be simple - write code, click a button and go home.

No, you want your tool to help you. And git can, but you have to spend a bit of time understanding it. Every tool that can help you a lot requires that.

[Bulb]

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@HardwareGeek there's also first-party git GUI, which sucks more than entire rest of git combined.

It only sucks in one aspect – the utterly undiscoverable click-on-the-icon-does-something-else-than-click-on-the-name. Otherwise it gets the job done and gets it done better than most of the third party GUIs that are utterly useless because they drop the features in the name of simplicity.

[Gąska]

@Bulb hex editor gets the job done too. If your GUI is no better than hex editor, it's not good, even if it gets the job done.

[topspin]

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Bulb hex editor gets the job done too. If your GUI is no better than hex editor, it's not good, even if it gets the job done.

Your hex editor has a GUI?

[Gąska]

@topspin I never said whether my hex editor has GUI or not. Both are better than official Git GUI.

_{But, yes.}

[Applied Mediocrity]

I must be using the wrong hex editor

[Bulb]

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Bulb hex editor gets the job done too. If your GUI is no better than hex editor, it's not good, even if it gets the job done.

Yes. And nobody managed to write such GUI yet. And it's not a lack of trying. Many tried. Nobody succeeded completely.

[MrL]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

People use Git here because the seniors lobby for it.

What I said exactly.

Because the seniors, who remember CVS, and Subversion, and have to publish the work in TFS anyway, still choose to use Git, even just for themselves, because it has the features that nothing else does.

I know such seniors. They divide into two groups. Clueless 'I heard git is great' and complicator gloves fetishists who actually like dealing with painful tools.

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

No, most people use 'clone', 'commit', 'push', advanced super users use 'branch'. Everything beyond that is a 'don't touch' stuff.

Yes, unfortunately there are many such people.

That's not unfortunate, but completely natural and desirable. Firstly, no normal person wants to acquire a PhD in handling a versioning tool. If you have any sense you learn your language(s), your platform(s) and business domain of your product. You concentrate your efforts on making better software, not on masturbatory sessions with overcomplicated tools. Secondly, simple branch-for-feature-merge-to-develop kind of works and the moment you start doing something more complicated, you're in a world of pain.

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:
No, you want your tool to help you. And git can, but you have to spend a bit of time understanding it. Every tool that can help you a lot requires that.

Help with what? From what I've seen in 9 out of every 10 projects none of 'powerful' features are ever used.

@topspin said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

@Bulb hex editor gets the job done too. If your GUI is no better than hex editor, it's not good, even if it gets the job done.

Your hex editor has a GUI?

Hiew has better UI than anything I've seen for git. You can learn pretty much everything about its functionality from in-program help.

[dkf]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

Shipping Is A Feature.

Arguably it's the primary feature of all. That which never ships, nobody gives a about.

[dkf]

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

And nobody managed to write such GUI yet.

For hex editing or for being an interface to git?

[El_Heffe]

@Jaloopa said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

the problem domain for software development software is software development

An accountant shouldn't need to know software development to make a tool to help them with their accountancy. An architect shouldn't have to know about software development to be able to make an architecture tool.

We already tried that. It was called Visual Basic. And we see how well THAT worked out.

If I need a wrench, but I have no knowledge about machining or metal-working, I'm going to end up making a really shitty wrench that doesn't work very well. Computer software is not magically exempt from reality.

[admiral_p]

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

People use Git here because the seniors lobby for it.

What I said exactly.

Because the seniors, who remember CVS, and Subversion, and have to publish the work in TFS anyway, still choose to use Git, even just for themselves, because it has the features that nothing else does.

I know such seniors. They divide into two groups. Clueless 'I heard git is great' and complicator gloves fetishists who actually like dealing with painful tools.

"I divide people that go against the point I'm trying to prove in two categories, each of which is an insult".

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

No, most people use 'clone', 'commit', 'push', advanced super users use 'branch'. Everything beyond that is a 'don't touch' stuff.

Yes, unfortunately there are many such people.

That's not unfortunate, but completely natural and desirable. Firstly, no normal person wants to acquire a PhD in handling a versioning tool. If you have any sense you learn your language(s), your platform(s) and business domain of your product. You concentrate your efforts on making better software, not on masturbatory sessions with overcomplicated tools. Secondly, simple branch-for-feature-merge-to-develop kind of works and the moment you start doing something more complicated, you're in a world of pain.

You are a musician, you wish to record your own stuff. There is a somewhat wide variety of choices of DAWs, but they all require the musician to understand stuff that is not strictly connected to the music they make. Therefore, Garageband is the best software of its kind for a musician to use.

Unfortunately, Garageband is also very limited (as the name somewhat implies), and to make anything even remotely professional sounding (and it could be arguable that today the production is or at least can be more important than the music itself) you need to delve into digital audio theory, learn to use a super-complicated tool, each with their own WTFs, each packed with tons of features that most will never use (until you need them).

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:
No, you want your tool to help you. And git can, but you have to spend a bit of time understanding it. Every tool that can help you a lot requires that.

Help with what? From what I've seen in 9 out of every 10 projects none of 'powerful' features are ever used.

What's your problem with the features you don't use? Don't use them, so they don't get in the way.

[Gąska]

@admiral_p said in Software disenchantment:

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

@Bulb said in Software disenchantment:

People use Git here because the seniors lobby for it.

What I said exactly.

Because the seniors, who remember CVS, and Subversion, and have to publish the work in TFS anyway, still choose to use Git, even just for themselves, because it has the features that nothing else does.

I know such seniors. They divide into two groups. Clueless 'I heard git is great' and complicator gloves fetishists who actually like dealing with painful tools.

"I divide people that go against the point I'm trying to prove in two categories, each of which is an insult".

And this disproves his argument how exactly?

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:

No, most people use 'clone', 'commit', 'push', advanced super users use 'branch'. Everything beyond that is a 'don't touch' stuff.

Yes, unfortunately there are many such people.

That's not unfortunate, but completely natural and desirable. Firstly, no normal person wants to acquire a PhD in handling a versioning tool. If you have any sense you learn your language(s), your platform(s) and business domain of your product. You concentrate your efforts on making better software, not on masturbatory sessions with overcomplicated tools. Secondly, simple branch-for-feature-merge-to-develop kind of works and the moment you start doing something more complicated, you're in a world of pain.

You are a musician, you wish to record your own stuff. There is a somewhat wide variety of choices of DAWs, but they all require the musician to understand stuff that is not strictly connected to the music they make. Therefore, Garageband is the best software of its kind for a musician to use.

Unfortunately, Garageband is also very limited (as the name somewhat implies), and to make anything even remotely professional sounding (and it could be arguable that today the production is or at least can be more important than the music itself) you need to delve into digital audio theory, learn to use a super-complicated tool, each with their own WTFs, each packed with tons of features that most will never use (until you need them).

And your point is...?

@MrL said in Software disenchantment:
No, you want your tool to help you. And git can, but you have to spend a bit of time understanding it. Every tool that can help you a lot requires that.

Help with what? From what I've seen in 9 out of every 10 projects none of 'powerful' features are ever used.

What's your problem with the features you don't use? Don't use them, so they don't get in the way.

The problem is that Git is designed around those never used features, making everyone else suffer more. For example, git push doubles as the command to remove branches, detached head is way too easy to invoke and can cause commits to be gone forever, and there's a mandatory step of staging between making a change and committing, which is PITA whenever you realize you don't want to commit something during writing of commit message, because now you find yourself scrambling the web for manuals because the official ones say nothing, and are surprised for the third time in the month that the command to remove things from staging is the same command you use to revert bad merge (git reset).

[topspin]

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

there's a mandatory step of staging between making a change and committing, which is PITA whenever you realize you don't want to commit something during writing of commit message, because now you find yourself scrambling the web for manuals because the official ones say nothing, and are surprised for the third time in the month that the command to remove things from staging is the same command you use to revert bad merge (git reset).

To be fair, you can use git commit -a or list files to skip the staging process. And git status explicitly tells you which files are staged and that you can use git reset to unstage (as well as other things to do with the listed files, like staging or reverting changes).

[Gąska]

@topspin said in Software disenchantment:

@Gąska said in Software disenchantment:

there's a mandatory step of staging between making a change and committing, which is PITA whenever you realize you don't want to commit something during writing of commit message, because now you find yourself scrambling the web for manuals because the official ones say nothing, and are surprised for the third time in the month that the command to remove things from staging is the same command you use to revert bad merge (git reset).

To be fair, you can use git commit -a

Not when I have new files.

or list files to skip the staging process.

Yeah, it would save me so much work.

And git status explicitly tells you which files are staged and that you can use git reset to unstage

The problem isn't that I don't know which files I have staged. The problem is that the command for unstaging is called "reset", and this command does 8 different things depending on what arguments you pass, most of them unrelated to staging.