4 ms·

Text configuration is so far beyond that vast majority of end users. Hacker News truly is living in a bubble.

michaelmrose 8y ago
I could train a computer illiterate to open a text file and change foo=bar to foo=Baz. Not to mention most things including red shift actually have a gui.
gregknicholson 8y ago
The majority of users would either (A) not care about their screen's colour temperature at all, or (B) just turn on Night Light using Gnome's settings. Redshift is very much a niche tool.
pasabagi 8y ago
Non-text configuration is beyond me. Changing text files is easy because I already know how to use a text editor. Changing something in a labyrinthine set of nested GUI menus that may or may not contain the option you want, that has no comments, is kinda horrible. And it's even more horrible if you end up editing hexidecimal values in regedit. I know there's this theoretical 'end user' who likes to point and click, but honestly, I've never met them. People who don't like computers just don't do configuration - having a GUI or not is besides the point - other than the fact it makes the howto of configuration difficult to communicate and specific to every app.
- overcast 8y ago
  You really are out of touch with the end users of most software then. You're not living in the corporate world dealing with them, and troubleshooting their issues. Most people come into work, click on the same exact shortcut on their desktop, type in the same exact data all day, and then leave. If that shortcut is missing for some reason, they can not do their job. If ANYTHING deviates from the norm, they can not do their job. Full stop. Could they type in the address of that web app without the shortcut? Of course, but they have NO clue what that even means. Copy and paste with the keyboard? That's a revelation to most. Many can't even type without looking at the keyboard. This is clearly a foreign world to you. Which is fine, but please don't act like you and your peers are anywhere near the other 99% of computer users. This is EXACTLY what people talk about when a discussion comes up about developers creating things for themselves, and not their end users.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    "If that shortcut is missing for some reason, they can not do their job." I don't expect everyone to edit their text configuration in vim but come on everyone can learn better than that. Acting like complete computer illiteracy is fate is nonsense. There are fewer and fewer of the people that grew up completely before computers and virtually every job requires some computer use at this point.
    - overcast 8y ago
      Sure they can, but twenty years experiences shows me they won't. You'd think it would be different between generations, but it's not. The new generation growing up now solely with smartphones is even less literate with computers.
      - pasabagi 8y ago
        I don't know if computer literacy is the problem here. I spent many years as a teenager heavily configuring my computers, despite having basically no knowledge about how they worked. I think it's more the case that some people are simply disinterested in computers, and as such, neither like textbased nor gui configuration - they would rather the computer just worked the way they expect it to. Which is, in my eyes, reasonable. These people tend to care about configuration solely when something isn't working, at which point they tend to go to google, or ask somebody. At which point, text based configuration makes more sense, because you can just copy and paste it (at the cost, I guess, of being more sensitive to small mistakes in syntax).
        overcast 8y ago
        If I could get 1% of end users to use google for their stupid questions, it would be a miracle.
        pasabagi 8y ago
        I don't blame them. People don't generally have the vocabulary to specify their problem, so googling isn't normally that helpful. If by luck, you find the right words, then you're (assuming windows) dropped into the online trash-heap of viruses and horror that are blogs and forums for windows computer problems. Then, if by more luck, it's not massively out of date or a trojan, you have to click through a million GUI menus, or perhaps edit a registry key - which is frankly daunting even if you like hexidecimal. Then nothing happens, because you have to reboot. I personally like that computers as they exist developed organically, and primarily reflect the culture and ideas of their programmers. Equally, I can see it's no fun at all if you're the kind of 'end-user' who really just wants microsoft word and the occasional video. My grandad can use IOS because it was designed explicitly for end-users - which shows that it's primarily a design problem, not a people problem.

I could train a computer illiterate to open a text file and change foo=bar to foo=Baz. Not to mention most things including red shift actually have a gui.

gregknicholson 8y ago

The majority of users would either (A) not care about their screen's colour temperature at all, or (B) just turn on Night Light using Gnome's settings. Redshift is very much a niche tool.

pasabagi 8y ago

Non-text configuration is beyond me. Changing text files is easy because I already know how to use a text editor. Changing something in a labyrinthine set of nested GUI menus that may or may not contain the option you want, that has no comments, is kinda horrible. And it's even more horrible if you end up editing hexidecimal values in regedit. I know there's this theoretical 'end user' who likes to point and click, but honestly, I've never met them. People who don't like computers just don't do configuration - having a GUI or not is besides the point - other than the fact it makes the howto of configuration difficult to communicate and specific to every app.

overcast 8y ago
You really are out of touch with the end users of most software then. You're not living in the corporate world dealing with them, and troubleshooting their issues. Most people come into work, click on the same exact shortcut on their desktop, type in the same exact data all day, and then leave. If that shortcut is missing for some reason, they can not do their job. If ANYTHING deviates from the norm, they can not do their job. Full stop. Could they type in the address of that web app without the shortcut? Of course, but they have NO clue what that even means. Copy and paste with the keyboard? That's a revelation to most. Many can't even type without looking at the keyboard. This is clearly a foreign world to you. Which is fine, but please don't act like you and your peers are anywhere near the other 99% of computer users. This is EXACTLY what people talk about when a discussion comes up about developers creating things for themselves, and not their end users.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  "If that shortcut is missing for some reason, they can not do their job." I don't expect everyone to edit their text configuration in vim but come on everyone can learn better than that. Acting like complete computer illiteracy is fate is nonsense. There are fewer and fewer of the people that grew up completely before computers and virtually every job requires some computer use at this point.
  - overcast 8y ago
    Sure they can, but twenty years experiences shows me they won't. You'd think it would be different between generations, but it's not. The new generation growing up now solely with smartphones is even less literate with computers.
    - pasabagi 8y ago
      I don't know if computer literacy is the problem here. I spent many years as a teenager heavily configuring my computers, despite having basically no knowledge about how they worked. I think it's more the case that some people are simply disinterested in computers, and as such, neither like textbased nor gui configuration - they would rather the computer just worked the way they expect it to. Which is, in my eyes, reasonable. These people tend to care about configuration solely when something isn't working, at which point they tend to go to google, or ask somebody. At which point, text based configuration makes more sense, because you can just copy and paste it (at the cost, I guess, of being more sensitive to small mistakes in syntax).
      - overcast 8y ago
        If I could get 1% of end users to use google for their stupid questions, it would be a miracle.
        pasabagi 8y ago
        I don't blame them. People don't generally have the vocabulary to specify their problem, so googling isn't normally that helpful. If by luck, you find the right words, then you're (assuming windows) dropped into the online trash-heap of viruses and horror that are blogs and forums for windows computer problems. Then, if by more luck, it's not massively out of date or a trojan, you have to click through a million GUI menus, or perhaps edit a registry key - which is frankly daunting even if you like hexidecimal. Then nothing happens, because you have to reboot. I personally like that computers as they exist developed organically, and primarily reflect the culture and ideas of their programmers. Equally, I can see it's no fun at all if you're the kind of 'end-user' who really just wants microsoft word and the occasional video. My grandad can use IOS because it was designed explicitly for end-users - which shows that it's primarily a design problem, not a people problem.