3 ms·

From the Linux side of the fence; Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial? Why encourage or tolerate a

by jrm4 5y ago

From the Linux side of the fence; Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial? Why encourage or tolerate an operating system (slash ecosystem of apps) with such a limited view of choice? Announcements like this really lay bare the collective dumbing down that these centralized ecosystems encourage. Someone's going to respond with "people don't like thinking about choices for things and just want simplicity," and I will point you to an American grocery store to remind you what utter BS that is. This is monopoly(ish) leveraging, perhaps not at its most harmful, but it's really silly.

groby_b 5y ago
I strongly encourage you to occasionally view the world through more than one lens. No matter what the OS, the default editor is important. Changes to the default editor that address long standing demands by the community are important. Communicating those changes to a wide audience is important as well. (And the Linux side of the fence could stand to learn a bit about communicating with the wider community) And that's why that article exists - because a tool used by a large user population just got significantly better. And that user population is mostly happy about the improvement. If you're not the audience, skipping it is an option.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Oh please. So what I'm hearing is, there are changes in software that a lot of people wanted for a long time, but weren't allowed to have for some reason? If only there were a model of software creation that let you fix that?
  - groby_b 5y ago
    What you're hearing is clearly what you want to hear, and nothing else.
okareaman 5y ago
How many people use Microsoft windows 10? Latest: 1.3 Billion https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices That, along with the tendency towards Bikeshedding, or Parkinson's law of triviality, means a lot of people care. Android has a comparable number of users, but I think we should compare desktop PC systems here and in this case, Linux users have much lower expectations of Linux Desktop along with not being nearly as many users.
- jrm4 5y ago
  What I'm suggesting is that insiders in IT are perhaps overestimating how much people care, as part of the general argument that Microsoft and Apple often dumb down the whole computer experience for everyone. Specifically: Okay, bikeshedding. Bikeshedding is what it is for individuals and their own environments; I do it, sometimes it's a waste of time, sometimes not. But this feels like bikeshedding on behalf of others, which is WEIRD for a tool like this. If you're an insider, than you probably have moved beyond, way beyond "Notepad for everything." If you're a non-techie, you likely don't use notepad at all, and if you do, not extensively in a way that makes this update interesting. If you're in the middle (first, who is this even?) old Notepad or new Notepad is still probably something transitory. The broad version of this is: IT generally does far too much in terms of trying to think about and creating dumb, unmodifiable and heavy handed entrenched interface designs for people who are not themselves.
51Cards 5y ago
When you buy a car are you concerned that it came with manufacturer monopoly provided radio, GPS, seats, tires and a jack? I mean you can go out and get third party versions of all of these things with improved functionality so why should they even include basic versions? Now how many people actually replace the radio in their car? Or the rims? Or the seats? A vast percentage of owners are very happy with the included version as they don't desire / require anything beyond that. It's not a monopoly, it's just including the basic features most users will be content with. Now if they forced you to keep Notepad associated with TXT files then we'd have an issue. (I'm looking at you Edge) (adding a note to address in comments likely coming about how media systems aren't easily replacable in cars anymore but I'm a child of the DIN radio era)
- jrm4 5y ago
  If I could literally change any of those things in my FOR FREE, INSTANTLY, AT NO MARGINAL COST, AT THE PRESS OF A BUTTON, WITH EASY UNDO then yes I would. I would also be happy to always help out other people and share my changes with my friends. And I do this when I can. Guess why I can't, now. Come ON people.
  - recursive 5y ago
    The more you configure stuff, the less it interoperates. That's my experience. Defaults for life.
    - jrm4 5y ago
      I'm sorry you're bad at interoperating things? Works fine for me.
      - recursive 5y ago
        Apology accepted. But for what it's worth, I definitely wasn't blaming you.
lemmsjid 5y ago
Not disagreeing with you (often have to preface internet comments with that :) but instead discussing. The grocery store example is quite revealing. Yes, you can point to the American grocery store, but what has been well studied there is that presenting people with choices creates its own form of stress. I certainly feel the stress of going to Whole Foods and wanting cocoa powder and seeing what seems like a thousand variations, versus going to Trader Joe's where there's almost always one brand per item (and often it's the Trader Joe's brand). Whole Foods can be good if there's some niche thing I want, but Trader Joe's is quite relaxing to just have a shopping list and pick up stuff not worrying about comparing each item to a whole bunch of other ones. I believe this was also part of the thinking behind most stores introducing house brands over the last several decades. Anyhow, this is not some huge announcement. I'm assuming it got voted up in hacker news because there's a humorous element to the whole thing, notepad being one of the more glacially-iterated-but-still-around software systems in existence.
jodrellblank 5y ago
One quote I've kept around for years is: "But now every little thing--wristwatches, VCRs, stoves--is jammed with features, and every feature is useless without an interface. If you are like me, and like most other consumers, you have never used ninety percent of the available features on your microwave oven, VCR, or cellphone. You don't even know that these features exist. The small benefit they might bring you is outweighed by the sheer hassle of having to learn about them." -- [which I didn't keep a source for, and searched back to http://www.garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html http://www.garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html "The Command Line in 2004" but that looks like a more modern post about an earlier Neal Stephenson article] > "Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial?" It's a blog post on the "Insiders" blog[1], they seem to appear weekly. Why comment on this at all "from the Linux side" in one breath advocating freedom of choice, in the next breath condemning everyone who doesn't value what you value, or who does things differently to you? Which is it, freedom of choice, or mandatory complexity? Freedom of opinion, or "that is trivial and I am correct"? [1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/tag/windows-insider-program/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/tag/windows-inside...
- jrm4 5y ago
  You're completely missing the point. I'm not saying that "It's bad for Microsoft to promote a new type of interface that they're trying to get out there." I'm saying it's ridiculous that Microsoft gets so much "air-time" over it and that professional IT people are paying attention as if this were something special, when it's not particularly difficult to do a really good interface that the user can dig in and modify if they choose. I'm reminded of the "addition" of Dark Modes to things, as if flippin' Windows 95 didn't let you change your theme way way way back when.

by jrm4 5y ago

groby_b 5y ago

I strongly encourage you to occasionally view the world through more than one lens. No matter what the OS, the default editor is important. Changes to the default editor that address long standing demands by the community are important. Communicating those changes to a wide audience is important as well. (And the Linux side of the fence could stand to learn a bit about communicating with the wider community) And that's why that article exists - because a tool used by a large user population just got significantly better. And that user population is mostly happy about the improvement. If you're not the audience, skipping it is an option.

jrm4 5y ago
Oh please. So what I'm hearing is, there are changes in software that a lot of people wanted for a long time, but weren't allowed to have for some reason? If only there were a model of software creation that let you fix that?
- groby_b 5y ago
  What you're hearing is clearly what you want to hear, and nothing else.

okareaman 5y ago

How many people use Microsoft windows 10? Latest: 1.3 Billion https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices That, along with the tendency towards Bikeshedding, or Parkinson's law of triviality, means a lot of people care. Android has a comparable number of users, but I think we should compare desktop PC systems here and in this case, Linux users have much lower expectations of Linux Desktop along with not being nearly as many users.

jrm4 5y ago
What I'm suggesting is that insiders in IT are perhaps overestimating how much people care, as part of the general argument that Microsoft and Apple often dumb down the whole computer experience for everyone. Specifically: Okay, bikeshedding. Bikeshedding is what it is for individuals and their own environments; I do it, sometimes it's a waste of time, sometimes not. But this feels like bikeshedding on behalf of others, which is WEIRD for a tool like this. If you're an insider, than you probably have moved beyond, way beyond "Notepad for everything." If you're a non-techie, you likely don't use notepad at all, and if you do, not extensively in a way that makes this update interesting. If you're in the middle (first, who is this even?) old Notepad or new Notepad is still probably something transitory. The broad version of this is: IT generally does far too much in terms of trying to think about and creating dumb, unmodifiable and heavy handed entrenched interface designs for people who are not themselves.

51Cards 5y ago

When you buy a car are you concerned that it came with manufacturer monopoly provided radio, GPS, seats, tires and a jack? I mean you can go out and get third party versions of all of these things with improved functionality so why should they even include basic versions? Now how many people actually replace the radio in their car? Or the rims? Or the seats? A vast percentage of owners are very happy with the included version as they don't desire / require anything beyond that. It's not a monopoly, it's just including the basic features most users will be content with. Now if they forced you to keep Notepad associated with TXT files then we'd have an issue. (I'm looking at you Edge) (adding a note to address in comments likely coming about how media systems aren't easily replacable in cars anymore but I'm a child of the DIN radio era)

jrm4 5y ago
If I could literally change any of those things in my FOR FREE, INSTANTLY, AT NO MARGINAL COST, AT THE PRESS OF A BUTTON, WITH EASY UNDO then yes I would. I would also be happy to always help out other people and share my changes with my friends. And I do this when I can. Guess why I can't, now. Come ON people.
- recursive 5y ago
  The more you configure stuff, the less it interoperates. That's my experience. Defaults for life.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    I'm sorry you're bad at interoperating things? Works fine for me.
    - recursive 5y ago
      Apology accepted. But for what it's worth, I definitely wasn't blaming you.

lemmsjid 5y ago

Not disagreeing with you (often have to preface internet comments with that :) but instead discussing. The grocery store example is quite revealing. Yes, you can point to the American grocery store, but what has been well studied there is that presenting people with choices creates its own form of stress. I certainly feel the stress of going to Whole Foods and wanting cocoa powder and seeing what seems like a thousand variations, versus going to Trader Joe's where there's almost always one brand per item (and often it's the Trader Joe's brand). Whole Foods can be good if there's some niche thing I want, but Trader Joe's is quite relaxing to just have a shopping list and pick up stuff not worrying about comparing each item to a whole bunch of other ones. I believe this was also part of the thinking behind most stores introducing house brands over the last several decades. Anyhow, this is not some huge announcement. I'm assuming it got voted up in hacker news because there's a humorous element to the whole thing, notepad being one of the more glacially-iterated-but-still-around software systems in existence.

jodrellblank 5y ago

One quote I've kept around for years is: "But now every little thing--wristwatches, VCRs, stoves--is jammed with features, and every feature is useless without an interface. If you are like me, and like most other consumers, you have never used ninety percent of the available features on your microwave oven, VCR, or cellphone. You don't even know that these features exist. The small benefit they might bring you is outweighed by the sheer hassle of having to learn about them." -- [which I didn't keep a source for, and searched back to http://www.garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html http://www.garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html "The Command Line in 2004" but that looks like a more modern post about an earlier Neal Stephenson article] > "Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial?" It's a blog post on the "Insiders" blog[1], they seem to appear weekly. Why comment on this at all "from the Linux side" in one breath advocating freedom of choice, in the next breath condemning everyone who doesn't value what you value, or who does things differently to you? Which is it, freedom of choice, or mandatory complexity? Freedom of opinion, or "that is trivial and I am correct"? [1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/tag/windows-insider-program/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/tag/windows-inside...

jrm4 5y ago
You're completely missing the point. I'm not saying that "It's bad for Microsoft to promote a new type of interface that they're trying to get out there." I'm saying it's ridiculous that Microsoft gets so much "air-time" over it and that professional IT people are paying attention as if this were something special, when it's not particularly difficult to do a really good interface that the user can dig in and modify if they choose. I'm reminded of the "addition" of Dark Modes to things, as if flippin' Windows 95 didn't let you change your theme way way way back when.