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Very popular programming language and IDE have telemetry on by default, VSCode, C#, Java etc ... People act like they discover telemetry in 2023. I don't thin

by Thaxll 4y ago

Very popular programming language and IDE have telemetry on by default, VSCode, C#, Java etc ... People act like they discover telemetry in 2023. I don't think it's a big deal, ultimately it's to improve Go and the proposal makes it very easy to disable it ( single env variable ).

alyandon 4y ago
I think they should all be opt-in as well. However, as a developer and pretend sysadmin, I am generally a nice guy about not turning off telemetry on software products with a user facing UI that I use frequently.
xh-dude 4y ago
Totally agree. Telemetry has been around and matured and benefits users. I’m not sure the benefits for Go would be as significant as other software but, really, why not?
- masklinn 4y ago
  > Telemetry has been around and matured and benefits users. Does it? Telemetry mostly seems used to justify removing features I need on grounds that they’re little used. As an other user noted, if telemetry is your yardstick, the average backup software removed the “restore” feature because that’s barely ever used.
  - xh-dude 4y ago
    I don’t like this example in particular because observing too much “restore” activity is an excellent piece of information.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      I fail to see what’s that got to “too much” restore activity doesn’t tell you anything actionable about your software, if anything it’s creepy as hell.
  - arp242 4y ago
    There is a long list of use cases, which go far beyond "removing features": https://research.swtch.com/telemetry-uses https://research.swtch.com/telemetry-uses "Is it safe to remove support for X?" is one use case. Right now the strategy more or less amounts to "remove and see if anyone complains, possibly too late to change".
    - JetSpiegel 4y ago
      > Is it safe to remove support for X? What the hell, it's a freaking compiler. What do you mean, "too late to change"? Fail the compilation is suddenly a showstopper bug? If go wants to deprecate features, just follow the same procedure done by literally all other non-spyware compilers.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Microsoft deprecated the disk-image backup in Windows 7 because it was infrequently used... buy random grandparents. It was basically a "free" wrapper on top of the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) built into the operating system, but only IT professionals ever used it, so... it had to go.
mort96 4y ago
What the hell? "People act like they discover telemetry in 2023"? Are we just going to ignore the fact that the issue of companies spying on their users has been a hotly discussed controversial topic since the practice began? Do you think objection to telemetry first appeared in 2023?
ptx 4y ago
> VSCode, C# These are both Microsoft products. Microsoft's position is well known. > Java etc ... Really? Which Java distribution? It's definitely opt-in in Jetbrains IDEs.

by Thaxll 4y ago

alyandon 4y ago

I think they should all be opt-in as well. However, as a developer and pretend sysadmin, I am generally a nice guy about not turning off telemetry on software products with a user facing UI that I use frequently.

xh-dude 4y ago

Totally agree. Telemetry has been around and matured and benefits users. I’m not sure the benefits for Go would be as significant as other software but, really, why not?

masklinn 4y ago
> Telemetry has been around and matured and benefits users. Does it? Telemetry mostly seems used to justify removing features I need on grounds that they’re little used. As an other user noted, if telemetry is your yardstick, the average backup software removed the “restore” feature because that’s barely ever used.
- xh-dude 4y ago
  I don’t like this example in particular because observing too much “restore” activity is an excellent piece of information.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    I fail to see what’s that got to “too much” restore activity doesn’t tell you anything actionable about your software, if anything it’s creepy as hell.
- arp242 4y ago
  There is a long list of use cases, which go far beyond "removing features": https://research.swtch.com/telemetry-uses https://research.swtch.com/telemetry-uses "Is it safe to remove support for X?" is one use case. Right now the strategy more or less amounts to "remove and see if anyone complains, possibly too late to change".
  - JetSpiegel 4y ago
    > Is it safe to remove support for X? What the hell, it's a freaking compiler. What do you mean, "too late to change"? Fail the compilation is suddenly a showstopper bug? If go wants to deprecate features, just follow the same procedure done by literally all other non-spyware compilers.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Microsoft deprecated the disk-image backup in Windows 7 because it was infrequently used... buy random grandparents. It was basically a "free" wrapper on top of the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) built into the operating system, but only IT professionals ever used it, so... it had to go.

mort96 4y ago

What the hell? "People act like they discover telemetry in 2023"? Are we just going to ignore the fact that the issue of companies spying on their users has been a hotly discussed controversial topic since the practice began? Do you think objection to telemetry first appeared in 2023?

ptx 4y ago

> VSCode, C# These are both Microsoft products. Microsoft's position is well known. > Java etc ... Really? Which Java distribution? It's definitely opt-in in Jetbrains IDEs.