4 ms·

Windows does that, and its regular users barely visit Control Panel, not to mention .msc-s and other system menus, e.g. Security or Sharing tab. When something

by wruza 4y ago

Windows does that, and its regular users barely visit Control Panel, not to mention .msc-s and other system menus, e.g. Security or Sharing tab. When something breaks or they have an idea that isn’t in a nearby menu, they call a nearby programmer for help. Your sentiment is agreeable, but we are still unable make interfaces you want. There probably even is a button or a sequence of ui actions in your system for half of things you wanted. But these are less discoverable than a bash pipe available right there on SO, three clicks away rather than ten+ that will change location and names with the next update. It becomes hard either way, but only a stable and replayable way wins.

pessimizer 4y ago
> When something breaks or they have an idea that isn’t in a nearby menu, they call a nearby programmer for help. No they don't. Normal people don't have programmers on call. They google the error message and do whatever the classiest-looking page they find tells them to do, which usually starts with opening the Control Panel. Honestly, the same thing that programmers do when they hit something they don't understand, except programmers are better evaluators of classiness irt help pages (due to the mental model.).
- brightlancer 4y ago
  For a loose definition of "programmers", sure they do. Maybe it's a sysadmin, maybe it's a teen who writes/ builds game mods, but IME most normal folks have someone at work or someone in their family they can ask/ harass, and they'll do this before they'll start typing error messages into a web search. Folks will come and ask for help but then you have to tease out of them what the problem was. The entire idea of "I got this error; I will look up this error" is _foreign_ to most normal folks. It is grand when they came with an error message in hand. But even when someone has an error message, they often turn their brain off: I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it, which would force one of us to retype what he wrote into a web search.
  - biggedyb 4y ago
    > I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it.. I've worked with one like that. I got fed up so I just took to walking back to my desk and telling them to google it to see what the general consensus is, when they can tell me more about it I'll come back. Did that enough times till they got 'used' to not being lazy and at least tried to understand the issue before yelling for help. Was harsh at the time but they knew they were being lazy and as devs we are paid to find solutions. I think that's the critical thing in this, we're not only incentivised into naturally and habitually finding solutions to things, but also we are failing when we don't. We're failing for our expectation of our own analytical capability. Also we work with devs, or dev-like people so we get used to talking to people who will either keep up with us when we're rattling down a rabbit hole of thinking, but sometimes will gleefully join us in it to try to find the solutions. I think that's the crucial thing here. We're applying our expectations of ourselves/peers into personality traits that find solution finding completely alien, who not only don't think 'this is for me to understand', don't even approach the thought that they can potentially do something to fix it, even at a very small level. The things we do everyday as easily as breathing, to a lot of people is magic, and that's really not a good thing (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”).
  - reboog711 4y ago
    > I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it I worked with someone who did this too. Would also commonly send screenshots of code we were discussing. "Dude, I need to see this code in context, can't yous end me a link to the file / line in Github?"

by wruza 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

> When something breaks or they have an idea that isn’t in a nearby menu, they call a nearby programmer for help. No they don't. Normal people don't have programmers on call. They google the error message and do whatever the classiest-looking page they find tells them to do, which usually starts with opening the Control Panel. Honestly, the same thing that programmers do when they hit something they don't understand, except programmers are better evaluators of classiness irt help pages (due to the mental model.).

brightlancer 4y ago
For a loose definition of "programmers", sure they do. Maybe it's a sysadmin, maybe it's a teen who writes/ builds game mods, but IME most normal folks have someone at work or someone in their family they can ask/ harass, and they'll do this before they'll start typing error messages into a web search. Folks will come and ask for help but then you have to tease out of them what the problem was. The entire idea of "I got this error; I will look up this error" is _foreign_ to most normal folks. It is grand when they came with an error message in hand. But even when someone has an error message, they often turn their brain off: I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it, which would force one of us to retype what he wrote into a web search.
- biggedyb 4y ago
  > I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it.. I've worked with one like that. I got fed up so I just took to walking back to my desk and telling them to google it to see what the general consensus is, when they can tell me more about it I'll come back. Did that enough times till they got 'used' to not being lazy and at least tried to understand the issue before yelling for help. Was harsh at the time but they knew they were being lazy and as devs we are paid to find solutions. I think that's the critical thing in this, we're not only incentivised into naturally and habitually finding solutions to things, but also we are failing when we don't. We're failing for our expectation of our own analytical capability. Also we work with devs, or dev-like people so we get used to talking to people who will either keep up with us when we're rattling down a rabbit hole of thinking, but sometimes will gleefully join us in it to try to find the solutions. I think that's the crucial thing here. We're applying our expectations of ourselves/peers into personality traits that find solution finding completely alien, who not only don't think 'this is for me to understand', don't even approach the thought that they can potentially do something to fix it, even at a very small level. The things we do everyday as easily as breathing, to a lot of people is magic, and that's really not a good thing (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”).
- reboog711 4y ago
  > I worked with a developer who would send screenshots of a text error rather than just copy and paste it I worked with someone who did this too. Would also commonly send screenshots of code we were discussing. "Dude, I need to see this code in context, can't yous end me a link to the file / line in Github?"