3 ms·

People used to look forward to software updates. How did it come to this?

by kps 3y ago

II2II 3y ago
I get the impression that attitudes are starting to shift back to anticipation, but I suspect that many people are still leery due to the disruptive changes brought by KDE 4, Gnome 3, and Python 3 (to name three projects that immediately come to my mind). Of course, those weren't the only products affected and open source software wasn't the only thing affected. The years around 2010 felt a bit like the early 1990's, with the distinct difference that disruptive change in the early 1990's brought with it quality of life improvements that were more often well received. Now that software is starting to mature again (at least in my mind, and at least with open source projects), changes are more welcome. Watching updates is more interesting because the bullet points look interesting from a utility standpoint rather than a drama standpoint.
Barrin92 3y ago
on specific consumer products people tended to look forward and probably still do. On major framework, user interface or OS changes which KDE falls into I think people always have always been at best ambivalent about. The reason is pretty straight forward. If you break something at that level you tend to break almost everything, and people have spent a lot of time building stuff on top. Shaking that in a big way is always risky. People tend to be more conservative the more you go towards the bottom of the stack.
felixg3 3y ago
When I was younger (in my teens, early twenties), I looked forward to every feature upgrade. Now I’m getting anxious at breaking changes and upgrade paths and every new major release of RHEL/Debian makes me a bit sweaty and they feel so quick (what, Debian 12 is coming out this year? I just migrated to 11 last year.) Now I’m an old grumpy 29 year old man yelling at the cloud.

3 ms·

People used to look forward to software updates. How did it come to this?

by kps 3y ago

People used to look forward to software updates. How did it come to this?

II2II 3y ago
I get the impression that attitudes are starting to shift back to anticipation, but I suspect that many people are still leery due to the disruptive changes brought by KDE 4, Gnome 3, and Python 3 (to name three projects that immediately come to my mind). Of course, those weren't the only products affected and open source software wasn't the only thing affected. The years around 2010 felt a bit like the early 1990's, with the distinct difference that disruptive change in the early 1990's brought with it quality of life improvements that were more often well received. Now that software is starting to mature again (at least in my mind, and at least with open source projects), changes are more welcome. Watching updates is more interesting because the bullet points look interesting from a utility standpoint rather than a drama standpoint.
Barrin92 3y ago
on specific consumer products people tended to look forward and probably still do. On major framework, user interface or OS changes which KDE falls into I think people always have always been at best ambivalent about. The reason is pretty straight forward. If you break something at that level you tend to break almost everything, and people have spent a lot of time building stuff on top. Shaking that in a big way is always risky. People tend to be more conservative the more you go towards the bottom of the stack.
felixg3 3y ago
When I was younger (in my teens, early twenties), I looked forward to every feature upgrade. Now I’m getting anxious at breaking changes and upgrade paths and every new major release of RHEL/Debian makes me a bit sweaty and they feel so quick (what, Debian 12 is coming out this year? I just migrated to 11 last year.) Now I’m an old grumpy 29 year old man yelling at the cloud.