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It's crazy how much time it takes for commonplace system design properties to get adopted by the larger programming discipline. Immutability for system security

It's crazy how much time it takes for commonplace system design properties to get adopted by the larger programming discipline. Immutability for system security has been used for at least a decade. But software development exists within its own organism, protected by an impermeable membrane. New ideas from outside its domain (software design) don't easily pass through. Yet occasionally you have a programming organism whose focus is influenced by some other discipline (e.g. OpenBSD, for security) and some new ideas get passed through the membrane. It would be neat if we could bring back the heyday of research operating systems / software, to push the cultural envelope of software development to think more outside the box.

robertlagrant 2y ago
Where do we see this outside of software development?
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  Automotive. It's 2024; the infotainment displays and UI from the major (legacy) Detroit automakers just makes my skin-crawl from the touch-latency, single-digit frame-rates, and overall lack-of-good-taste in design. And yet, we've known for decades that having smooth and fluid (60fps) UI goes a long way to reducing user stress and frustration. (I stress that I'm not advocating huge touch-screens for everything; but yet it's a sad day when Tesla's demonstrably unsafe touch-screen UX is otherwise oftentimes better overall than the physical-ish buttons/ridges (capacitative touch?!!) from Chevrolet (and I'm still waiting for a volume-knob with detents...).
  - fl0ki 2y ago
    Apple CarPlay may have given automakers just barely enough of an "out" that the pressure is reduced. The only time I use the system's own interface is to update its firmware once a year, and the only time those updates have noticeably mattered was to make my car compatible with CarPlay over USB Type-C. Given this, it's surprising to me to see reluctance to adopting second-generation CarPlay, but someone who knows more about the tradeoffs can certainly account for that better than I can.
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      I just got an older (2020) truck with an older generation Ford infotainment (SYNC 3) with CarPlay/Android Auto. I use AA, and its huge latency and the difficulty of use (capacitive touch, the physical buttons on the media console are useless) make it hard to use. I notice my eyes are locked on the console for much longer than necessary because it's so hard to press things and then wait for a response, or go back if the wrong thing got touched. I don't have my eyes on the road and it feels dangerous. If they had just made the radio tuning knob into a scroll wheel for the UI, it would be so much easier, quicker, safer to navigate the screen. But I know they'll be going in the opposite direction due to tech trends. We need hackers to save us.
  - MaxBarraclough 2y ago
    > we've known for decades that having smooth and fluid (60fps) UI goes a long way to reducing user stress and frustration This hasn't stopped appalling bloat becoming the norm on the web, either.
    - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
      Bloat on the web generally doesn't impact frame-rate, though - just memory usage.
      - MaxBarraclough 2y ago
        It harms loading times, which harms smoothness/fluidity. edit On second thought, it can harm framerates too. There are plenty of webdev discussion threads about achieving 60fps.
deleted 2y ago
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robertlagrant 2y ago

Where do we see this outside of software development?

DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
Automotive. It's 2024; the infotainment displays and UI from the major (legacy) Detroit automakers just makes my skin-crawl from the touch-latency, single-digit frame-rates, and overall lack-of-good-taste in design. And yet, we've known for decades that having smooth and fluid (60fps) UI goes a long way to reducing user stress and frustration. (I stress that I'm not advocating huge touch-screens for everything; but yet it's a sad day when Tesla's demonstrably unsafe touch-screen UX is otherwise oftentimes better overall than the physical-ish buttons/ridges (capacitative touch?!!) from Chevrolet (and I'm still waiting for a volume-knob with detents...).
- fl0ki 2y ago
  Apple CarPlay may have given automakers just barely enough of an "out" that the pressure is reduced. The only time I use the system's own interface is to update its firmware once a year, and the only time those updates have noticeably mattered was to make my car compatible with CarPlay over USB Type-C. Given this, it's surprising to me to see reluctance to adopting second-generation CarPlay, but someone who knows more about the tradeoffs can certainly account for that better than I can.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    I just got an older (2020) truck with an older generation Ford infotainment (SYNC 3) with CarPlay/Android Auto. I use AA, and its huge latency and the difficulty of use (capacitive touch, the physical buttons on the media console are useless) make it hard to use. I notice my eyes are locked on the console for much longer than necessary because it's so hard to press things and then wait for a response, or go back if the wrong thing got touched. I don't have my eyes on the road and it feels dangerous. If they had just made the radio tuning knob into a scroll wheel for the UI, it would be so much easier, quicker, safer to navigate the screen. But I know they'll be going in the opposite direction due to tech trends. We need hackers to save us.
- MaxBarraclough 2y ago
  > we've known for decades that having smooth and fluid (60fps) UI goes a long way to reducing user stress and frustration This hasn't stopped appalling bloat becoming the norm on the web, either.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    Bloat on the web generally doesn't impact frame-rate, though - just memory usage.
    - MaxBarraclough 2y ago
      It harms loading times, which harms smoothness/fluidity. edit On second thought, it can harm framerates too. There are plenty of webdev discussion threads about achieving 60fps.

deleted 2y ago

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