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Stuff like this really make me wish people knew about computers. They could see endless gains from switching to something like LaTeX with Git version control. S

Stuff like this really make me wish people knew about computers. They could see endless gains from switching to something like LaTeX with Git version control. Sure, it would take a bit of time to train people on, but the productivity gains would be massive. The strangest thing is that everyone used to use computers that way. It seems that the creation of GUIs and WYSIWYG has greatly worsened the experience a lot of people have with a computer. I think the issue is that people select their tools based off what is easiest to learn, so there is a kind of local minima reached where most software today is very easy to operate but hugely inefficient for anyone who has to use it frequently.

jjmarr 2y ago
The issue is "people who view themselves as good with computers" self-select into jobs in the technology industry. This means we don't have any ambassadors for technological process improvements in the average business.
- jayd16 2y ago
  You mean the sales department?
duped 2y ago
More "endless pains" then "endless gains" in all honesty. The point of software is to abstract complexity, not present it to users (or worse, create it). LaTex is just ugly and surprising. People want to write and see what they've written, not type and then render. It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg (which is why wysiwyg was so revolutionary, and became the de facto standard for the task).
- myworkinisgood 2y ago
  If Word was implemented with standard XML backend instead of OOXML, then today, we could have easily developed tools to show good, reliable diffs without having to resort to tricks.
- James_K 2y ago
  Do you ever wonder why audio mixing panels have all those buttons and knobs instead of just one big slider labelled "volume"? It's because audio engineers benefit more from the complexity than they lose out from the time taken to learn it. It's easy to frame features as bad if you describe them as "creating complexity", but what you ignore is that the advanced user of a piece of software (i.e. anyone who uses it for work) will want to do very complex things with that software. A simpler interface is only achieved by making assumptions about how people will use the product, and these assumptions often cause issues for people. > It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg No it isn't. I've already explained this in my original comment, and you've provided little rebuttal here. What is the value of instant feedback? As far as writing documents, there is none. That's because the people who write documents are interested in the text, which they get instant feedback on in their text editor. They don't really care how it looks while they are in the process of writing it. Instant feedback may be useful if you are interested in styling a document, but usually style sheets are prepared once and reused many times. Documents are not like computer programs, you typically write the entire thing out then compile it once or maybe twice to fix typos in command names. Even if you think instant feedback is intensely valuable, there is no reason you can't have it in the case of LaTeX (or LaTeX adjacent) documents. Simply design your document editing software with two windows, the one on the left shows the textual source, and the one on the right shows the compiled document. These can be kept in sync in real time.
  - duped 2y ago
    > Do you ever wonder why audio mixing panels have all those buttons and knobs instead of just one big slider labelled "volume"? It's because audio engineers benefit more from the complexity than they lose out from the time taken to learn it. I've actually worked extensively on audio hardware and software. The mixer slider is there because audio engineers don't benefit from having to type in a float value for gain and need to adjust up and down to balance levels. That said, most effects that affect perceptual loudness have an autogain feature such that the mix fader doesn't need to be changed because of the complexity introduced. A better example is routing in audio software. This is way more complex than users imagine it to be, and that's because the interface is a simple "connect input to output" that abstracts the underlying complexity. > A simpler interface is only achieved by making assumptions about how people will use the product, and these assumptions often cause issues for people. No, it isn't. That's why UI/UX is a different skillset than engineering - discovering how to intuitively present something that isn't complex (note: the complexity of the problem is not the complexity of the interface - if you equate the two, you're doing bad interface design). > What is the value of instant feedback? I see what I want and move on instead of fiddling around. > Simply design your document editing software with two windows, the one on the left shows the textual source, and the one on the right shows the compiled document. These can be kept in sync in real time. There's a difference between "can" and "should." Now you have to look two places - where you are editing, and where it is rendering. Like I don't know why software folks are so keen to throw away 50 years of HCI research that's led to local maxima in terms of interfaces - WYSIWYG is not preferred because it's easier to develop or maintain, it's because users actually find it easier than remembering how to invoke the exact sequence of characters in a document to get what they want!

jjmarr 2y ago

The issue is "people who view themselves as good with computers" self-select into jobs in the technology industry. This means we don't have any ambassadors for technological process improvements in the average business.

jayd16 2y ago
You mean the sales department?

duped 2y ago

More "endless pains" then "endless gains" in all honesty. The point of software is to abstract complexity, not present it to users (or worse, create it). LaTex is just ugly and surprising. People want to write and see what they've written, not type and then render. It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg (which is why wysiwyg was so revolutionary, and became the de facto standard for the task).

myworkinisgood 2y ago
If Word was implemented with standard XML backend instead of OOXML, then today, we could have easily developed tools to show good, reliable diffs without having to resort to tricks.
James_K 2y ago
Do you ever wonder why audio mixing panels have all those buttons and knobs instead of just one big slider labelled "volume"? It's because audio engineers benefit more from the complexity than they lose out from the time taken to learn it. It's easy to frame features as bad if you describe them as "creating complexity", but what you ignore is that the advanced user of a piece of software (i.e. anyone who uses it for work) will want to do very complex things with that software. A simpler interface is only achieved by making assumptions about how people will use the product, and these assumptions often cause issues for people. > It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg No it isn't. I've already explained this in my original comment, and you've provided little rebuttal here. What is the value of instant feedback? As far as writing documents, there is none. That's because the people who write documents are interested in the text, which they get instant feedback on in their text editor. They don't really care how it looks while they are in the process of writing it. Instant feedback may be useful if you are interested in styling a document, but usually style sheets are prepared once and reused many times. Documents are not like computer programs, you typically write the entire thing out then compile it once or maybe twice to fix typos in command names. Even if you think instant feedback is intensely valuable, there is no reason you can't have it in the case of LaTeX (or LaTeX adjacent) documents. Simply design your document editing software with two windows, the one on the left shows the textual source, and the one on the right shows the compiled document. These can be kept in sync in real time.
- duped 2y ago
  > Do you ever wonder why audio mixing panels have all those buttons and knobs instead of just one big slider labelled "volume"? It's because audio engineers benefit more from the complexity than they lose out from the time taken to learn it. I've actually worked extensively on audio hardware and software. The mixer slider is there because audio engineers don't benefit from having to type in a float value for gain and need to adjust up and down to balance levels. That said, most effects that affect perceptual loudness have an autogain feature such that the mix fader doesn't need to be changed because of the complexity introduced. A better example is routing in audio software. This is way more complex than users imagine it to be, and that's because the interface is a simple "connect input to output" that abstracts the underlying complexity. > A simpler interface is only achieved by making assumptions about how people will use the product, and these assumptions often cause issues for people. No, it isn't. That's why UI/UX is a different skillset than engineering - discovering how to intuitively present something that isn't complex (note: the complexity of the problem is not the complexity of the interface - if you equate the two, you're doing bad interface design). > What is the value of instant feedback? I see what I want and move on instead of fiddling around. > Simply design your document editing software with two windows, the one on the left shows the textual source, and the one on the right shows the compiled document. These can be kept in sync in real time. There's a difference between "can" and "should." Now you have to look two places - where you are editing, and where it is rendering. Like I don't know why software folks are so keen to throw away 50 years of HCI research that's led to local maxima in terms of interfaces - WYSIWYG is not preferred because it's easier to develop or maintain, it's because users actually find it easier than remembering how to invoke the exact sequence of characters in a document to get what they want!