3 ms·

I've spent most of my career for 15 years as a programmer. Some days I just want to throw out my computers and phones and never touch them again. Days when I ge

I've spent most of my career for 15 years as a programmer. Some days I just want to throw out my computers and phones and never touch them again. Days when I get overwhelmed by the feeling described in the article. Every computer environment is layer upon layer of kludges. There is shit all the way down.

batista 14y ago
>Every computer environment is layer upon layer of kludges. There is shit all the way down. You missed the AMAZING INGENUITY and BRILLIANCE that is also all the way down.
- yesbabyyes 14y ago
  batista, I often find myself nodding in agreement when reading your posts on HN -- especially when you take a contrarian position. I do agree with you in this, also -- the hardware and software combination of a single PC or smartphone is, I guess, among the most complex systems humanity has built, and in such a short time frame. While my post was mostly me venting (bad Monday, frustration with people/clients/spouse/stuff in general), I have to say that I still agree with Scott. Too often are we putting up with things not working. I use Android, Gmail and Google Calendar. Yet, when I get a calendar request, it shows up in the official Gmail client on my Android phone as meeting.ics 1 KB Text VIEW | SAVE If I click "view", it opens up in a text editor. This is not helpful at all. Does nobody at Google ever get a calendar request to their phone? The only way for me to respond to such a request is either to get to my computer and open it in web mail, or call back and ask what time the meeting is. Whenever a family member asked me about something failing in a similar manner, I used to feel slightly attacked: This is my line of work and major hobby, and I know that the reason shit fails is, well, shit is hard. I would perhaps try to explain the probable cause and so on, but to what avail? It still doesn't work. But now, I rather shrug and say yeah, I know, it sucks. It happens to me too, all the time. I just get used to it, and deal with it. Isn't that all we can ever do, after all? Lately, I've started trying way harder to remove complexity. I constrain myself on purpose, I get rid of software and file formats, and basically, the last thing I ever want to do is to add a new piece of software. If I am convinced I need a new piece of software, it has to be implemented with minimal change to the rest of the system. Well, that was a bit of a rant. Anyway, in no way do I mean to disrespect any of the programmers who built this ingenious, brilliant piece of shit. I feel for them and, well, the brilliance sometimes shines through. We're still running the world's financial, communications and distribution systems on layers of shit. Don't look down.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    "Nobody hates software more than software developers": http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-software-more-than-software-developers.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-softwa...
  - eclipxe 14y ago
    Check google play - there are apps that will handle the ICS files for you
  - batista 14y ago
    >batista, I often find myself nodding in agreement when reading your posts on HN -- especially when you take a contrarian position. A, thanks. I mostly take a contrarian position when I comment, because at things I already agree with I don't feel the need to comment on (yeah, have the silly urge to correct "someone wrong on the internet" as my motivation). >This is not helpful at all. Does nobody at Google ever get a calendar request to their phone? The only way for me to respond to such a request is either to get to my computer and open it in web mail, or call back and ask what time the meeting is. Yes, that's a perfect example of what the article SHOULD BE talking about (far better than the examples in the article). With those kinds of things, I agree, you tend to see neglect like this in all apps. I just disagree with the particular examples given in the original article, which are far more complex and bug-like, and most of all with the notion of the article that because of those bugs (syncing, FCP crashing, etc) "everything is broken". Some of the "layers of shit" (e.g, a pet peeve of mine, the traditional UNIX application installation directories and standards such as /usr/bin etc instead of self-contained, versioned, app directories) have historical reasons, and not necessarily incompetence, and it's very difficult to remove them without major financial and time investment.

batista 14y ago

>Every computer environment is layer upon layer of kludges. There is shit all the way down. You missed the AMAZING INGENUITY and BRILLIANCE that is also all the way down.

yesbabyyes 14y ago
batista, I often find myself nodding in agreement when reading your posts on HN -- especially when you take a contrarian position. I do agree with you in this, also -- the hardware and software combination of a single PC or smartphone is, I guess, among the most complex systems humanity has built, and in such a short time frame. While my post was mostly me venting (bad Monday, frustration with people/clients/spouse/stuff in general), I have to say that I still agree with Scott. Too often are we putting up with things not working. I use Android, Gmail and Google Calendar. Yet, when I get a calendar request, it shows up in the official Gmail client on my Android phone as meeting.ics 1 KB Text VIEW | SAVE If I click "view", it opens up in a text editor. This is not helpful at all. Does nobody at Google ever get a calendar request to their phone? The only way for me to respond to such a request is either to get to my computer and open it in web mail, or call back and ask what time the meeting is. Whenever a family member asked me about something failing in a similar manner, I used to feel slightly attacked: This is my line of work and major hobby, and I know that the reason shit fails is, well, shit is hard. I would perhaps try to explain the probable cause and so on, but to what avail? It still doesn't work. But now, I rather shrug and say yeah, I know, it sucks. It happens to me too, all the time. I just get used to it, and deal with it. Isn't that all we can ever do, after all? Lately, I've started trying way harder to remove complexity. I constrain myself on purpose, I get rid of software and file formats, and basically, the last thing I ever want to do is to add a new piece of software. If I am convinced I need a new piece of software, it has to be implemented with minimal change to the rest of the system. Well, that was a bit of a rant. Anyway, in no way do I mean to disrespect any of the programmers who built this ingenious, brilliant piece of shit. I feel for them and, well, the brilliance sometimes shines through. We're still running the world's financial, communications and distribution systems on layers of shit. Don't look down.
- icebraining 14y ago
  "Nobody hates software more than software developers": http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-software-more-than-software-developers.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-softwa...
- eclipxe 14y ago
  Check google play - there are apps that will handle the ICS files for you
- batista 14y ago
  >batista, I often find myself nodding in agreement when reading your posts on HN -- especially when you take a contrarian position. A, thanks. I mostly take a contrarian position when I comment, because at things I already agree with I don't feel the need to comment on (yeah, have the silly urge to correct "someone wrong on the internet" as my motivation). >This is not helpful at all. Does nobody at Google ever get a calendar request to their phone? The only way for me to respond to such a request is either to get to my computer and open it in web mail, or call back and ask what time the meeting is. Yes, that's a perfect example of what the article SHOULD BE talking about (far better than the examples in the article). With those kinds of things, I agree, you tend to see neglect like this in all apps. I just disagree with the particular examples given in the original article, which are far more complex and bug-like, and most of all with the notion of the article that because of those bugs (syncing, FCP crashing, etc) "everything is broken". Some of the "layers of shit" (e.g, a pet peeve of mine, the traditional UNIX application installation directories and standards such as /usr/bin etc instead of self-contained, versioned, app directories) have historical reasons, and not necessarily incompetence, and it's very difficult to remove them without major financial and time investment.