4 ms·

So, your amazing feat of engineering phone, with a color retina display, audio-video capabillity, 700.000 apps, gyroscope, HD cameras, etc has some extra stuff

by batista 14y ago

So, your amazing feat of engineering phone, with a color retina display, audio-video capabillity, 700.000 apps, gyroscope, HD cameras, etc has some extra stuff taking 3GB drive space (of the 16GB device). Your amazing, multi million lines of code Windows desktop, the work of some 1000 people or more, has a problem with indexing. The protocol and apps that connect you via email to everyone you want, free, globally and instantly, sometimes loses a mail. Or the UI is slow to load your new messages. A program with which you can do on your laptop what it took huge teams, million dollars of equipment, and professional expertise to do (FCP), has a crashing bug in some particular action. The program that lets you talk to everybody on the planet, instantly, with video, and paying nothing, has a badly designed UI. etc... Yes, I can see how "everything is broken". Because, when we didn't have any of these, when 30 years before you had a rotating dial to dial numbers on your phone that only called landlines and cost mega bucks to call internationally, when you had MS-DOS as the most prevalent desktop OS, when 20MB was a huge disk in a desktop system, and before something like video chat was only possible in huge organizations with special software, everything was perfect... Wanting to improve things? Fine. Not understanding the complexity and magnitude of the technical achievements you use everyday? Bad.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
zaptheimpaler 14y ago
So, your amazing feat of engineering car, with automatic transmission, ABS, a GPS, incredible fuel efficiency etc. stops in the middle of the highway sometimes. Your incredible display, which somehow manages to use liquid crystals to display beautiful 1080 HD video develops a jitter and bright line down the middle after a month. The machine gun which lets you launch tiny projectiles at speeds high enough to kill a person sometimes fires rounds without you pulling the trigger and causes a casualty. ... Yes, the technology is incredibly complex and represents a huge transformation in the way we do things, but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly. Given the fact that most (all?) of the products mentioned in the post have some kind of price associated to using them, its not unreasonable to expect they work correctly. This is not to say that the people who made the tech are at fault per se, just that the customer is not at fault either for complaining when things dont work.
- batista 14y ago
  >Yes, the technology is incredibly complex and represents a huge transformation in the way we do things, but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly. In some ideal world, where you can have things with MILLIONS of moving parts and TRILLIONS of states, designed by mere mortals and still have them be faultless, yes. In the real world, the customer will have to settle for things not being 100% perfect. He can now do things unheard of even in science fiction 20-30 years ago, and takes for granted things only appearing like 6 years ago (e.g YouTube). >Given the fact that most (all?) of the products mentioned in the post have some kind of price associated to using them, its not unreasonable to expect they work correctly. I think that, yes, it is unreasonable. That you pay for something doesn't mean anything related to it's error margin. You cannot demand the impossible just because you paid for something. It's like saying: "hey, I paid for this car, why does it is disfigured when it crashes and can kill me?". Consumer products (non digital) break all the time. You can even pay top dollar and yet have crap food served to you. And all those are far less complex than software.
  - zaptheimpaler 14y ago
    My argument is not that consumer products should be perfect; it is that when consumers see deficiencies in them which could reasonably be fixed, they have every right to complain. In fact, they should complain because it will help make things better.
    - chris_mahan 14y ago
      What makes things better is that they buy a competing product.
- prof_hobart 14y ago
  Are they meant to be examples of complex tech that aren't allowed to fail and don't? Or examples of complex tech that does fail, but really shouldn't? >but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly It's not an excuse - it's an explanation. These things are complex, and complex things sometimes fail. The average user can be forgiven for not really appreciating this, but lack of knowledge of the nature of complexity doesn't magically make it disappear. Of couse companies could take the NASA approach of spending huge amounts of time and money on formal requirements/analysis methods, building massively fault-tolerant solutions etc etc, but I doubt there's a vast amount of users out there willing to buy tech that's 5 years behind cutting edge, and costing many times more, simply because it (almost) never fails.
mattmanser 14y ago
You've totally missed the point of his post. You're talking about Scott Hanselman here, he does understand all that.
- batista 14y ago
  I don't think so. Read his postscript: "Is this a speed problem? Are we feeling we have to develop too fast and loose? Is it a quality issue? Have we forgotten the art and science of Software QA? Is it a people problem? Are folks just not passionate about their software enough to fix it? I think it's all of the above. We need to care and we need the collective will to fix it." I.e, he attributes things to lack of: care, passionate people, the forgotten art and science of QA, etc. Which is BS. There will ALWAYS be many bugs and problems in systems that large in scope and complexity. And it's not because "the guys that designed, say, GMail or FCP (that he complains about) do not care, or lack passion, or have forgotten the "art and science" of software QA. Plus, the kind of bugs he describes are not that important compared to what we have actually achieved and DOES work. FCP crashing when you "scroll too fast" while rendering? Give me a break, these linear editing systems cost tens of millions of dollars, took half a room, and didn't operate in real time just 15 years ago. Oh, and had just as many bugs, and you needed support staff from Avid or whatever to come over to set them up. Now thousands of people all over the world edit their films and documentaries in their laptops.
  - koide 14y ago
    Plus, the kind of bugs he describes are not that important compared to what we have actually achieved and DOES work. Bingo! This is one perfect example of the problem he's referring to about people not being passionate enough to fix the problems: "Those bugs are not that important." That's a lame excuse. Who cares that we are better than 15 years ago, the point is that we have lots of (seemingly) low-hanging fruit that stays there for plenty of releases and that nobody cares enough to fix, because "bah, it's not that important." The problem is not that the bugs exist, but how fast and how well they are being solved.
    - batista 14y ago
drunkpotato 14y ago
Stop. Re-read the post. Try to understand the point of the post. Understand what it is he's saying about process, craftsmanship and trying to fix things that are broken instead of making excuses. Understand it as a call to action to do better, to be better and to care more. Then re-read your response and see what a defensive crouch you immediately took. How that immediate defensive reaction led you to miss these points. Crying "complexity!" for things that don't work is not a solution. Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution, and I believe that Scott is explicitly calling for the latter and implicitly calling for the rest.
- batista 14y ago
  >Stop. Re-read the post. Try to understand the point of the post. Understand what it is he's saying about process, craftsmanship and trying to fix things that are broken instead of making excuses. Understand it as a call to action to do better, to be better and to care more. "Calls to action to do better" are a dime a dozen. You can get them in $5 self-help books, motivational posters and bs marketing gurus. For all I know, they come free with Cheetos. The problems he describes are not because of some "lack of craftmanship". They are inevitable in large scale, enormous complexity systems, that also have to SHIP some day. Things that CAN get fixed, ARE getting fixed. >Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution, and I believe that Scott is explicitly calling for the latter and implicitly calling for the rest. Saying that "Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution" means absolutely nothing. At best is a platitude that goes without saying. Do you or Scott thinks that the major software players do not spend time, money, education and understanding on what they are making? Microsoft, one of the software makers he complains about (and he knows internally), spends tons of money on testing and QA. And it has some of the top minds in software engineering. Ditto for Apple, ditto for Google.

by batista 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

zaptheimpaler 14y ago

So, your amazing feat of engineering car, with automatic transmission, ABS, a GPS, incredible fuel efficiency etc. stops in the middle of the highway sometimes. Your incredible display, which somehow manages to use liquid crystals to display beautiful 1080 HD video develops a jitter and bright line down the middle after a month. The machine gun which lets you launch tiny projectiles at speeds high enough to kill a person sometimes fires rounds without you pulling the trigger and causes a casualty. ... Yes, the technology is incredibly complex and represents a huge transformation in the way we do things, but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly. Given the fact that most (all?) of the products mentioned in the post have some kind of price associated to using them, its not unreasonable to expect they work correctly. This is not to say that the people who made the tech are at fault per se, just that the customer is not at fault either for complaining when things dont work.

batista 14y ago
>Yes, the technology is incredibly complex and represents a huge transformation in the way we do things, but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly. In some ideal world, where you can have things with MILLIONS of moving parts and TRILLIONS of states, designed by mere mortals and still have them be faultless, yes. In the real world, the customer will have to settle for things not being 100% perfect. He can now do things unheard of even in science fiction 20-30 years ago, and takes for granted things only appearing like 6 years ago (e.g YouTube). >Given the fact that most (all?) of the products mentioned in the post have some kind of price associated to using them, its not unreasonable to expect they work correctly. I think that, yes, it is unreasonable. That you pay for something doesn't mean anything related to it's error margin. You cannot demand the impossible just because you paid for something. It's like saying: "hey, I paid for this car, why does it is disfigured when it crashes and can kill me?". Consumer products (non digital) break all the time. You can even pay top dollar and yet have crap food served to you. And all those are far less complex than software.
- zaptheimpaler 14y ago
  My argument is not that consumer products should be perfect; it is that when consumers see deficiencies in them which could reasonably be fixed, they have every right to complain. In fact, they should complain because it will help make things better.
  - chris_mahan 14y ago
    What makes things better is that they buy a competing product.
prof_hobart 14y ago
Are they meant to be examples of complex tech that aren't allowed to fail and don't? Or examples of complex tech that does fail, but really shouldn't? >but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly It's not an excuse - it's an explanation. These things are complex, and complex things sometimes fail. The average user can be forgiven for not really appreciating this, but lack of knowledge of the nature of complexity doesn't magically make it disappear. Of couse companies could take the NASA approach of spending huge amounts of time and money on formal requirements/analysis methods, building massively fault-tolerant solutions etc etc, but I doubt there's a vast amount of users out there willing to buy tech that's 5 years behind cutting edge, and costing many times more, simply because it (almost) never fails.

mattmanser 14y ago

You've totally missed the point of his post. You're talking about Scott Hanselman here, he does understand all that.

batista 14y ago
I don't think so. Read his postscript: "Is this a speed problem? Are we feeling we have to develop too fast and loose? Is it a quality issue? Have we forgotten the art and science of Software QA? Is it a people problem? Are folks just not passionate about their software enough to fix it? I think it's all of the above. We need to care and we need the collective will to fix it." I.e, he attributes things to lack of: care, passionate people, the forgotten art and science of QA, etc. Which is BS. There will ALWAYS be many bugs and problems in systems that large in scope and complexity. And it's not because "the guys that designed, say, GMail or FCP (that he complains about) do not care, or lack passion, or have forgotten the "art and science" of software QA. Plus, the kind of bugs he describes are not that important compared to what we have actually achieved and DOES work. FCP crashing when you "scroll too fast" while rendering? Give me a break, these linear editing systems cost tens of millions of dollars, took half a room, and didn't operate in real time just 15 years ago. Oh, and had just as many bugs, and you needed support staff from Avid or whatever to come over to set them up. Now thousands of people all over the world edit their films and documentaries in their laptops.
- koide 14y ago
  Plus, the kind of bugs he describes are not that important compared to what we have actually achieved and DOES work. Bingo! This is one perfect example of the problem he's referring to about people not being passionate enough to fix the problems: "Those bugs are not that important." That's a lame excuse. Who cares that we are better than 15 years ago, the point is that we have lots of (seemingly) low-hanging fruit that stays there for plenty of releases and that nobody cares enough to fix, because "bah, it's not that important." The problem is not that the bugs exist, but how fast and how well they are being solved.
  - batista 14y ago

drunkpotato 14y ago

Stop. Re-read the post. Try to understand the point of the post. Understand what it is he's saying about process, craftsmanship and trying to fix things that are broken instead of making excuses. Understand it as a call to action to do better, to be better and to care more. Then re-read your response and see what a defensive crouch you immediately took. How that immediate defensive reaction led you to miss these points. Crying "complexity!" for things that don't work is not a solution. Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution, and I believe that Scott is explicitly calling for the latter and implicitly calling for the rest.

batista 14y ago
>Stop. Re-read the post. Try to understand the point of the post. Understand what it is he's saying about process, craftsmanship and trying to fix things that are broken instead of making excuses. Understand it as a call to action to do better, to be better and to care more. "Calls to action to do better" are a dime a dozen. You can get them in $5 self-help books, motivational posters and bs marketing gurus. For all I know, they come free with Cheetos. The problems he describes are not because of some "lack of craftmanship". They are inevitable in large scale, enormous complexity systems, that also have to SHIP some day. Things that CAN get fixed, ARE getting fixed. >Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution, and I believe that Scott is explicitly calling for the latter and implicitly calling for the rest. Saying that "Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution" means absolutely nothing. At best is a platitude that goes without saying. Do you or Scott thinks that the major software players do not spend time, money, education and understanding on what they are making? Microsoft, one of the software makers he complains about (and he knows internally), spends tons of money on testing and QA. And it has some of the top minds in software engineering. Ditto for Apple, ditto for Google.