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,

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.