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Oh, they very much do. But like with everything in technology, they can do fuck all about it, so they resign and maybe complain to you occasionally if you're th

Oh, they very much do. But like with everything in technology, they can do fuck all about it, so they resign and maybe complain to you occasionally if you're the designated (in)voluntary tech support person for your family and friends. Regular people hate technology, both for how magical and how badly broken it is, but they've long learned they're powerless to change it - nobody listens to their complaints, and the whole market is supply-driven, i.e. you get to choose from what vendors graciously put on the market, not from what the space of possible devices.

ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
They also tend to hate technology, because us nerds are often unbearable. They hate having to go through people that get them upset, in order to use their kit. Not just tech (although it’s more prevalent). People who are “handy” can also be that way (but, for some reason, techies tend to be more abrasive). I’ve learned the utility of being patient, and not showing the exasperation that is often boiling inside of me.
- tomcam 7mo ago
  Amen. I couldn’t have said it better. In general for the 40+ years I’ve been a programmer I have detested the practice of not surfacing diagnostic information to users when technology makes it possible to do so in a clear and unambiguous way.
  - graemep 7mo ago
    Most users tend to ignore diagnostic information. "What did the error message say" "I don't know."
    - Telaneo 7mo ago
      This is because error messages have historically been bad, unintelligible, un-actionable, and hard to separate from soft errors that don't actually matter. 'Segmentation fault. Core dumped.' 'Non-fatal error detected. Contact support.' 'An error occurred.' 'An illegal operation was performed.' 'Error 92: Insufficient marmalade.' 'Saving this image as a JPG will not preserve the transparency used in the image. Save anyway?' 'Saving as .docx is not recommended because blah-blah-blah never gonna give you up nor let you down.' I can't blame any normal user from either not understanding nor giving a shit about any of these. If we'd given users actionable information from day 1, we'd be in a very different world. Even just 'Error 852: Couldn't reach the network. Check your connection to the internet.' does help those who haven't turned of their brains entirely yet.
      - ben_w 7mo ago
        30 or so years back, one of the Mac magazines had a customer support quote along these lines: "I don't understand, it says 'System Error Type 11', and no matter how many times I type 11, nothing happens!"
        Telaneo 7mo ago
        Now imagine if that error said 'Error 11: A memory error occurred. Your program may be faulty or misbehaving. Contact your software vendor." That's miles better than what most things provide. That one's a good example of why these things are hard. The user could have been running 5 different programs, any one of which caused this error, and MacOS can't point the finger at anyone. Not to mention that the problem could be MacOS itself, or the user being a dunce who misconfigured something. I'm not sure if that error can occur without 3rd party software being involved, but if it can, then that error message might need to be even more vague, helping the user even less. Not to mention it could just be faulty hardware. A paper manual offering troubleshooting steps for each error would be really helpful. Just 'Error 11. Consult your manual.' and the manual actually telling you what the problem could be is also miles better than what we usually get.
        ben_w 7mo ago
        This was 30 years ago, it was Mac OS classic with co-operative multitasking and zero inter-process memory protection, when the error comes up the only option was "restart" (the computer, not the task).
        Telaneo 7mo ago
        I know.
        TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        > The user could have been running 5 different programs, any one of which caused this error, and MacOS can't point the finger at anyone. It's still an example why it's worth giving your users a fighting chance. MacOS may not know enough to point the finger at anyone, but the user knows what they were doing at that moment, and even if they were not paying attention, they might start now. They'll realize if something is off. Or, after 10th time they get this error, they'll connect the dots and realize it's always happening when application X is running and they try to launch Y. Or maybe sometimes they won't. Maybe they'll form a story and maybe it'll be all bullshit, or maybe good enough. Either way, the important part is, the user retains agency in the process. Giving people information is how they can become self-sufficient users and trust technology more.
Gigachad 7mo ago
This is true of basically everything. Even trivial home maintenance people will just put up with things being broken most of the time over learning how to fix them.
- encom 7mo ago
  I've lived in this apartment for about a year and a half. It took me until last week to put up lights over the stairs. I've been walking on the stairs in the dark, some times using my phone as a light. I'm an electrician.
  - Telaneo 7mo ago
    Physician, heal thyself. The cobbler's children have no shoes.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
graemep 7mo ago
I think you are right, but I think what I said is also true. People will notice some things. For example, with USB if they are using it for local backup they might notice, but with a lot of devices they will not. When they do notice, they will feel powerless. Even if we had a wider choice, they are not well placed to pick products. There is no way they will know about details of things such as USB issues (a cable is slow, the device will not tell you if it is) at the time of purchase.
- Forgeties79 7mo ago
  I think any of us just have to look at how many people ask us for recommendations on basic things like docks and adaptors to see how common this is. On top of that you can’t even trust what’s on the tin sometimes.
dijit 7mo ago
I had a programmer pushing multi-gig packages to a Meta Quest 3; and it was taking around a minute. He didn’t even think that it could be faster because he assumed the Quest or software was slow and didn’t check. I implored him to try a different cable (after checking cables with the Treedix mentioned in TFA), and the copy went from taking over a minute to about 13s. Its not just normal people confused.
- bdavbdav 7mo ago
  I find some programmers (and this is presumably true of any industry) very narrow in their expertise within technology.
  - lpcvoid 7mo ago
    Yeah, most programmers are not curious hackers anymore. They are 9-5 white collar workers with hobbies far outside of programming, systems, hardware, etc. It shows very much as soon as you meet one of them. But, like you said, this is true of any industry. Oh, and pointy jab: these folks are also, in my opinion/experience, the most eager to vibecode shit. Make of that what you will.
    - ben_w 7mo ago
      "anymore"? Over a decade ago, a coworker had a path for updating some app's files to a database, and it was taking something like 10 minutes on certain test inputs. Swore blind it couldn't be improved. By next morning's stand-up, I'd found it was doing something pointless, confirmed with the CTO that the thing it was doing was genuinely pointless and I'd not missed anything surprising, removed the pointless thing, and gotten the 10 minutes down to 200 milliseconds. I'm not sure if you're right or wrong about the correlation with vibe-coding here, but I will say that co-workers's code was significantly worse than Claude on the one hand, and that on the other I have managed to convince Codex to recompute an Isochrone map of Berlin at 13 fps in a web browser.
      - lpcvoid 7mo ago

ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago

They also tend to hate technology, because us nerds are often unbearable. They hate having to go through people that get them upset, in order to use their kit. Not just tech (although it’s more prevalent). People who are “handy” can also be that way (but, for some reason, techies tend to be more abrasive). I’ve learned the utility of being patient, and not showing the exasperation that is often boiling inside of me.

tomcam 7mo ago
Amen. I couldn’t have said it better. In general for the 40+ years I’ve been a programmer I have detested the practice of not surfacing diagnostic information to users when technology makes it possible to do so in a clear and unambiguous way.
- graemep 7mo ago
  Most users tend to ignore diagnostic information. "What did the error message say" "I don't know."
  - Telaneo 7mo ago
    This is because error messages have historically been bad, unintelligible, un-actionable, and hard to separate from soft errors that don't actually matter. 'Segmentation fault. Core dumped.' 'Non-fatal error detected. Contact support.' 'An error occurred.' 'An illegal operation was performed.' 'Error 92: Insufficient marmalade.' 'Saving this image as a JPG will not preserve the transparency used in the image. Save anyway?' 'Saving as .docx is not recommended because blah-blah-blah never gonna give you up nor let you down.' I can't blame any normal user from either not understanding nor giving a shit about any of these. If we'd given users actionable information from day 1, we'd be in a very different world. Even just 'Error 852: Couldn't reach the network. Check your connection to the internet.' does help those who haven't turned of their brains entirely yet.
    - ben_w 7mo ago
      30 or so years back, one of the Mac magazines had a customer support quote along these lines: "I don't understand, it says 'System Error Type 11', and no matter how many times I type 11, nothing happens!"
      - Telaneo 7mo ago
        Now imagine if that error said 'Error 11: A memory error occurred. Your program may be faulty or misbehaving. Contact your software vendor." That's miles better than what most things provide. That one's a good example of why these things are hard. The user could have been running 5 different programs, any one of which caused this error, and MacOS can't point the finger at anyone. Not to mention that the problem could be MacOS itself, or the user being a dunce who misconfigured something. I'm not sure if that error can occur without 3rd party software being involved, but if it can, then that error message might need to be even more vague, helping the user even less. Not to mention it could just be faulty hardware. A paper manual offering troubleshooting steps for each error would be really helpful. Just 'Error 11. Consult your manual.' and the manual actually telling you what the problem could be is also miles better than what we usually get.
        ben_w 7mo ago
        This was 30 years ago, it was Mac OS classic with co-operative multitasking and zero inter-process memory protection, when the error comes up the only option was "restart" (the computer, not the task).
        Telaneo 7mo ago
        I know.
        TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        > The user could have been running 5 different programs, any one of which caused this error, and MacOS can't point the finger at anyone. It's still an example why it's worth giving your users a fighting chance. MacOS may not know enough to point the finger at anyone, but the user knows what they were doing at that moment, and even if they were not paying attention, they might start now. They'll realize if something is off. Or, after 10th time they get this error, they'll connect the dots and realize it's always happening when application X is running and they try to launch Y. Or maybe sometimes they won't. Maybe they'll form a story and maybe it'll be all bullshit, or maybe good enough. Either way, the important part is, the user retains agency in the process. Giving people information is how they can become self-sufficient users and trust technology more.

Gigachad 7mo ago

This is true of basically everything. Even trivial home maintenance people will just put up with things being broken most of the time over learning how to fix them.

encom 7mo ago
I've lived in this apartment for about a year and a half. It took me until last week to put up lights over the stairs. I've been walking on the stairs in the dark, some times using my phone as a light. I'm an electrician.
- Telaneo 7mo ago
  Physician, heal thyself. The cobbler's children have no shoes.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

graemep 7mo ago

I think you are right, but I think what I said is also true. People will notice some things. For example, with USB if they are using it for local backup they might notice, but with a lot of devices they will not. When they do notice, they will feel powerless. Even if we had a wider choice, they are not well placed to pick products. There is no way they will know about details of things such as USB issues (a cable is slow, the device will not tell you if it is) at the time of purchase.

Forgeties79 7mo ago
I think any of us just have to look at how many people ask us for recommendations on basic things like docks and adaptors to see how common this is. On top of that you can’t even trust what’s on the tin sometimes.

dijit 7mo ago

I had a programmer pushing multi-gig packages to a Meta Quest 3; and it was taking around a minute. He didn’t even think that it could be faster because he assumed the Quest or software was slow and didn’t check. I implored him to try a different cable (after checking cables with the Treedix mentioned in TFA), and the copy went from taking over a minute to about 13s. Its not just normal people confused.

bdavbdav 7mo ago
I find some programmers (and this is presumably true of any industry) very narrow in their expertise within technology.
- lpcvoid 7mo ago
  Yeah, most programmers are not curious hackers anymore. They are 9-5 white collar workers with hobbies far outside of programming, systems, hardware, etc. It shows very much as soon as you meet one of them. But, like you said, this is true of any industry. Oh, and pointy jab: these folks are also, in my opinion/experience, the most eager to vibecode shit. Make of that what you will.
  - ben_w 7mo ago
    "anymore"? Over a decade ago, a coworker had a path for updating some app's files to a database, and it was taking something like 10 minutes on certain test inputs. Swore blind it couldn't be improved. By next morning's stand-up, I'd found it was doing something pointless, confirmed with the CTO that the thing it was doing was genuinely pointless and I'd not missed anything surprising, removed the pointless thing, and gotten the 10 minutes down to 200 milliseconds. I'm not sure if you're right or wrong about the correlation with vibe-coding here, but I will say that co-workers's code was significantly worse than Claude on the one hand, and that on the other I have managed to convince Codex to recompute an Isochrone map of Berlin at 13 fps in a web browser.
    - lpcvoid 7mo ago