4 ms·

No, but that's not the point: anyone can be cajoled into making a graph (and I love ASCII art as much as anyone), but the fact that there wasn't the culture of

by lsb 17y ago

No, but that's not the point: anyone can be cajoled into making a graph (and I love ASCII art as much as anyone), but the fact that there wasn't the culture of putting a pretty ribbon on nice results, that's the problem.

sp332 17y ago
Real life is not that simple. Many times, graphs and charts (especially when they replace actual numbers) can be misleading, even unintentionally. In this article, you could focus on IOPS, if your target workload is sensitive to that. Or you could think about maximum bandwidth, or number of rack units required, or the fact that one of the options requires special drivers and multiple PCI-e channels, and so on. Just throwing a graph up would hide a lot of useful information, and encourage knee-jerk reactions to the article. We all know from the Megahertz Wars that this isn't good for anybody. Pretty graphs have their place in pop-tech pieces, but this article was more useful in just two pages than most of those articles are in ten pages of graphs.
patio11 17y ago
Additionally, there is not-universal-but-fairly-widespread culture of contempt for folks who make suggestions like that. "Bah, typical Excel user with your useless eye-candy and summaries and obsession with ease of use." I wrote an article some months back about competing with OSS, which included some very basic advice like "If you offer software for download, you should have a prominent button which lets people download your software". I did not anticipate this recommendation would be controversial. I got some absolutely priceless comments about it. My two favorites: users who can't find the software without a big ugly button don't deserve to have it, and technically disinclined users who are attempting to install software from the Internet are already doing something wrong, they should be getting it from their distro's repo instead.

by lsb 17y ago

sp332 17y ago

Real life is not that simple. Many times, graphs and charts (especially when they replace actual numbers) can be misleading, even unintentionally. In this article, you could focus on IOPS, if your target workload is sensitive to that. Or you could think about maximum bandwidth, or number of rack units required, or the fact that one of the options requires special drivers and multiple PCI-e channels, and so on. Just throwing a graph up would hide a lot of useful information, and encourage knee-jerk reactions to the article. We all know from the Megahertz Wars that this isn't good for anybody. Pretty graphs have their place in pop-tech pieces, but this article was more useful in just two pages than most of those articles are in ten pages of graphs.

patio11 17y ago

Additionally, there is not-universal-but-fairly-widespread culture of contempt for folks who make suggestions like that. "Bah, typical Excel user with your useless eye-candy and summaries and obsession with ease of use." I wrote an article some months back about competing with OSS, which included some very basic advice like "If you offer software for download, you should have a prominent button which lets people download your software". I did not anticipate this recommendation would be controversial. I got some absolutely priceless comments about it. My two favorites: users who can't find the software without a big ugly button don't deserve to have it, and technically disinclined users who are attempting to install software from the Internet are already doing something wrong, they should be getting it from their distro's repo instead.