4 ms·

My philosophy for a long time has been "every tunable parameter is a design weakness, and every one that must be tuned is a bug." It's hard to achieve this in

by api 12y ago

My philosophy for a long time has been "every tunable parameter is a design weakness, and every one that must be tuned is a bug." It's hard to achieve this in practice, but I keep it in mind as a goal.

wlesieutre 12y ago
100% agreed. This is why I'm liking elementary OS so much. I still need to pop into the command line for some things, but the standard GUI software is less excessively configurable than most. They have an HIG and a small community of developers who actually pay attention to it. http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/avoid-configuration http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/avoi... That said, it's still Linux, and if you really need more flexibility you can always pull chunks out and replace them with the usual alternatives. As an example, here are the prefs for the built-in music player: http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png
- Crito 12y ago
  > "but the standard GUI software is less excessively configurable than most." How configurable is it compared to GNOME? Less configurable than that is really just "not configurable".
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    A lot of it is based on the GNOME core applications, so it's similar. I haven't used GNOME enough to say more than that. For the people who want extra options, there's elementary-tweaks, similar to gnome tweak tool. http://gfycat.com/UniqueInfamousCoypu http://gfycat.com/UniqueInfamousCoypu Since I put up a screenshot of elementary's music player already (http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png) that makes for a decent comparison. Here's Rhythmbox: http://www.gfycat.com/MenacingFreshIndianpalmsquirrel http://www.gfycat.com/MenacingFreshIndianpalmsquirrel How many users will want to change the file naming or folder hierarchy convention for their music library if they're managing them through a GUI application? Why is there a big list of "visible columns" checkboxes instead of setting that by right-clicking the columns? Does crossfade really need a whole tab for a checkbox and slider (and why does it need a checkbox when 0 seconds implies no fading)? Do people actually use crossfade anyway? I never have. In short, there's room to clean a lot of things up. Even if it's minor, doing it across the entire system makes things a lot nicer. Plus there are some additional system-wide standardization features that elementary is doing, which should prevent a lot of inconsistency from software from all reinventing the wheel in different ways: http://elementaryos.org/journal/contractor-not-sharing-service http://elementaryos.org/journal/contractor-not-sharing-servi... http://elementaryos.org/journal/hig-update-popovers-decorated-windows-and-source-lists http://elementaryos.org/journal/hig-update-popovers-decorate... It's still a pretty new project, but as a relative Linux newbie I'm still having an easy time with it despite the comparatively small community.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      How many users will want to change the file naming or folder hierarchy convention for their music library if they're managing them through a GUI application? I do. Do people actually use crossfade anyway? Yes. The past decade has shown a disturbing trend in design. B-level designers think they can ape Apple by optimizing for the middle of the bell curve and alienating the edges. The problem is that the actual distribution of feature usage is multidimensional in a big way, and these designers delete features on one axis that otherwise very average users absolutely depend on. There's the saying that 80% of users use 20% of features, but no users use the same 20%.
      - wlesieutre 12y ago
        I'm not saying it's ideal for everyone, but it's an Ubuntu derivative, and it will continue to exist alongside Ubuntu. Noise will exist alongside Rhythmbox. I like a lean, well integrated player as the baseline "everyone gets this by default" option. Out of curiosity, what's the naming/organization system that you use, and is there a reason you don't like "Music/Artist/Album/# - Song.mp3"? And re:crossfade, if people other than me really use it, then my complaint is that they added an entire "playback" tab in the settings for it. If there's only one playback setting, give it a header under General. It's the visual equivalent of a "for i in range(0):" loop; all it does is make your interface harder to read. Noise is still an early version and I'm sure there are features that will be added, but "Print CD jewel case insert" isn't on the high priority list. That might have been neat when iTunes first added it, but it's just more cruft now. 1% of people might burn CDs in iTunes today, and only 1% of that 1% will even realize they could print an insert to go with it. Even on OS X where every computer ships with a pretty effective (if not always snappy) media player, there are plenty of alternatives for people who don't like iTunes. http://www.pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://www.pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://www.tomahawk-player.org/ http://www.tomahawk-player.org/ http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/ http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/ etc.
        rspeer 12y ago
        > and is there a reason you don't like "Music/Artist/Album/# - Song.mp3"? There are tons of reasons I don't like that format. It's extremely limiting and it only applies to a few genres of music. It tries to fit all music into a rigid hierarchy of bands, albums, and tracks, a hierarchy which applied to a reasonable amount of popular music from the '70s to the '00s, and it makes me wonder if the designers of music players ever listen to anything else. Suppose the song is a collaboration. Which artist directory does it go in? Suppose the song is a promo track that you downloaded from a band's website or from Bandcamp. What's the album? What's the track number? What happens when the track is eventually released on an album? Suppose the "song" is the third movement of Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 (BWV 1007) as performed by Yo-Yo Ma. Who's the artist? What's the album? (If you're going to say "the album that Yo-Yo Ma's recording was released on", you'll have to be more specific.) Now can you give answers that put things in the same organizational scheme when it's the second chorale of Wachet Auf (BWV 140) as performed by the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, directed by John Eliot Gardiner? Suppose the song is Monstrous Turtles, by Zircon, a remix of Koji Kondo's "Super Mario World" music, released as OCRemix #1558. Is "OCRemix" an album under "Zircon"? Is it track number 1558? What about the fact that most OCRemixes are not by Zircon? Does it go in the same place if you download it from Zircon's web site instead of OCRemix?
ay 12y ago
It's a very noble goal, and a pity HN has only one upvote per reader :-) But, designing a ship that 10 years post-release can fly and dig under ground on a whim is a pretty high bar - and would be interesting to learn of successes elsewhere, if you know. Some of the "weird" IPv6 knobs today are actually very useful, though from what I know, I must've been one of the first known instances to abuse some of the non-defaults at a 10K+ users' scale. So, I'd say - keep "no knobs" as a goal, but still leave the dirty knobs somewhere to turn in case of emergency. You'd be thanked, if by accident your protocol get used 15 years later :-)
zrm 12y ago
> My philosophy for a long time has been "every tunable parameter is a design weakness, and every one that must be tuned is a bug." It's completely true that good defaults are essential. But no one person is competent to make a decision for everyone everywhere. It should always be possible to change something but ideally it shouldn't be necessary.
- derefr 12y ago
  The interesting thing about software: excepting DRM, it's always possible to change something. Don't like a "fixed" parameter in your IP stack? Patch your kernel. I'm honestly surprised people don't take more advantage of "tuning the source" as an solution to providing end-user flexibility (the only project that I can think of that does is nginx.) Maybe it's because we have "dev ops" (devs who end up doing ops) but no "op devs" (operators who know how to code.)
  - zrm 12y ago
    It's still possible even with DRM, it's just more work. You have to get out a debugger and write new code. But what I meant was that you shouldn't try to make modifications impossible. Yes, it's futile anyway, but it's a bad idea independent of that. If you've designed the system right then the users shouldn't need to modify it. So if they do it's a signal that you've missed something and then you can improve it. Whereas if you declare yourself the final authority and refuse to facilitate user modifications, or worse actively interfere with them, then any mistakes you make are silently uncorrectable.
pshc 12y ago
The maxim "every tuneable parameter is a design weakness" applies for top-down design, but not so much for something as foundational as the IP layer. In the 70s, TCP's inventors imbued it with solid fundamentals, but could not have anticipated how the protocol would need to evolve in the future w.r.t. security and performance. For IPv6, there are unknowns that will only encountered at scale, and implementors are hugely motivated to play fast and loose with the spec. (TCP Fast Open converts!) Bottom-up systems have inherent wiggle room, and shipping them with sensible defaults is only possible in the short term. That's not to say we should design over-complicated systems, but just that fine tuners are not a weakness.
- api 12y ago
  I sort of disagree. Every tunable parameter ought to be computable. If it isn't, it's because I haven't been smart enough to figure out how to auto-tune it. At least that's the stick I bash myself over the head with. :)

by api 12y ago

wlesieutre 12y ago

100% agreed. This is why I'm liking elementary OS so much. I still need to pop into the command line for some things, but the standard GUI software is less excessively configurable than most. They have an HIG and a small community of developers who actually pay attention to it. http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/avoid-configuration http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/avoi... That said, it's still Linux, and if you really need more flexibility you can always pull chunks out and replace them with the usual alternatives. As an example, here are the prefs for the built-in music player: http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png

Crito 12y ago
> "but the standard GUI software is less excessively configurable than most." How configurable is it compared to GNOME? Less configurable than that is really just "not configurable".
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  A lot of it is based on the GNOME core applications, so it's similar. I haven't used GNOME enough to say more than that. For the people who want extra options, there's elementary-tweaks, similar to gnome tweak tool. http://gfycat.com/UniqueInfamousCoypu http://gfycat.com/UniqueInfamousCoypu Since I put up a screenshot of elementary's music player already (http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png http://i.imgur.com/Py7TkTR.png) that makes for a decent comparison. Here's Rhythmbox: http://www.gfycat.com/MenacingFreshIndianpalmsquirrel http://www.gfycat.com/MenacingFreshIndianpalmsquirrel How many users will want to change the file naming or folder hierarchy convention for their music library if they're managing them through a GUI application? Why is there a big list of "visible columns" checkboxes instead of setting that by right-clicking the columns? Does crossfade really need a whole tab for a checkbox and slider (and why does it need a checkbox when 0 seconds implies no fading)? Do people actually use crossfade anyway? I never have. In short, there's room to clean a lot of things up. Even if it's minor, doing it across the entire system makes things a lot nicer. Plus there are some additional system-wide standardization features that elementary is doing, which should prevent a lot of inconsistency from software from all reinventing the wheel in different ways: http://elementaryos.org/journal/contractor-not-sharing-service http://elementaryos.org/journal/contractor-not-sharing-servi... http://elementaryos.org/journal/hig-update-popovers-decorated-windows-and-source-lists http://elementaryos.org/journal/hig-update-popovers-decorate... It's still a pretty new project, but as a relative Linux newbie I'm still having an easy time with it despite the comparatively small community.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    How many users will want to change the file naming or folder hierarchy convention for their music library if they're managing them through a GUI application? I do. Do people actually use crossfade anyway? Yes. The past decade has shown a disturbing trend in design. B-level designers think they can ape Apple by optimizing for the middle of the bell curve and alienating the edges. The problem is that the actual distribution of feature usage is multidimensional in a big way, and these designers delete features on one axis that otherwise very average users absolutely depend on. There's the saying that 80% of users use 20% of features, but no users use the same 20%.
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      I'm not saying it's ideal for everyone, but it's an Ubuntu derivative, and it will continue to exist alongside Ubuntu. Noise will exist alongside Rhythmbox. I like a lean, well integrated player as the baseline "everyone gets this by default" option. Out of curiosity, what's the naming/organization system that you use, and is there a reason you don't like "Music/Artist/Album/# - Song.mp3"? And re:crossfade, if people other than me really use it, then my complaint is that they added an entire "playback" tab in the settings for it. If there's only one playback setting, give it a header under General. It's the visual equivalent of a "for i in range(0):" loop; all it does is make your interface harder to read. Noise is still an early version and I'm sure there are features that will be added, but "Print CD jewel case insert" isn't on the high priority list. That might have been neat when iTunes first added it, but it's just more cruft now. 1% of people might burn CDs in iTunes today, and only 1% of that 1% will even realize they could print an insert to go with it. Even on OS X where every computer ships with a pretty effective (if not always snappy) media player, there are plenty of alternatives for people who don't like iTunes. http://www.pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://www.pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://www.tomahawk-player.org/ http://www.tomahawk-player.org/ http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/ http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/ etc.
      - rspeer 12y ago
        > and is there a reason you don't like "Music/Artist/Album/# - Song.mp3"? There are tons of reasons I don't like that format. It's extremely limiting and it only applies to a few genres of music. It tries to fit all music into a rigid hierarchy of bands, albums, and tracks, a hierarchy which applied to a reasonable amount of popular music from the '70s to the '00s, and it makes me wonder if the designers of music players ever listen to anything else. Suppose the song is a collaboration. Which artist directory does it go in? Suppose the song is a promo track that you downloaded from a band's website or from Bandcamp. What's the album? What's the track number? What happens when the track is eventually released on an album? Suppose the "song" is the third movement of Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 (BWV 1007) as performed by Yo-Yo Ma. Who's the artist? What's the album? (If you're going to say "the album that Yo-Yo Ma's recording was released on", you'll have to be more specific.) Now can you give answers that put things in the same organizational scheme when it's the second chorale of Wachet Auf (BWV 140) as performed by the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, directed by John Eliot Gardiner? Suppose the song is Monstrous Turtles, by Zircon, a remix of Koji Kondo's "Super Mario World" music, released as OCRemix #1558. Is "OCRemix" an album under "Zircon"? Is it track number 1558? What about the fact that most OCRemixes are not by Zircon? Does it go in the same place if you download it from Zircon's web site instead of OCRemix?

ay 12y ago

It's a very noble goal, and a pity HN has only one upvote per reader :-) But, designing a ship that 10 years post-release can fly and dig under ground on a whim is a pretty high bar - and would be interesting to learn of successes elsewhere, if you know. Some of the "weird" IPv6 knobs today are actually very useful, though from what I know, I must've been one of the first known instances to abuse some of the non-defaults at a 10K+ users' scale. So, I'd say - keep "no knobs" as a goal, but still leave the dirty knobs somewhere to turn in case of emergency. You'd be thanked, if by accident your protocol get used 15 years later :-)

zrm 12y ago

> My philosophy for a long time has been "every tunable parameter is a design weakness, and every one that must be tuned is a bug." It's completely true that good defaults are essential. But no one person is competent to make a decision for everyone everywhere. It should always be possible to change something but ideally it shouldn't be necessary.

derefr 12y ago
The interesting thing about software: excepting DRM, it's always possible to change something. Don't like a "fixed" parameter in your IP stack? Patch your kernel. I'm honestly surprised people don't take more advantage of "tuning the source" as an solution to providing end-user flexibility (the only project that I can think of that does is nginx.) Maybe it's because we have "dev ops" (devs who end up doing ops) but no "op devs" (operators who know how to code.)
- zrm 12y ago
  It's still possible even with DRM, it's just more work. You have to get out a debugger and write new code. But what I meant was that you shouldn't try to make modifications impossible. Yes, it's futile anyway, but it's a bad idea independent of that. If you've designed the system right then the users shouldn't need to modify it. So if they do it's a signal that you've missed something and then you can improve it. Whereas if you declare yourself the final authority and refuse to facilitate user modifications, or worse actively interfere with them, then any mistakes you make are silently uncorrectable.

pshc 12y ago

The maxim "every tuneable parameter is a design weakness" applies for top-down design, but not so much for something as foundational as the IP layer. In the 70s, TCP's inventors imbued it with solid fundamentals, but could not have anticipated how the protocol would need to evolve in the future w.r.t. security and performance. For IPv6, there are unknowns that will only encountered at scale, and implementors are hugely motivated to play fast and loose with the spec. (TCP Fast Open converts!) Bottom-up systems have inherent wiggle room, and shipping them with sensible defaults is only possible in the short term. That's not to say we should design over-complicated systems, but just that fine tuners are not a weakness.

api 12y ago
I sort of disagree. Every tunable parameter ought to be computable. If it isn't, it's because I haven't been smart enough to figure out how to auto-tune it. At least that's the stick I bash myself over the head with. :)