8 ms·

Running this argument in the other direction: if you want an uncompromised user experience, you should use or build a centralized system rather than a distribut

by panic 11y ago

Running this argument in the other direction: if you want an uncompromised user experience, you should use or build a centralized system rather than a distributed one.

prewett 11y ago
Reading your comment made me think of Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft makes an operating system that runs on a distributed hardware ecosystem and they have the unenviable task of making the user with crappy (but cheap) hardware actually work. Apple is completely vertically integrated, so they can make sure everything works smoothly in their vision, but you only get Apple's vision. Then you have Linux, which is a distributed software ecosystem on top of a distributed hardware ecosystem. UX is terrible, but flexibility is through the roof. You can pretty much have exactly what you want, although you might have to do parts of it yourself.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  UX doesn't have to be terrible. It's just a long twisty maze of interlocking decisions. Depends on the U, too - I feel better with command line tool output and filters than with fancy GUI furniture.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    Yeah, my X on Linux is wonderful, but pretty far from what is offered elsewhere (or typical on Linux), and I have no confidence it would be a good X for any particular other U.
  - prewett 11y ago
    Depends on what you want out of your UI. I ran Linux for years and years on my laptops. But getting a consistent look was difficult: Firefox, OpenOffice (at the time), Emacs, Inkscape, Gimp, the KDE CD burner I used, etc. all had different toolkits so theming never really looked right. Every time I upgraded Ubuntu something else broke: first sleep, then wifi, then audio (pulseaudio and jack, grrr). Getting on the network after an install was usually a bit of work. Maybe DHCP worked fine, ... and maybe it didn't. Configuring X (resolution, mousewheel, etc.) was a chore, although I think that's no longer necessary. I never did get my USB thumb drives to automount, although I heard tell it was possible. That long, twisty maze of interlocking decisions, and the fact that every decision could and did go wrong, usually necessitating several hours of troubleshooting, that's bad UX. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Linux. But Mac OS X is the real Unix on the Desktop.
Garlef 11y ago
That's a nice idea; But it is a misleading one. Even an app for your phone that communicates with a server is a distributed system. Even a programm performing a simple read/write operation on the file_system_ is part of a distributed system. Handling exceptions is precisely a way to deal with the uncertainty of these two systems working together.
marknadal 11y ago
No. If your server is in Virginia and you have a customer on a phone in Jo'burg... they're gonna have one sucky comprised experience. Latency kills, and if you are centralized then your latency goes exponentially up the further away you get from that point.
- panic 11y ago
  You don't necessarily need to build a distributed system to solve that problem. You could have an entirely separate centralized system which serves that region.
  - marknadal 11y ago
    If you now have many centralized systems... Don't you by definition have a distributed system? Or are you saying these are isolated units that never talk to each other? If you say yes, I would again question the legitimacy of the UX.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      If you now have many centralized systems... Don't you by definition have a distributed system? Not in the sense that it matters to the customer. You can have a customer connected to their local centralised shipping centre before confirming an order, so every customer who would be supplied from that centre is seeing the same real-time stock indication. If supplies of a product the customer is trying to order are low, you can manage expectations accurately, for example warning that the product is almost out of stock and saying you'll confirm the order within 15 minutes to deal with races, or providing a "we're holding this for you, but you need to complete your purchase within X minutes to guarantee it" system as many on-line event ticket systems do. You can certainly have distributed infrastructure and logistics behind those local centralised shipping centres. You still have to physically transport the products there from your manufacturing facilities or suppliers. You still have to do marketing and PR. You still have to do your corporate accounts. However, you have 100% isolated your customers from the distributed aspects of your business, and those aren't going to result in a bad experience for a real life customer just because a delivery driver was stuck in traffic for 10 minutes and arrived later than scheduled with the new stock.
rubiquity 11y ago
This is why the first rule of distributed systems is: Don't build a distributed system if you don't have to. Unfortunately, a lot of problems eventually grow beyond centralized solutions and thus have to be distributed.

by panic 11y ago

Running this argument in the other direction: if you want an uncompromised user experience, you should use or build a centralized system rather than a distributed one.

prewett 11y ago

Reading your comment made me think of Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft makes an operating system that runs on a distributed hardware ecosystem and they have the unenviable task of making the user with crappy (but cheap) hardware actually work. Apple is completely vertically integrated, so they can make sure everything works smoothly in their vision, but you only get Apple's vision. Then you have Linux, which is a distributed software ecosystem on top of a distributed hardware ecosystem. UX is terrible, but flexibility is through the roof. You can pretty much have exactly what you want, although you might have to do parts of it yourself.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
UX doesn't have to be terrible. It's just a long twisty maze of interlocking decisions. Depends on the U, too - I feel better with command line tool output and filters than with fancy GUI furniture.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  Yeah, my X on Linux is wonderful, but pretty far from what is offered elsewhere (or typical on Linux), and I have no confidence it would be a good X for any particular other U.
- prewett 11y ago
  Depends on what you want out of your UI. I ran Linux for years and years on my laptops. But getting a consistent look was difficult: Firefox, OpenOffice (at the time), Emacs, Inkscape, Gimp, the KDE CD burner I used, etc. all had different toolkits so theming never really looked right. Every time I upgraded Ubuntu something else broke: first sleep, then wifi, then audio (pulseaudio and jack, grrr). Getting on the network after an install was usually a bit of work. Maybe DHCP worked fine, ... and maybe it didn't. Configuring X (resolution, mousewheel, etc.) was a chore, although I think that's no longer necessary. I never did get my USB thumb drives to automount, although I heard tell it was possible. That long, twisty maze of interlocking decisions, and the fact that every decision could and did go wrong, usually necessitating several hours of troubleshooting, that's bad UX. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Linux. But Mac OS X is the real Unix on the Desktop.

Garlef 11y ago

That's a nice idea; But it is a misleading one. Even an app for your phone that communicates with a server is a distributed system. Even a programm performing a simple read/write operation on the file_system_ is part of a distributed system. Handling exceptions is precisely a way to deal with the uncertainty of these two systems working together.

marknadal 11y ago

No. If your server is in Virginia and you have a customer on a phone in Jo'burg... they're gonna have one sucky comprised experience. Latency kills, and if you are centralized then your latency goes exponentially up the further away you get from that point.

panic 11y ago
You don't necessarily need to build a distributed system to solve that problem. You could have an entirely separate centralized system which serves that region.
- marknadal 11y ago
  If you now have many centralized systems... Don't you by definition have a distributed system? Or are you saying these are isolated units that never talk to each other? If you say yes, I would again question the legitimacy of the UX.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    If you now have many centralized systems... Don't you by definition have a distributed system? Not in the sense that it matters to the customer. You can have a customer connected to their local centralised shipping centre before confirming an order, so every customer who would be supplied from that centre is seeing the same real-time stock indication. If supplies of a product the customer is trying to order are low, you can manage expectations accurately, for example warning that the product is almost out of stock and saying you'll confirm the order within 15 minutes to deal with races, or providing a "we're holding this for you, but you need to complete your purchase within X minutes to guarantee it" system as many on-line event ticket systems do. You can certainly have distributed infrastructure and logistics behind those local centralised shipping centres. You still have to physically transport the products there from your manufacturing facilities or suppliers. You still have to do marketing and PR. You still have to do your corporate accounts. However, you have 100% isolated your customers from the distributed aspects of your business, and those aren't going to result in a bad experience for a real life customer just because a delivery driver was stuck in traffic for 10 minutes and arrived later than scheduled with the new stock.

rubiquity 11y ago

This is why the first rule of distributed systems is: Don't build a distributed system if you don't have to. Unfortunately, a lot of problems eventually grow beyond centralized solutions and thus have to be distributed.