Curious about Computer Experience

[andrewducker]

[Poll #932201]

Comments

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Actually, as former coder I have become more forgiving with time, now I just observe the error with dislike and try to work around it.

Or it might be that as a sysadmin I now believe that all applications are, by definition, buggy, so I have lower expectations :-)

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add to my answer that it really depends on who the coder is. If it's written by a multi-million dollar organisation (or even a smaller organisation dedicated to coding) then the answer I answered applies. If it's a huge open source project then again the answer I answered applies (although perhaps to a lesser extent). If it's a small open source project or a one-person project or something lke that then I am forgiving.

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

seconded

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

I assumed that knowing enough HTML to put together a fairly basic website doesn't count as coding.
I agree with what was said above fwiw.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm a snowflake:

"As a non-coder, I'm amazed that anyone can get computers to do stuff, and I don't mind them going wrong occasionally....


... and because I am a Mac user, my computer goes wrong about 1% as often as a PC with a similar application set and use would. The applications are almost universally more beautiful, less buggy and better designed, and the coders appear to have a shared mindset that encourages excellence and the sharing of best practice. So the whole 'computers going wrong' thing just isn't that big a problem for me. Any more."

[andrewducker]

See, that confuses me. Because my computer hasn't crashed on me in about 4 years, outside of some dodgy memory about 2 years ago. Other than that it's pretty much rock solid, the applications all work, and I don't have a problem with it.

Windows certainly used to be pretty crappy, back in 3.1/95 days, but I rarely see any problems either at home or work with XP. I'm aware that there are people who have problems - particularly with things like viruses and the like, but they seem to pass me by. And I get baffled when people tell me that Word/Excel and the like crash, as I haven't had problems with them since Office 97.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I agree. I rarely have Windows go wrong - except when it's caused by me doing something silly that I know is going to overload my poor processor. I'm always surprised when colleagues randomly manage to corrupt files and crash their machines.

That said, I do find Windows often does "odd things" that I just can't explain.

I definitely have to reboot XP far less than I ever used to.

My experience of Macs is actually rather negative. Other than not being able to work out how the hell to do things I want to do the one version I've used had horrible rendering issues with Firefox and IE.

I have to say the computer I have the least problems with is my trusty Linux box. And generally when something does go wrong it's something I can work out how it went wrong (or again it's something I made it do) and so I can fix it or prevent it.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

IE is a Microsoft program and is completely shite on the Mac. The Mac Firefox was also very poor last time I used it (1.1 or so) -- I understand it's improved but the password management was so badly designed when I used it that I am not inclined to try again. They are both examples of 'non-Mac-like' programs, which are rare on the Mac.

I use Camino; others like Safari or OmniWeb. There is no shortage of good Mac browsers.

On the 'not being able to work out how to do things I want to do', that's not actually a criticism of the Mac, is it?

[draconid.livejournal.com]

The reasons why I was using IE and Firefox was that I couldn't work out how to find other programs and I found it a bitch to install anything on the Mac. Maybe I didn't persevere (sp?) long enough. It was also frustrating knowing that OS X is based on a *nix style OS and yet I couldn't even find a shell. I found the Mac incredibly counter-intuitive - and this is from someone who has used a range of Linux and Unix machines and tends to use non-standard window managers for Linux. I normally love things that are a little different to use. I was so excited to be able to try out a Mac but it really let me down. So yes, not being able to work out how to do things is a criticism, because Linux seems ten times easier despite being supposedly less user friendly.

I love Mac hardware though. I'd love to get myself a Mac Mini. Of course, the first thing I'd do would be to put the Mac version of Ubuntu on it.

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

the way i see it, windows is more successful, thus a) has more programs available for it, thus a larger number of badly coded programs and b) a larger number of users to bitch about that fact.

there's also the nature of the way each system works; from my experience, there's more available for users to tinker with in windows thus more available for non pc-savvy users (well, i really mean the majority of computer users here) to accidentally change for the worse.

saying that, on the other hand windows has more of an architecture legacy which can contribute to potential problems (a problem with windows itself, although i'd suspect that many issues with this might more relate to how an app maybe coded itself) and has to work with a much wider array of hardware devices (not really a windows problem though, it just happenes).

an aside; a colleague at work imaged a new mac pro, after which he attempted to login, only to be treated with a wiggling login box. no details about what kind of error, be it bad username/password, trouble accessing the domain, etc, comes up in that situation. what's exactly is the point of that, withholding information like that? (mac people, please inform if we'd missed anything obvious regarding viewing immediate login error details and i'll pass it on tomorrow :)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I have relatively few software problems with my XP PC now. But it's not being used in the way my iMac is -- and when I *did* bash a PC hard, I had endless trouble.

I observe that my mother and father both have very substantial problems with their PCs, and less techie friends who have PCs have really severe problems.

But I think the key points are those made below by mirukux -- the tinkery settings on macs are much better hidden from non-savvy users, so people screw stuff up less. On the software, I think it's a bit more subtle; Mac developers are encouraged to behave in a more constrained way, which leads to a soothing consistency to applications.

[andrewducker]

That's very true - by having everything be as consistent as possible, the Mac user experience certainly seems to be more consistent and friendly than the Windows one, from my understanding. Giving total control to one company seems to have its advantages.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

As a non-coder, I'm astonished that people can get computers to do anything at all.

At the same time, I'm also astonished at the degree to which people put up with profoundly buggy, awkward, and bloated applications. I'm a Mac user too, but my job requires me to use Microsoft Word. A lot. It crashes, it's inconsistent, it misapplies styles, it alters the text I'm writing at what seems like random. Often I'll save a document in one font and I'll re-open it later and it'll be in three different fonts. I can't understand why the market hasn't forced Microsoft to fix this kind of crap, or why alternately we haven't just found a better program en masse.

[andrewducker]

See I use Word all the time, and never have problems with it crashing. At all. I've not had it crash on me in at least three years.

I've not had Windows crash on me either, outside of a problem I had a with some dodgy memory about two years ago, for about 4 years.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I should add that I use an XP PC at work and although XP itself is stable there, I expect applications to crash every day. And I am only really using Word, Excel, and Outlook.

[andrewducker]

I don't know what causes it, to be honest. I do find it baffling that in my current office I've never seen Windows or Office crash, but I've seen it happen all the time in one previous one. Whether it's machine configuration, network configuration, the hardware being cheaper, or what.

[ginjabadja.livejournal.com]

I use MS Word a lot for both work and writing at home and I've never had it crash on me at all, even though I'm using some pretty weird BBC-sourced radio script templates. Or the scottish screen ones for that matter.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Wword doesn't crash on me - but it IS horrifically 'over (un)helpful' on style applications and the like. Having done some Word coding a while back it has an inherently complex model that is fundamentally flawed in a number of areas and in particular some that make anything to do with styles really difficult to get right.

Oh and have you *seen* the workaround in Excel when you have range of cells that are numbers formatted as text and you want to format them all as number?? Doing it through Format, Cells just doesn't work - but full amrks to the guy/gal that though of the workaround in put it the help files.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I am not a coder, I'm an infrastructure/routers/firewalls/mailservers kind of guy. My closest answer was, in fact, closest to "as a server-side-infrastructure kind of guy, it drives me mad when I have to use shoddy infrastructure".

[robhu.livejournal.com]

As a coder I can understand that some classes of software are really hard to write, but I find that most applications work pretty well.

[darkoshi]

As a coder, I don't think that software is in general hard to write, but I understand that it can be difficult and time-consuming getting it to work correctly in all situations. And I understand that even though coders may wish to spend time fixing all the problems, their management often doesn't give them enough time or resources to do so. And it drives me mad when I have to use buggy applications.

[moniqueleigh]

IAWTC

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

To be honest, dodgy UI's piss me off a lot more than the occasional bug.