Slashdot Mirror
Scientists And Engineers Say "Computers Suck!"
drhpbaldy writes: "At the latest ACM meeting,
scientists and engineers threw mud at computer scientists for not contributing anything useful. They lambasted CS types for developing complex and useless technologies. Some of the fault was placed on VC's for funding only the fanciest and stupidest technologies." Of course, when people say that "design" will save the world, they usually mean their idea of design, which might not jibe with yours or mine.
The Rambler
Actually, I'd heard that you can take advantage of the DirectInput part of DirectX to capture that key combination... can anyone confirm this?
I could have gone to school for CS..but I figured why pay so much money getting a degree for something I could easily teach myself?
Instead, I got my Aerospace Engineering degree with an emphasis in Fluid Dynamics and Automatic Control Systems (lots of complex coding in those things, btw).
Computers are great tools, but I really doubt a CS guy could write the code I do...they simply don't understand the engineering stuff that needs to be calculated. Fluid dynamics is an art. you only learn how to solve the equation after lots of practice learning what can be dropped/substituted in the equations of motion.
I almost agree with the premise, with some conditions. Computers aren't doing anything near what they were and are hyped to do. Hal is still a long, long ways away. But I don't think that is computer scientists faults -- I think it is Intel and Microsoft's fault.
;-). The same with operating systems. It's very interesting to see that the only successful competition for Windows is a piece of volunteer-built public infrastructure that grew on a schedule largely independent of "market forces".
These companies told the world that computers were ready to make their lives better. They made a lot of laughable statements that were, unfortunately, easy and desireable to believe. Then these companies mass marketed their products and made bundles of money. Imagine vulture, er, venture capitalists in 1910 saying "London to New York in 3 hours via plane!" This is what happened in the computer industry, and there has been a lot of dissapointment as a result.
Consequently, Intel's research budget grew very fast, evidently much faster than they could improve their designs by the look of things. However, the companies that were making real advances in processors have been pushed out of business (next week, we'll discuss whether the "efficiency" of capitalism is really the right economic principle to maximize
The term Artificial Intelligence (my research, sort of) is horrible, and has probably contributed to the disappointment. I don't think software techniques have matured much. Hardware and hardware processes have become much better -- memory densities, magnetic storage densities, even CRT manufacturing. But I really don't see any improvement in available software. At least with GNU/Linux, there's an attempt to find the right way to do things even if it takes several tries and isn't popular or financially rewarding.
The best thing that has happened, by my estimation, is the interconnection of computers. Networks have proven far more valuable than so many other technologies like speech recognition and vision. Those technologies are very, very interesting, and it's proper for people to study them. But natural language processing has not had an effect on how we get through each day, yet, despite hype from the market.
It's interesting, therefore to see how Microsoft, Intel, etc. hype the Internet. Watch how they try to spin their products to say that they add "value" to the Internet experience. An Intel P-MCMXXXI doesn't make the Internet any better. The important aspects of the 'net don't depend on Flash or Javascript, and certainly don't depend on Flash or Javascript executing on bajillion-megahurts processors. The Internet, the best thing to happen to come to the public from the tech sector (followed by handhelds, I think =-), is useful with or without Intel's latest and greatest. The internet is even better without Microsoft's latest and greatest Media-Hijacker. =-)
The Internet is valuable for the transmission of information. Computers are valuable for the processing of information in simple ways, really quickly. Neither of these create new information in any meaningful sense--we still need humans or nature or whatever for that. But none of this sounds exciting enough to sell computers, and as a result Microsoft and Intel, etc., created the hype that has led to a large disappointment. They preached the land of milk and honey but delivered a desert (I better watch out for lightning bolts after saying that...).
I like to say that these companies, and the whole PC industry, have been "taxing naive consumers." And now consumers are realizing that these companies have squandered their money. It is ironic, and slightly humorous if you've a strong stomach, that the academics are getting blamed.
-Paul Komarek
Computer Science is not just "coding". There is also a lot of real research in the field, think e.g. about database indexing, operating systems, compilers, programming languages. All of these have their foundations in proper research. Otherwise you would still program in machine code, operating systems would not be able to run several processes, large amounts of data could not be processed.
:: [a] -> [a]
And indeed, for a scientist, the code is not the thing that is important, its the idea! Imagine a very simple thing, the quicksort algorithm. I can implement it in many different programming languages, but the thing is still the same. (BTW, my personal favorite for this is Haskell, which is really beautiful code:
quicksort
quicksort [] = []
quicksort (x:xs) = quicksort [y | y =x]
).
Sebastian
Sorry, some of the code got removed in the post...
Users lose dialog boxes. I don't know how, but they do it.
One thing I think I'd like to see is the rest of the app graying if a modal dialog box is invoked, making it clear that the dialog is "in charge."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Correct.
To keyboard-reset a VMware session, you must use C-M-Ins, instead of C-M-Del.
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
it comes down to licensing -- not technical issues. manufacturers to this day still have to pay the ``apple tax'' for each firewire port on their device, as opposed to USB where no such rediculous licensing is required.
MO never took off because the various disk manufacturers could never agree on common formats. ZIP was similarly doomed from the start since only one company manufactures it.
USB appears to be obsoleting serial and parallel for all practical purposes... it was showing up on PC motherboards before apple came out with the imac. it's becoming difficult to get a PC motherboard without USB. printers, scanners, mice, keyboards, even the beloved cd burners are now available in USB form, knocking out their bus-predecessors.
I personally think compactflash prices and densities will eventually improve to the point that they will replace the floppy. it just needs to get cheaper.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
People are stupid. People asked for stupid stuff on their software. The software is stupid.
Poke fun all you want, but since the invention of photo-paper, science has contributed absolutely nothing to the important field of pornography distribution. Look how far we've come.
-the Pedro Picasso
--
--
(sourceCode == freeSpeech)
Apple no longer includes internal FireWire connectors in their current hardware.
What does this have to do with computer science? The complaints mentioned in the article were were really about how the software industry was screwing up. I don't think it's fair to blame computer scientists, since CS research is generally ignored by software developers.
It might be fair to blame the industry for not making usability a priority, but it's generally a low priority for customers too, and companies prefer not to spend resources on features customers don't care about.
I'd have to say that writing a well crafted piece of software is extraordinarily satisfying, but it doesn't come close to the satisfaction of having built a physical device. Unfortunately, physical devices are more expensive and time consuming to build. The way I see it, hardware design is the same as programming, only in a different medium. The advantage is the device you can show others when you've finished.
Of course, probably the most satisfying thing I've ever done was to build a device based on a microprocessor, and to then write all the software that ran on it. :-)
It wasn't an aircraft carrier, it was the Aegis cruiser USS Yorktown.
Attention:
... knees for being beef-witted hypocrites.
All the scientists and engineers who agree with this article *must* stop using these obviously non-useful and pathetically convoluted software tools or risk being kicked in the
Have fun with your pencils and telephones.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Users lose dialog boxes. I don't know how, but they do it. I've spent the last two days making all the error pop-ups in my company's software not only modal, but stay-on-top and sticky too. Granted this is a highly specialized system, and theoretically missing one of those errors could put lives in danger, but how the hell do you lose an error box? It's right in front of you dammit.
As if I didn't have better things to work on...
Search first, ask questions later.
Uh... feeding the troll, sorry.
From a Rhetoric perspective, which is better?
A) constitutionally based representative democracry with socialist education system and fascist military, etc.?
or
B) USA-Democracy (which implies all that)?
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
of course, before the advent of computers, travel was all but impossible. Just look at Columbus's voyage to the New World. If Spain hadn't heavily invested in GPS software and IT infrastructure, how would they know where they were going. (Of course, had they solved the traveling salesman problem first, they could have gone to the East in only x ln x moves.)
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
What career choice other than management and used car sales (I know, redundant) could you choose that would not expose you to the evils of the computer?
Engineers, econ, finance, office admins, they all end up progrmaming in one way or another (schedulers, Excel, macros, mail filter, etc.).
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
AFAIK, most computer science degrees do require a user interface course.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There are millions of bits and pieces of software and hardware out there...not all of it bad, particularly when you start looking at medical implementations and other one off systems.
As with mainstream TV, mainstream music and any other mass production market... 95% of it sucks... but that other 5%???? Yeah baby!!!
'sapientia potestas est'
There are only a finite number of atoms in any given object that you can lathe away.
Your assertion that a computer cannot do inifinite things is quite wrong. A computer may have a finite instruction set, but has access to an infinite amount of memory via networking. A computer can, in fact, do an infinite number of things. Even if you try really hard, you cannot write all programs that can be written.
Forever is a long time...
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Organometallic + Mac = MacSPARTAN. I don't know if that is written in Fortran or not (I hope they didn't write the GUI for it in Fortran ;). SPARTAN is a pretty nice "pointy-clicky" type comp. chem. package. Or really, "molecular modeling" package. Things like this are usually used as frontends to some "real code" (usually written in Fortran). That is, I can use SPARTAN to draw my molecule(s), and then use that structure (prehaps tweaked with one of the simple methods implemented in the graphical package) as input to a real number cruncher (e.g., Gaussian).
When I pursued my Physics degree we wrote in C.
Some of the newer codes that don't depends so much on established code (which is usually in Fortran77) are moving to C.
the also-programmer element, like myself, wrote components in C and tied them together with scripting languages. Incidentally, this approach is best in the real world, too.
Perl is like my best-friend, dude. It is graet at what Fortran (even the newest flavors) suck at: pushing strings around in a way that is easy and makes sense. I write about half as much Perl as I do Fortran, basically in the same way I was talking about SPARTAN before- to push data between Fortran based number crunchers.
oh, but avoid C++
Yeah ;) I think I heard of a (chem) code written in C++ once a conference. Never heard from them since though ;)
As a point of curiousity, where are you applying your chem skillz at the moment?
University of Minnesota. Home of one of the largest, best, and most well equipped comp. chem. programs in the world. ;)
Anyway, I am not saying that C sucks and Fortran rocks or anything like that. Fortran has some features that are really useful when writing chem codes though. Of course C can do it, but it is harder to do right and fast there. And we all know where that leads... you should just use the best tool for the job. And a lot of times in chemistry, that tool is Fortran.
It was a cool little quasi-flamewar though. Sorry I really didn't bust out the napalm for you ;)
Well gee, I suppose once you get past the 72-char line limits, the dearth of types, the pathetic flow control, and the complete lack of objects, higher order functions, lazy eval, complex data structures, & everything we've spent 30 years developing ..
Fortran90/95/2000 does not have 72-char line limits, has derived types, pointers, dynamic memory allocation, overloading... most of the stuff you've spent 30 years developing. What it doesn't have is a lot of crap that is unnecessary for scientific programing. Sure, every now and again I wish could have pointers to functions, or inheritance, but rarely. Use the best tool for the job. Modern Fortran is a really great language for scientific applications.
you're left with code that almost no one can or will read.
Almost every single major computational chemistry code is written in a dialect of Fortran: Gaussian, GAMESS, MolPro, MOPAC,... It is the language of most scientific programmers and is excellent at what it does.
Nor can they get compilers. Writing in a flavor past F77?? Cheapest compiler - $1000. Is that what you might call student priced?
That is just not true. And there is a group working on a GPL'd f90 compiler right now. How long did C exisit before gcc was written (before gcc was useful)? How long has C++ been around? How many problems does gcc have with C++ code? How much does a good commercial C++ compiler cost?
Anyway, your magical '10 times faster' FORTRAN skillz don't really help you since you have to work with a team. A team, mind you, who are now all using Matlab, LISP, or Perl-with-C-mods.
A team who also knows Fortran. Or shit, if they don't it is SO easy to learn. Especially if they already know C and/or Perl.
Something useful written in F95
because you obviously got a serious ego problem. iMac is more than just the case, it's the same as other Macintosh computers, ease of use. as I always say, smart people use linux as server, suckers use linux as desktop (and still they they are really smart).
I'm an actual engineer (eit really as I didn't get my PE..). Having switched careers and gotten a masters in software engineering and working in software I can say the feild is definitely less structured and diciplined than that of Civil engineering. In Civil engineering plans are looked at by a least 2 people and can only be built if signed and stamped by a PE (Profession licenced Engineer). If something goes wrong they go see the PE.
Software can be built and deployed by anyone (this is a good thing though.)
Of course bad software hasn't killed many people yet, and Civil enginneering disasters have caused fatalities, but as more and more systems depend on computers more peoples lives will depend on code.
I don't think its a bad as the article made it out tobe. The industry seems to be maturing and more design/engineering is being used . Thats because those "CS" types have "discovered" a lot of building blocks, structures that can be put together into an "Engineered" system.
And if i'm typing away while reading something, i accidently hit POWER and continue typing, and my sentance has an 'o' and a space in it (as most sentences do) which depressed the OK button and my computer turns off......
Yeah that sounds cool, let's do that!
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
"Look haaaarder." -- Rafiki
The serial port jams bits into a register and pulls the interrupt line. The CPU notices the interrupt and jumps to wherever the vector for that interrupt points. If it points into BIOS, BIOS handles it; if the OS has rewritten the vector to point to itself, the OS handles the interrupt and BIOS never knows it happened. Go read the CPU databook and see.
That's all good stuff, except for the 4-MHz ISA bus bit - IIRC, EISA can also slurp data from the DMA channel at 8MHz. Not that it makes any difference compared to PCI...
Electronics are just expensive useless boxes without the software to make them do something useful.
Right, d00d. Check out a McIntosh MC 75 amplifier before you say anything else. Name me the code in there. (It is a tube amplifier.) Manley, VAC, and many others still make electronics that don't embody a single line of code today.
The engineers who designed the 75 knew a lot, don't kid yourself. If you look at the number of -discrete devices- in a tube amp you will find there aren't many. Yet they amplify.
So - a long time ago, people didn't have computers, and they still made electronics. Fussy electronics? Yup. Flaky electronics? Maybe. But electronics that sold, and worked, and brought music into their houses.
There were electronics before computers. There will be electronics after computers.
I've done that.
And I can still do that. I can still use a slide rule and books of tables, which were accurate enough before computers were available. My first equipment designs were that way, with analog -everything-, on a real drawing board. And BTW, you probably have depended on those designs for your comfort and safety, they're pneumatic controls for DC-9s.
So if a massive EMP event kills all silicon worldwide, you're going to need me a hell of a lot more than I'm going to need you. I can use the tools, but if I didn't have them I could still get my job done. The equipment wouldn't be as pretty or as efficient but it would work.
Can you say the same about your job? Do you have the grace to admit that knowing -multiple- ways to deliver the goods is better than having only one? Yep, engineers have a choice. We choose to use computers the way we choose to use certain alloys in structures. In case of need there is another way.
It should have started like this -
...which becomes a blatantly angry or seemingly thoughtful and even-handed (but actually angry) denial.
Subject: Apparently unrelated "teaser" title...
Body:
---
Well, you're quite correct to say that "There is no real reason your computer should stop playing music, printing, downloading or whatever because the OS is busy with something else." But your proposed remedy won't float.
The supremacy of low cost solutions in the volume PC marketplace is evident. It dates back to about the 486, when PCs became fast enough to handle a WIMP GUI plus every application that mainstream users need. People stopped buying something fast "so it won't become obsolete"; hell, my old 486 really is not obsolete yet, since it deals fine with Win9x, IE, Office 98. As time marched on, and the silicon improved twentyfold, the need for any intelligent devices in new systems "evaporated in the warm light of fast CPUs and cheap memory." (Nemeth et al., 3ed., p.489)
There is just no way to compete any more with a high priced solution. So forget about intelligent peripherals; they are dead forever at the low end, which these days is most of the picture.
As another poster remarked, a solution is better O/S and driver software engineering. It is by no means an open problem to deliver an O/S that can handle the kind of soft real time requirements you are laying out.
(BTW, you were thinking of integrated video subsystems, not AGP video cards.)
ALGOL 60
CPL
BCPL
B
C
C++
try to keep it straight
Now, the average user needs a great deal of support and a sysadmin, that they can't afford (or didn't used to need to afford), so it's their brother-in-law or the guy down the hall who's into computers (even though it's not his job) who's got to fix Microsoft's problems. Microsoft support can't help... they don't have the proper education. Neither does the standard MSCE.
Amen
Many Small Businesses have been hit hard for support costs in the past 5 years. Previous to that they spent many a year working with the same old stable app that served them well. As vendors moved away from the platforms they originally supported the businesses (Doctors, Body Shops, etc.) have been forced to move along. And many have been forgotten by Service companies because of the more lucrative "big" jobs.
Somebody's gotta go back and get us a shitload of dimes.
FORTRAN has moved with the times, you know. It is now possible to code in Visual FORTRAN.
God, that sounds so wrong.
dave
"That's the gist of what academics and engineers told IT workers gathered here this week for the three-day Association for Computing Machinery conference."
Get it straight, this article is about the failure of IT professionals to make intuitive computers... NOT computer scientists. Half the people quoted in this article ARE computer scientists. The IT community contains everything from useless MSCE's to computer scientists, to pointy-haired bosses. Get a clue.
Mmm. I sure do love wading through y/n prompts.
I think that would make a funny show. Don't fill in real words though, that would ruin it.
Penny Arcade did a strip like this a long time ago. I'd link to it but their archive sucks so much that I'd have to look at like 200 strips to find it...
The joke was that they set up cardboard cutouts of themselves so they could go to the beach:
Tycho: Informative news tidbit
Gabe: Veiled or direct insult
...ect.
if computers have contributed nothing usefull, then i would like to see them argue with this:
the Human Genome project uses computers
sheer speed is cool too you can use it to simulate blowing stuff up with nucs without the radiation.
----------------------
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
those Scientists still believe in
- marketing (e. g. new technology will
solve old Problem instantly)
"Advances in speech recognition software, for
example, will open up the Internet to the
estimated 2 billion people worldwide who
cannot read or write, vastly increasing the
size of the Internet and the potential data
collected on it."
IMHO this is incredibly stupid.
Just think about people that have to cope
hunger, housing, health and other basic needs.
How should they spend some 'superflouous'
resources? RRR or WWW?
- AI (e. g. speech recognition,
Computer understands what You want
"The vast majority of computers have few
interactive features and are largely unable
to forecast human behavior")
- integration of different HW and SW is easy,
Computer Scientists just have to come up with
clean, watertight and bulletproof standards.
Whereever You look, people read standards
in a different way than You (e. g. MSFTs
Kerberos, where UNIX boxes can only work as
client), no matter how well written they are.
From personal experience I can assure
that this causes a hell of a lot of work.
To agree on a standard (so that it works
perfectly) there is no competition
based on merits, but on economic success.
cees
jibe?.... now you're just makin' words up.
Scientists and Engineers largely have benefitted from the number-crunching capability and related software (Sci & Eng software). None of this relates to their bitch that 90% of all the crap that's been developedbeyond that is utter trash.
Can you say Windows? At least the MacOS was Engineered!
How many software titles out there on Tucows are worth a damn? Most only reinvent what came before it! That's THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of packages! What's that amount to in man-years?
Put this argument into another perspective:
How many boxes out there in the REAL WORLD utilize anything approaching the full capability of modern computing hardware?
Sci & Eng software. Photo & Movie editing. Database serving. Ummm.... The list begins to dry up not too long after this.
This is an infinitesimally small percentage of boxes!
This isn't true because CS has been cranking out HUGELY USEFUL app's.
Anyway...
you know, if I could, I'd mod you up. meta-posts like this really save a lot of reading.
sean
Are you sure it doesn't? Does it have a light meter (the kind that show up in the view finder) ? If so, that's a simple analog computer, without which you would have to have a standalone light meter to be sure you could "image a scene" with enough light.
Does it have autofocus? If so, you can bet your life it has a computer onboard
I think you mis-define "computer". Just because you can't run Linux on it doesn't mean it's not a computer.
And come to think they managed to land on the moon with a few Ks of Fortran :)
Seriously, you have to give that to enginers, they managed some pretty amazing things with pocket calculator resources.
What about the computer that is publishing their remarks for the whole world to see?
What about the computers that are in their vehicles?
What about the computers that fly the airplane that they used to get to the conference?
What about the computer in their cell phone that allows them to call their spouses to complain about all of those sucky CS majors?
The whole world does not consist of a PC running Windows.
Talk about short sighted, these guys can't see past their desktops.
So what if my mom has to hit the "Start" button to shutdown her computer?
The only thing she uses it for is email, IM, and solitaire.
Her life does not revolve around that stupid PC.
Why do I have turn 5 knobs and push 4 buttons to make my home theater receiver/tv switch from dss to ps2?
.. you name it ...
:)
.. but for some reason, getting them all to work together in a synchronous, efficient manner is impossible, unless you of course get all your services from the same company, and who wants that?
... if all engineers and scientists contributed to what makes sense and push good technology instead of market-speak, we'd would have had beta vcr's, be running linux, and stupid shit like DMCA/UCITA wouldn't exist...
....
You do?
Why do 90% of VCR functions only come on the remote, especially important stuff, like switch to the aux video source?
Because it's cheaper...
why does every piece of software come with crappy default settings?
That depends...
A: The author wants the most popular options (regardless of how they interact) enabled and the blandest, least-offensive, most generic defaults possible.
B: The author wants defaults that make them money. If there is an annoying new "feature" that is either a selling point or a lame attempt to get information/money/whatever out of poeple (somehow), it gets enabled, even if newborn chimps can understand just how doomed the feature is even after being dropped on their head and cut in fifths.
why are we stuck with crappy interoperatability between anything? DV vs. D8mm, firewire vs. whatever, ide vs. scsi
What exactly are you looking for, there...? VHS-C?
i have a pda, cell phone, pager, email, etc.
I repeat, what are you looking for? I can sort of see the usefulness of getting your cell phone to dial up something in an address book on a pda once you've found the number, but it's not much of an increase in convenience (actually dialing a number isn't mind-numbingly difficult, to say the least). And you'd think a cell phone should make a decent pager as well (although having both at once seems like the on-the-go version of using your answering machine to screen your calls, or something). What is so wrong with these devices not communicating? I don't own any of them, so, umm, anyway.
I know I'm generalizing, but these 'engineers and scientists' are the same jerks who've been pushing shitty technology down our throats
Err, not that companies didn't do their darndest to manipulate the markets, but it wasn't a bunch of engineers that decided to buy more BETA VCR's and tapes than VHS VCR's and tapes... And so on.
my 2 cents
I'm penniless. And sigless. I think.
Acutally, mister grammar nazzi, it would be '16-year-old'.
I honostly thought all these guys would have gotten bored years ago. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Maybe that's what is really pissing them off.
You forget. A lot of the UNIX world was created by these types (and of course the corporate geeks). They do have a point. What did you use to enter in your respounce? I bet it was a keyboard, and I bet you have a mouse type device too. These technologies are old. Speech recognition technology has been around for about 20 years (or more). I was playing with speech recognition hardware as a kid in the early to mid eighties. We should have better alternatives to inputing our desires into the computer--such as talking to it.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
The USA is a Republic, we only practice Democracy.
Except in Florida.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
This reminds me of something I want to bitch about. Quite a few Mac programs install extensions, and therefore require a reboot after install. Usually it will pop up a box with options to either quit the installer, continue, or reset. Sometimes it will pop up a box that only gives you the reset option. In this case, it's usually not modal, and you can just send it to the background and gracefully shut down whatever you were working on, or just keep on working. In either case, it will usually tell you before you install and will sometimes also alert you that it will automatically quit any other running programs before the install and force a reboot afterwards. Now, keep in mind these are only conventions, and nobody HAS to do any of that.
Anyway, I installed some software recently that not only didn't tell you it required a reboot beforehand, but popped up a reset only dialog box after the install--a dialog box that was fucking modal. I had to force quit the installer in order to continue working. That annoyed me to no end.
Moral of the story? I dunno. Modal dialog boxes are bad. I hate them. They always annoy me and I wish people would stop using them unless they were absolutely necessary. I guess a dialog box along the lines of "Are you sure you want to shut down?" is OK, but almost nothing else NEEDS to be modal.
That's odd... I guess that all the software that makes the hardware that engineers (computer and electrical) is just nothing. I also suppose that hardware will rise up and work on its own, if it weren't for those nasty computer scientists...
Oh, wait. That's right... Electronics are just expensive useless boxes without the software to make them do something useful.
I wise person once said "engineers think they know everything but they don't know shit."
As for vanity coming before functionality, remember that all the porducts that they cited are just that...products. Consumers need a compelling reason to buy them. That's why "the computer for the rest of us" (the Macintosh, if you don't know the reference) used simple graphics as the user interface. A form of *nix (or other command line system) just wouldn't sell at all. All those in accidemia have their head in the clouds when they say that fashonable technology is foolish. Consumers will buy a shinny "cool" looking device with half the functionality or intuitiveness of something that looks like it should be in a lab. That's a fact.
Quite true. Where I work there are a several "programmers" doing embedded systems. All of them (us) have engineering or EIT backgrounds.
Well, there IS one CS type. He does Windows.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
What should they be called? "General purpose programming language that can be used for systems and application programming" and "A programming language based on the former which also can be used in an object-oriented manner?" They are very general purpose(a relatively low-level) languages.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
You could set up a network of these and fuck yourself in the ass. If I read their product specs correctly.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Heh.
I was not just refering to "coding" I was refering to the "art" of bringing a large project together and having an elegent result.
The "pure" since of a new sorting/indexing algorithm. Or some new compiler technology does not make for a good product. That is where the art comes in.
Even in Haskell( which is pretty cool ) someone who does not appreciate the art will write ugly unmaintainable code. Which will become the building block for an ugly unmaintainable project.
I am so tired of people acting as if systems/software development is a science, it is not. It is an art. Some people are great artists and some are not. Instead of spending time in "Computer Science" classes they should have "Code Art Appreciation" classes.
I have worked with so many academics that produce the worst implimentation. They think it is not important, but that is just a cover for the fact that they do not have the eye for elegent design/implimentation.
Your joke reminded me of another one:
A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician were hanging around outside a building. They watched as one person walked into the building, and the exact same person walk out with someone else a few moments later. The physicist quickly said, "Hm. Our original count must have been mistaken." The biologist said, "The person reproduced!" And the ever helpful mathematician added, "Now, if one more person ENTERS the building, it will be empty again."
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
As Intel made faster processors, Microsoft added more functionality, which exponentially grew in complexity given their poor kernel design.
The functionality was inevitable... Microsoft had to catch up to Unix, but the complexity was way beyond the average user.
Now, the average user needs a great deal of support and a sysadmin, that they can't afford (or didn't used to need to afford), so it's their brother-in-law or the guy down the hall who's into computers (even though it's not his job) who's got to fix Microsoft's problems. Microsoft support can't help... they don't have the proper education. Neither does the standard MSCE.
Microsoft has started saying "Software is support", but they don't yet understand this new mantra.
We're all used to hiring professionals to fix our appliances... but not our computers.
Large corporations hire armyies of sysadmins. Sun and IBM know how to sell them service and support.
Small businesses and individuals are going to have to get used to hiring professional support to maintain their computers.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
The Apollo guidance computers were programmed in assembler, not FORTRAN.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
No. In modern operating systems like Linux or NT the BIOS is used only for booting. Later on hardware is accessed directly by device drivers.
Windows9X is the only popular OS that still uses BIOS for regular operation. --
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
> the box to his own OS or circumvent NT keyboard handling
> (which can't be that hard)
You need a customized keyboard device driver.
And all I heard is that writing device drivers is rather difficult under NT.
--
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
whatever..they seem to be more intrested in making jokes then actually thinking about what they were saying... if computers havnt changed in the past 20 years..yet most people dont know how to use em..what does that say about most people.. and iMacs...jus using a case where style is more then substance.. screw it..personally i rather live in a world where most people dont know how to use a computer.. then those of us who do..can make more money.. a computer thats smarter then a toilet? is he talking about core dumps???
Cynical and unrelated dismissal of nostalgia in general.
Not only that, homes, but you also have to consider the fact that the 'corporate public' has been calling for a somewhat standardized computing situation for years now, and now that they have it, they piss and moan that it hasn't changed.
Fsck them. Really.
Yeah, it's gotten better over the years, but it hasn't changed. Good. That means that the user of old can interface with the new platforms. Is that bad?
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
The point of the article was that "Computer Sceintists contributed nothing useful".
This point is pretty much correct from thier point of view, the last piece of software which was generally useful to engineers was the Fortran Compiler.
As for the "schedule a trip" point, I can safely state having worked in various computer realted jobs in commercial organisations all my adult life that all the basic software required to schedule a business trip, book the flight, pay for it, fuel the aircraft etc. etc. was NOT written by anyone with a CS degree. Almost no software used in the real world originated in a CS research project.
CS is so irrelevent to the real world of computers that most IT professionals working in commercial organisation would consider a CS degree a reason for NOT hiring someone.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
The acedemic world did NOT give us UNIX. Bell labs did, the bit of Bell Labs which gave us UNIX was not a pure research department, but, an applied research department which was given a very clear task -- devolop software to control telephone switches using existing hardware.
Because the current OSes were not up to the job they developed a new one which was up to the job, and, did it so well that it was up to many other jobs as well.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Because you didn't buy a Bang & Olafson !
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Or perhaps more "Computer Science" courses should mandate courses in User Interface design, because there are just too many BAD DESIGNS out there. The problem isn't that interface design is a difficult concept to understand, but rather that it's not considered a priority.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Funny, seems the guys in the article were laughing at iMacs. You know, the computers that don't require any hardware knowledge to set up and don't make you hit Start to stop.
The fact that they were watching them on a PowerPoint presentation, a piece of software that deserves any and all scorn thrown it's way, is just icing on the cake.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Damn, I wish I could mod this up. My girlfriend was just trying to talk me into doing a new case mod, with one of those mechanical mouths mounted in the front.
jred
www.cautioninc.com
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
At least the microbee only reset when you released the key, but still a pain when you hit it. (not just figurativly either, finger cramps from not moving, "come on hurry up!")
This reminds me of an interesting question I'd been thinking over recently:
Has there really been much in the way of innovation in computer science since the heady days of the 1970s, or have the last few decades been more of a playing out of the various innovations and ideas produced back then, now merely possible thanks to lower costs and cheaper prices.
Considering:
Are there, perhaps, other examples? I don't believe that these "scientists" are necessarily upset with the work done by CS workers. I think they, quite rightly, object to the popular notion, seldom disputed by the industry, that constant innovation and invention are part and parcel of the marketplace.
The analysis of statistics, the backbone of much scientific research work on computers, may be aided at present more by the application of brute processing power than by any inventions since the transistor.
Given that, who's to say they don't have a point. . .
Larsal
Lamentation that /. isn't as good as it used to be.
Refutation of angry denial. Revelation of inconsistency in angry denial. Setup for attempt at witty attack on poster. Punchline.
But there will never be a program which allows a computer to say "hello" to the world.
The PC in many respects has too many functions, and it does them too poorly. So there's all the reason in the world do look at different choices.
So I guess that's either lobbying for an array of specialty digital appliances, or handicapping computers so they can't do so many functions (i.e., be a generalized logical device). I mean, come on, that's the whole magic of computers. Call me a hobbyist or whatever, but you can pry my word-processing, spreadsheet-calculating, internet-surfing, game-playing, software-developing PC out of my cold, dead arms.
It's stuff like this that is making me more and more likely to completely disregard as rubbish any presentation that includes the phrase "computers need to be more intuitive and user-friendly"...
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I get your point, but i might state that you didn mention the biggest invetion in PC science...PORN! ROFL....
Honestly, people. Who are we trying to fool? Engineers and CS people are both designing things. Some are physical, some are abstract, and some are a mixture of both. Why do you think so many Electrical Engineers also do Computer Science degrees? They are so closely related it's hard to differentiate the two...
i thought the article was interesting, but it seemed to overlook the basic practical necessity of backwards compatibility. it probably wouldnt be too hard at all to start fresh on a new kind of machine for doing the things we (supposedly) have so much trouble getting done with the computers of today--but what about when you need to transport or view standard file formats? who'll write the new driver you need for the network printer? how will this machine talk to all the other machines we already have? practical technologies don't exist in an academic vacuum--they have to be design with real world constraints in mind. and that means making new devices that work with old devices. and that means its very difficult to make a clean start.
!@#$%^&*()_+~`-=[]\{}|;':",./?
Look at that, it's puntuation. "Ooooh, punctuation!"
And looky here; I can use the Shift key. It sure goes a long way to making my writing look intelligent, such as when I say "I", or when I begin a new sentence. Rather like this one.
I have no tag line
Well, it's interesting that Comp Sci. is having a go at the Engineers here. Standards should be high, otherwise all you have is a bunch of hacks and band-aids. That's why there are Software Engineers (not someone with a major, I'm talking Fully qualified professionals with engineering degrees in this discipline).
I think the idea that Engineers turn concepts and scientific theory into reality (you know, the stuff that works), kinda bugs Comp Scis, because we don't take any crap. We're employed to build large-scale systems on time and on budget (yes, there are companies out there that can do it, so the rest are really without excuse) and we do it rather than complain that some obscure algorithm won't work right or that some neat little routine isn't elegant enough.
By all means, the Comp Scis can keep on doing what they do, but don't worry, the Engineers will get the job done, and done right.
"Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades--bore the brunt of scorn and jokes about how fashion has superseded functionality. "
:)
Huh? The iMac and other Apple designs (although controversial) consistently win industrial design awards from many places...what industrial designers are these? Even those who think its dumb have to acknowledge that colored computers have been wildly successful for Apple at least. As for fashion superceding functionality, what about when an engineer puts functionality over usability?
"One presenter went so far as to blame the non-intuitive, non-human oriented design of desktop computers for the current economic slowdown that has ravaged the broader technology sector."
He what? Someone please enlighten me how these computers that were designed by humans for humans and (in general) with extensive human interface group research are non-human oriented. The evolution of the GUI since it *began* has been to more and more intuitive and user friendly interfaces (once again, in general)...
(Flamebait): Why are engineers ragging on CS when they are responsible for more UI idiocy than most? Engineers tend to want to make UIs that favor the knowledgeable and competent person, not make it easy to use for anyone.
Heh. Top this.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I totally agree with these posts -- a lot of the complexity of technology is driven by the general level of intelligence (or lack thereof) of its users.
Here's a real-world example one of my help-desk guys gave me a few weeks ago (I'm an I.T. Director at a company of about 150):
This guy "Fred" was using Netscape for his e-mail and always deletes his e-mails knowing they go into the "Trashcan" inside Netscape. He knows about and understands the Win98 "Trashcan" on his desktop. The problem came in because he had hit "Empty Trash" inside of Netscape and afterwards realized that he needed some of those e-mails he emptied out of the Netscape trash. He wanted to know where his e-mails were because he just assumed that after emptying his trash inside Netscape it transferred the e-mails to his trash can on his desktop. Duhhhh...
He didn't understand why it wouldn't work that way. The MIS guy tried over and over to explain that they both have trash cans but they are completely separate and after you empty the trash anywhere, it's gone forever.
I think the easier we try to make things (on computers) for people the more likely those niceties conflict or actually work against each other. In the end things seem more complex -- just because we try to make things easier and more "fool-proof" for users. Maybe a lot of this complexity will eventually just disappear (usually companies react to stupidity from their customers) if users try harder to understand how to use their computers. I mean, how many f*ckin' people out there have ever *learned* how to use their mouse properly? I can guarantee you won't have a problem using those weird iMac mouses if you have.
>That's just an trick Fight that :)
Well actually at the lowest level all I/O is controlled by the BIOS. Therefore this can be circmvented by bare metal programming. Also in theory it can't be circumvented but trojans that do circumvent it have been seen. Also it would be quite simple for Microsoft to have changed the secure path key while in the pre login state.
It's lazy sloppy programming that microsoft have tried to cover up. I'm not an true Linux zealot. I like some Microsoft software but I won't put up with lazy programming or sloppy lies.
-- Be careful what you say. Someone might remind you about it another day.
Nonsense. You press a key on you keyboard and logic levels are interpreted by the serial port. The bios then send this data to the OS. The OS can not bypass the BIOS. BIOS == Basic Input Output System. Go down to the bare metal and you find the BIOS. But as usual this is more effort than most people will go to.
-- Be careful what you say. Someone might remind you about it another day.
Anyway, your magical '10 times faster' FORTRAN skillz don't really help you since you have to work with a team. A team, mind you, who are now all using Matlab, LISP, or Perl-with-C-mods. Oh, and they have a more pre-debugged algorithms available on the web, and better code profilers for tuning. So how's your amazing, faster than assembly, execution speed now??
FORTRAN was cool if you were an engineer when your choices were FORTRAN, COBOL, or LISP. Times have changed; and you aren't writing Apollo control systems in 128k. So fuck off and get a real language. Your undergrads will thank you, or at least forgive you.
No insult here - basically you're working with a dead language -- The vast majority can't afford to read/execute it. Standard specialist situation though - a small elite of people with access to forgotten tongues. The advice, your advice, "Use the best tool for the job." rings true. (I get most work done in LISP, SQL, C, & Perl. Lately Ruby.)
Language disputes are only suited for flamewars; serious discussions are wasted (design is more important anyway). From a few hundred to a couple tho. Keep in mind, however, that all of them keep to modern flavors, however -- so you can still use g++, but it'll take longer to compile, and execute slower; but you won't be restricted to a 24 year old language spec... Interesting; I didn't know that. My Chem grad friends tell me they get all their work done on packages written for Macs, but don't specify any languages(they're in organometallic catalysts).
When I pursued my Physics degree we wrote in C. (the also-programmer element, like myself, wrote components in C and tied them together with scripting languages. Incidentally, this approach is best in the real world, too.) The F77 limitations were very real - none of us had F90 at home, limited access to research machines, etc. Plus, the wealth of published physical algorithms written in C continues to creep up on those written in FORTRAN. And learning the syntax of a language is different from learning to program well in a language, as I am sure you know.
When I worked in a bioinformatics lab, the code there was written in C, and they were trying to move to Java...but then again, they were a little crazy.
So I don't think FORTRAN has a lock on sci computing.
My only real complaints are that FORTRAN is infeasible to most people and thus a burden to teach, esp. when other languages offer comparable speeds & more features. I only flamed since the previous poster presented me with such a wide target. Use what you use. -- oh, but avoid C++.
As a point of curiousity, where are you applying your chem skillz at the moment?
The software industry is laden with executives who care more about making the time to market window shorter than producing a quality product. Since the turnover rate is so high, they "guilty parties" have moved on to selling the next vaporware product, leaving over-taxed development to follow through on the previous pipedream.
I'm sure the hardware industry would run the same way if the consequences weren't so great. If XYZ Corp puts out some crappy web - enabled - XML - Java - object - oriented turd, it hits the marker, flops, and dies quietly. If XYZ Corp is producing say, CPU's, they cost of failure could well destroy the company. Plus, there's a lot less "well, this is just the beta" stuff. The chip works (for the most part) or doesn't get released.
I suppose my point is that geeks are geeks, and we all have more bad ideas than good ones. In the software world, these ideas can see the light of day. In hardware, the bad ideas get weeded out early. Quite frankly, I think the management of the technical talent dictates the quality of the idea. And the truth is, most management will take the shortest path to getting paid. For hardware, the path is a little longer...
This is entirely wrong. The PC keyboard can easily be read from directly by a program running under real mode, or a protected mode program with rights to access the port (usually the operating system's keyboard driver).
Specifics at PC Games Programmer's Encyclopedia - Programming the Keyboard.
In practice, only some DOS-based programs use the BIOS for keyboard access; DOS games usually read the hardware directly to be able to handle multiple simultaneous keypresses, and stuff under Windows/Linux/BeOS/whatever has to ask the operating system.
(Note: on my Power Mac 7500 under Mac OS 8.6, pressing the "power" key brings up a dialog box with the options "Restart," "Sleep," "Cancel," and "Shut Down." The default button is "Shut Down.") Heh.
- MFN
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Just remember, I didn't start it :-)
Disclaimer: Two beers down may be too many to be able to communicate in a grammatically correct fashion...
The best newspaper in the USA: the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
The best newspaper in the USA: the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
I'm having a lot more fun developing optimized neural networks to do hand writing recognition.
Wow this explains why you have been
Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for 3 years.
*cough* Schizopolis *cough*
When you jump into Protected Mode, all BIOS calls, interrupts etc. are disabled until you set up traps/paths for them. Bare metal or not, it is part of the i386 design that allows this, and the BIOS cannot function without the support of the processor. If the processor says "no", then it doesn't matter what anything else on the board says, because its not going to happen. Even a "spy" PCI card would not work under Windows if Windows did not know it should open a data path for it. That is the power of PM.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
Curses! Those clever scientists and engineers have found us out! But don't tell the VC's - otherwise I might have to work for a living!
Although I can't help but agree with some of the (few) arguments cited in the article, and I have to admit that there's plenty of useless crap that's come out of the CS field lately, but these scientists and researchers seem to have ignored the not-so-intellectual side of things : making the damned PC more popular and attractive to common people.
While there may not have been many remarkable technological achievements, marketing and image have been steadily improving and focusing on Joe Random Luser. This will bring more eyeballs to the next great neat project that will be perceived as the greatest thing since sliced bread. In the long run, more people will ultimately benefit from future advances in computing. Now I'd like to see an astrophysicist say the same about their practice.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Yes, they are not as stable as Unix, however I would characterize the user interface of Unix as "user hostile". After 30 years, the fact that no one has come up with a better interface is disappointing. If interracting with a Unix system on the command line is the be all and end all of computer systems I think I'll be switching careers.
I think IT and computer companies ahve done mor over the years to make computers easier to use than the academic world. Its certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. After all, industry gave us Windows and the Mac, the academic world saddled us with Unix.
Because you are exaggerating? It takes me ONE button press on my system at home. Doesn'tget much simpler than that!
"Why do 90% of VCR functions only come on the remote, especially important stuff, like switch to the aux video source"
'cos you bought a cheap crap VCR that didn't meet your requirements - i.e. you didn't bother to look at what you were buying.
FWIW, my VCR at home allows such switching from both the remote (where it is more useful anyway) and from teh front panel. Nexttime, THINKabout what you are buying before you spend your money!
"why does every piece of software come with crappy default settings"
Because no matter WHAT default settings arechosen, not everyone will agree with them. All they can do is chose suitably safe ones which will annoy the fewest people.
"why are we stuck with crappy interoperatability between anything"
Eh?
"i have a pda, cell phone, pager, email, etc. .. but for some reason, getting them all to work together in a synchronous, efficient manner is impossible"
Then either you are being deliberately obteuse, or you have, once again, not made sure your purchases meet your needs.
FWIW, my mobile/pager (seeing as how I needed both facilities, I took the radical step of buying a phone that can be paged - neat, huh?), computer and PDA all work together nicely, thank you.
Perhaps, rather than venting your spleen at random and irrelevant targets, you could spend your time more productivly by looking at what you buy BEFORE you buy it to make sure it meets your needs.
Or not.
It's your choice.
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
This movie? I'll have to look for it.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
My thinking is that one could work up a few templates like this and then simply fill in the blanks PRN. Whole seasons of WB could be written this way. Fame and fortune could be yours (unless somebody swiped the templates.)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
For example, he said, computer users must know that to turn off the computer they have to click on "Start"--not an intuitive step to end a computing session.
This is one of the more frequent stupid complaints about the win9x interface. (not to say all complaints about it are stupid) Microsoft should just take the word "start" off of the dang button. Just have the windows logo and call it the "windows" button.
UK readers of my age will remember the Acorn
Electron's Break key. Again, too easy to hit
by mistake and kill your BASIC program.
I rolled a paperclip into a spring and put it
under the keycap. Mmmmuch better.
------------------
The Fortarn code runs faster and the development time was 1/10 of what it would have been to write in C or C++. Your point is?
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
I can see a dilbert like comic with engineers poking fun at computer scientists.
I really shouldn't have to keep saying this to people, but, Gore NEVER SAID that he invented the internet!!!!!!
geez...
Yeah right, I'd like to see them do their work without them
I lost me sig.
How about this one:
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are sitting in a train driving through the Highlands in Scotland. Suddenly they see a single black sheep munching some grass on a nearby field. The engineer says, "Oh, all sheep in Scotland are black." The physicist shakes his head, "No no, at least one sheep in Scotland is black!". Now the mathematician cannot hold back: "Nonsense! At least one sheep in Scotland is black on at least one side!".
So I dont generally like replying to trolls. But in this case I am concerned. I think you should seek counseling. No, seriously. I mean it. I can only think of a few other examples of cynism that match yours, possibly Nitzche. There is more to life then the bottom line. Just about everything in fact.
No, Java sucks, I meant Objective-C.
A language that both combines smalltalk and C is problely a better language than a language based on C or one based on smalltalk.
They're not talking about computers in general, they're talking about PC's. Home PC's. Terminals in airports have been working well for years. They do what they're supposed to do, and although they're tough to use (ever wonder why a terminal agent has to type in a book jsut tp print your damn ticket?), they work well. Today's PC's are not only tough to use, but they don't do too much well at all.
Pease's articles do an excellent job of describing the real world and cutting through the scientist and theoretician rhetoric. If you've never read his column in Electronic Design, check out the archive at http://www.planetee.com/planetee/servlet/DisplayDo cument?ArticleID=8141. I highly recommend reading his work.
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
Absolutely, positively. Almost as a rule, management either wants to or is forced to try and cram a product with as many features as possible, even at the cost of quality. They squelch most attempts to do it right the first or second time because they've overbid to get the contract or are racing to create a more "advanced" product than their competitors, and doing it right requires a lot of time up front with little tangible results. It's the lack of tangibility that scares them -- they want to see their little worker bees typing away, not thinking, even though it's well known that coding takes up only a small fraction of the total development time if you're working the way you should. It's no wonder that most software is buggy and crappy. If you're getting paid to do it, you're discouraged from doing it right. This is especially true in an older project that has a lot of legacy code. No one understands the system completely, and you're considered a slow worker if you take the time to wrap your head around a bug and find the best solution; that is, a solution that minimizes risk and isn't a kludge. Often, however, a kludge is your only choice because the design is poor, either because the original developer wasn't given enough time, there was insufficient peer review, or the design is so dreadfully old that it no longer serves the system's requirements. Eventually the development cycle goes into a kind of "quality debt" in which there are so many bugs that you're doing all you can just to stay on top of them while updating your features for the new version. Forget about paying proper attention to thorough testing and good design.
Why be the grammer nazi?
Why not the American Secret Service?
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
How about usability? It is the idea these days to go away from modal dialogues. However try to send something using Outlook and look information up at the same time (say a few contact details). Under some conditions, this will work, on others, Outlook will just refuse to let you out of the current dialogue. Microsoft is just one example though. Some people can single-task, but most of us have to do several jobs at once. The computer doesn't like to let us unless the apps are totally unrelated.
See my journal, I write things there
My butt. What we have is a market full of technophobic, ignorant baby boomers. Just because it's not intuitive to a 50 year old marketing manager doesn't mean it's not intuitive to a 10 year old.
Most Gen X people (and ALL generation-whatever-they-are kids) find the Windows GUI, for example, to be very intuitive and very simple. Hell, my 5 year old cousin flies around my PC. Screw the baby boomers and the engineers that are blowing them. In 10 years, you won't see these arguments anymore.
And not just that - we have an advantage over traditional arts too. We have an infinitely flexible medium (Turing Machine) in which to build our constructs. Given the choice between an imaginative piece of code and a sheep in formaldehyde, I know which seems more like art to me. Keith.
come to think of it i met my fiance through this sucky computer / internet useless technology thing.. i wonder how many people have met their mates online ?
regardless of how unintuitive the technology is it is bringing people together every day that might not have ever crossed paths before.. in droves.
When i was a kid i was amazed by the computers on star trek (next generation) you didn't have to boot them or really know how to use them you just did paper was a thing of the past and a book was something read for pure enjoyment not to hold crap found in a text book and growing up on star trek i expected computers to be like the ones on star trek and now that i am older i am kind of disappointed that they are not and i have to type and click instead of issuing a voice command like i would to my waiter. the problem is simple this is still a young industry the first computers where only invented a little over 50 years ago and the average person has only been interacting with pc for around 6 years maybe less just give it time
Travis
Well, strong reactions are perfectly in line, when you have self-appointed "researchers" laughing at what they consider braindead design decisions.
They have absolutely no idea how to create s computer or design software; they are out of their depths. If they weren't, they wouldn't laugh. They would simply solve.
Contrary to what some may believe, most scientists are quite intelligent, especially in fields like physics and math. Non-analytical or less analytical fields like biology are where you could actually encounter cry-babies complaining about how their computers aren't user-friendly enough (Yes, biologists do need to use computers for things like DNA sequence analysis, spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, etc.)
Just trying to clear up the matter. The title should say "Some scientists say computers suck." instead.
Wroot
I still don't write in FORTRAN because g77 (GNU FORTRAN compiler) is archaic (Fortran77 doesn't even have dynamic memory allocation) while modern compilers aren't Free/GPL'ed. BTW, it's a shame GCC settles for the 24 year old standard.
Wroot
You are going to a be a lot of quiting in your life.
"never ever start a sentence with a preposition"
The computer has the ability to be an INFINITE [...] number of tools.
Then yours is different from mine.
OK, sure the computer can run all sorts of programs. But that's like saying an adjusable screwdriver can be an infinite number of tools, because it can be adjusted to an inifite number of settings.
Unfortunately these settings all range from X to Y and whatever you do, it's still a screwdriver.
So, maybe your computer can do an infinite number of things, but mine can't. It can't play MP3's without using two (audiable) fans, which sucks because I want to listen when it does so. Mine can't take piuctures. Mine can't answer the telephone. I can't carry mine around like my palm to keep track of adresses. My computer might be able to do so, but if it did, I'd not be able to use it to make a phonecall to one of these addresses.
Yes, I make my living (partially) by administering a company network. And still I think that windows is clumsy, hardware should adhere to stricter standards to make it "play well with others". The list could go on, but why care? Currently I hope that the Mac I'll buy when OsX ships will improve things for me.
Of course a Mac is also a PC. I won't carry it around etc. But maybe it will improve some of the things that I hate about my PIII.
Yes, we have porn, but give the scientists and engineers a chance; they're evidently working on something even better, the next generation of porn. Check this quote:
"We're talking about the emotional coupling between the robot and the human," Brooks said.
It sounds kind of awkward; but I've been single a while, I'll give it a shot. Where do I sign up?
Who do you think invented what we now call the computer in the first place? I think "computers" and "scientists and engineers" are interchangable in the above sentence. In "field" envy of this sort it always appears that every one tries to take other people out of context ;-)
-ed
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Since most Smalltalks interface nicely with C, why not just use both Smalltalk and C as appropriate?
You claim that "very few people ever actually learn how they work or how they can be properly and efficiently integrated into our lives". However, the University of Waterloo (way up here in Canada), has two (count them, TWO!) that deals with just this. Computer Engineers deal with both the development of hardware and software. The program resulted from a combination of computer science and electrical engineering. As a result we get the big picture when it comes to computers, and we take it from an engineering perspective. Plus there's also Systems Design Engineering. I am not a part of this program, but I know others who are. SyDe Eng's investigate the inner workings of systems, whether they be social, mechanical, or electronic. Many of them specialize towards the hi-tech side of things since so many jobs exist for them, simply because they are not many people (currently) that can go between two systems. My advice to any of those out there that wish to see both the hardware and software side of computers (and in an in-depth fashion), try out one of these programs.
"I am a brain, Watson, the rest of me a mere appendix"
I buy my first computer, and immediately, it is declared stupid.
I didn't see mention of scientists and engineers in the article's quotes... there was one guy who was a "computer scientist", and another was "Chief Scientist" of a graphics company, but it didn't sound like a wholesale assault from a bunch of EEs and Physicists. I wasn't at the ACM meeting, but it sounds to me like this article warped some comments into a "Scientist v. Programmers" vein to make it more interesting. In any case, when you're talking things like interfaces and fundamental hardware design, aren't you talking about SEs and EEs and CEs and what have you? Not computer scientists...
Given that this was an ACM meeting, I don't think the views represented here are at all indicative of "scientists and engineers" in general. If anything, most of the scientists I know are perfectly happy to write in FORTRAN (gack) and could care less about the marketability of personal computers. Engineers would be more likely to care about usability, but if anything they would be the ones looking for a full-featured computer, not an "appliance". Sounds to me like a bunch of people hurt by the recent economic problems associated with the stock market are angry and want someone to blame... a few may happen to be engineers and scientists, but I very much doubt this is at all a majority opinion.
Why not?? Define what you mean by 'Say', '"Hello"' and 'world' and I'm sure someone can (if it hasn't been done already) write a program to do that.
Most computers have sound cards or the old PC Sound (you know that annoying beep), simple get it to say hello... Or perhaps you mean the more philosphical kinda like AI? How about that, there is lotsa people out there playing with and researching AI techniques to create an entity (or program if you will) that will pass the turing test and perhaps go further...
It's in that place where I put that thing that time
Good for you following what you believe and dream in but don't bag out those of us who have no interest in actually doing the Engineering stuff you do. Hey I love hearing about the feats that engineers and scientists do around the world, just as much as I love hearing about new advances in programming/programs, the latest AI advance, the success in having a program recognise the difference between the thought "Yes" and the signal to say "Yes"... (the list goes on)
but I really doubt a CS guy could write the code I do [for fluid dynamics]Just as I (and no doubt others) doubt your ability to write beautiful recursive object structures to calculate taxes, invoice payments... Or analysing pictures/photos for UI building, or increasing the speed and scope of date/time comparisons, or networking to a ....
Just 'cause you're good at doing a small subset of programming does not mean you're a programming god or that the rest of us who are just CS's are not as 'good' as you.
It's in that place where I put that thing that time
I'd disagree with that last statement.. "Today's PC's are not only tough to use, but they don't do too much well at all."
Let's pick communication, say ten years ago, how easy was it to send (x) to a friend/stranger/relative (whatever) half way across the world, comfortable in the knowledge it would be recieved within a couple of minutes/hours (depending on if they're up?)
I can see you saying, you could do that right? Well guess what, my mum couldn't of, my sister couldn't of, namely people who knew nothing about computers would of had a hell of a difficult time to do so. But today, I recieved an email from my grandmother containing a scanned photo from her b'day... Sure she probably had some help scanning the photo, but could she of done that 10 years ago? (without having a computer expert do it for her)
It's in that place where I put that thing that time
Don't know about Mac but in Windoze, you have System Modal dialog boxes or [normal] modal boxes. System modal does what you're talking about ('ucking annoying too!!) but with modal boxes, you can set the parent of it to being either the desktop, a specific form on your app, the main form on your app, only limited to what hWnd you can provide.. Sorta like context (just that very few programmers out there use them, or more specifically use them well)
Rant over you can continueIt's in that place where I put that thing that time
Please, no comments on my spelling, it's a learning disability and my browser doesn't have a spell checker.
Mathematician's proof: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, therefore by induction all odd numebrs are prime".
Physicist's proof: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is expermental error, 11 is prime..."
Accoutant's proof: "2 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime..."
Computer Scientist's proof: "3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime...."
And so on =)
On my home machine, for example, I type 'halt machine', or utilize it's command completion and just type 'ham' which exits the operating system and returns me to a bootstrap command processor from which I can launch myself into another world with 'boot ', or shutdown the system completely by typing 'shutdown'. If I change my mind, I can get back where I was by typing 'restart'.
What is this amazingly intuitive system? Genera 8.3, on a 1991 Symbolics XL1200 (an old AI workstation).
The original article was correct in this respect -- modern systems may have lots of pretty bells and whistles, but they have really gotten untracked from usability and reliability standpoints.
We don't buy 'generalized' home motors anymore. Instead we have small specialized motors embedded in the home. In a hairdryer, in the microwave, in the air conditioner, In the fridge, In your scooter, In your car, In your cpu fan, in your hard-drive and in your automatic camera.
Sounds not so far far different than the motor to me....Our needs are complex, but technology can adapt to our needs. Not the other way through the looking-glass.
An automatic camera is intelligent in the domain that a camera needs to be because it is speciallized. It can calculate the distance to objects, set the aperature, focus, flash, advance the film, all within a fraction of a second, with the push of a button -- because it is specialized.
You may not need a general purpose computer at all. The specialization I'm talking about is deeper than what you are talking about. You can't easily get the affordances of pencil and paper through a general purpose computer. Different forms are conducive to different uses. Specialized hardware and software together in conjuction make it easier to do things. (see automatic camera example above) Don't tell me that your mouse/keyboard/monitor combo is equally good for doing spreadsheets/word processing as it is for drawing, or painting. Why are secretaries and artists (people who do fundamentally different things with the computer) working with essentially the same system?
It doesn't make much sense.
We definitely will NOT have behemoths like the current home computer as a common household item of the future.
At least not in the article cited. Complaints that efforts are focused too much on the PC rather than distributing technology across the household, strike me as being motivated by a certain faddishness and "buzzwordiness" rather than a substantive critique of some deficiency in computer science.
The article sounded to me like some people with a certain technological agenda are unhappy because everyone else in technology does not have that same agenda at the forefront of their minds.
That's hardly a substantive complaint.
plus, if i understand this correctly, the computer scientists would be throwing mud at themselves, am i correct? just a thought.
www.rose-hulman.edu/~castlebs
How can they even say that? Think about all the amazing innovations computer scientists have come up with! One click shopping! Great Porn sites! PORN SEARCH ENGINES! COMPUTER PORN! PORN!
Casual Games/Downloads
... we should start calling computers a "toolbox" rather than a tool.
If you don't think good programming = good engineering then I'd advise you to please remove yourself from our industry because its hard enough getting good work done in the first place, without having to deal with attitudes like that. Either that, or perhaps you'll be promoted to management sometime real soon.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Slashdot'2002: "Dangerous proprietary MS-tamagochis are out of control. They lay fiber-neural networks in city sewers. Scientists use open-sourced Kohonen maps to locate and neutralize them using GNU tools. Stop backpropagation now!"
Every tool has it's purpose. ...I find it odd that you'd poke fun at some stereotyped engineer for writing in Fortran. You "software guys" of all people should know the benefits of using Fortran even today...
The essence of the speakers' complaints was that computer engineers have spent the last five decades designing computers around the newest technology--not for the people who use the machines.
Their complaints can be understood as: (1)new computer technology is applied to limited areas where general public does not care; (2)computer interface is terrible. So why does anyone not agree with their viewpoints?
Computer technology should touch more of our daily lives was what they suggested and I agree. How much was done in this area? Why was the suggestion for us to jump out of the tower case anything wrong?
Computer interface is terrible yes. Window is popular because it's ease to use and consistent interface. Linux is not popular because it's hard to use despite it's powerful and abundant functionalities. So should we care about the general public more (develop more Window-like easy-to-use computer technology) or the geeks more (develop more Linux-like hard-but-powerful stuff)? Another translation of the above question is: is science for the good of general public or the geeks?
As a note to hexx, computer interface course is nothing when you just take it as a course but not implement what you learned. How many computer scientists care about interface? Most will tell you interface design is lame and not interesting. Also they thought users will have no problem using what they designed, and why was there recounts in Florida again?
Computer scientists are supposed to be scientists. Experiments should be conducted to test if an interface is easy to use. Science is so called science in that objective evidence has to be gathered, not subjective beliefs.
Someone who can handle their computer is generally considered more skillful, and seems to have more potential than one who can't.
So much for people who think able to think logic is everything. When are we going to give up our feeling of superiority as a geek and make the computers easy to use. Are we thinking for the good of human lives as scientists?
a lot of Buxton's writings are available from his site
Ahh, but code modularization (OO-ness) flies in the face of commercial interests, or so we are finding out. At my work we are pushing the "component based" philosophy, but vendors are not interested in developing anything that can be tinkered with or reused as components by other vendors. Furthermore, standards are all well and good, but to get the commercial edge, companies like to "enhance" the standard - HTML for example?
I would assert that computer scientists (or comp. sci. researchers) are in a position to contribute in the sense of true science, however the nature of the industry constrains what good we can do.
Lesson: The money is in stupid crap with bells and whistles, not in genuinely innovative and well designed software.
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
Thats right. The technology development is intended to make work easier. However people need to adapt themselves to. They cannot be atached to the memories of the old days.
From Jonathan Walls
This is insightful? Does it not strike moderators as pathetic to see a knee-jerk reaction to criticism, laced with bad sarcasm, insults and poor logic, pandering to the tastes of the audience?
Especially in a community that likes to think of itself as intelligent and cutting-edge - you would have thought a bit more open mindedness could be expected. Anyone with the ability to see another person's point of view would acknowledge that using the Start button to stop, or requiring hardware knowledge to install an OS, and so on, is indicative of a situation that needs improvement. And remember this is criticism of an industry rather than individuals, so there's no point cherry-picking to prove a point.
As for "computers are complex because your needs are complex", that sound like a pissing competition i.e. "My needs are so complex you could never design a simple [set of] interface[s] to solve them. Gee, you must be pretty simple if you think it's possible for you." Then you get, "my complex needs are inconsistent the needs of others", or in other words, "I am such an individual that noone could ever produce a simple solution that suits me."
Personally, I want things to be simple, I'm not strutting around claiming to be a complex individual, with difficult to meet needs. For a start, such a person sounds like an arsehole. But more to the point, I have lots of simple needs. Take the example of doing my taxes - I don't want to, I want a simple process. After all, all the figures I provide are automated somewhere anyway, I don't want to expend any effort at all, I just want a simple solution. Such a solution would undoubtably have a complex back-end, take a lot of work if it's possible at all currently, and take some talented people to do it right. If I simply saw a one page print out at the end of the tax year with a breakdown of income and taxes I would be very happy (and rather impressed). Simplicity of interface, sheer useability, takes a lot of talent, skill and creativity.
If the only example of an intelligent device you can think of is a computerised thermometer, I wouldn't hold much hope of ever getting a good job requiring any of these skills.
As a software engineer I always strive to make things as complex as possible. :)
The main problem is the toolkits/frameworks that are used for developing software. Most Unix toolkits really suck! What's even worse is that the language they are designed in, be it C or C++ makes such a mess, because those languages weren't designed for graphical interfaces, they are portable assemblers.
If the world programmed in Smalltalk life would be much easier. Imagine if everybody had truely reusable classes. Although maybe that would put some programmers out of work. Using a specific language doesn't mean that code reuse will be well done, a lot of it has to do with the programmer.
Maybe one of you has the idea that will push us past the archaic languages that we currently use.
This is just the old SCSI vs IDE argument rehashed.
SCSI cards handle transfers, IDE makes the CPU do it. Intel wants to drive demand for CPUs, so do they push SCSI as the standard interface mfrs should use, or IDE?
Same with USB vs. FireWire. (not to mention the NIH syndrome).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
And you can walk into a store and buy all of these separate applicances. So how can engineers complain that the CS people aren't making them?
Just because it is programmable doesn't mean a CS type programmed it.
I also believe that the ACM comments went too far but they do have a point, although I don't think that CS is all to blame.
So many people have the attitude that technology solves all of our problems. The thing is that technology seems to cause as many problems as it solves, and that blame can be spread everywhere, from consumers to politicians to VCs to designers to engineers to programmers, etc.
It's not that common that your programs will leap out of the screen and become a physical object? Even if you think you are creating something out of nothing, once you are done, I can't hold your program. I might be able to see it on the screen or read a printout.
Programs are abstract. The only reason we use them is that they can be made to work with non-abstract objects. The thing is, most programmers only have access to printers and monitors for output methods, which aren't bad but IMO that can limit the experience and capabilities of the programmer.
I am something of a programmer and something of an engineer, the benefit I get from that is that _I_ can make physical objects that are a result of my programs, or make electromechanical circuits that actually have real world interactivity.
Even if vmware runs multiple operating systems at the same time?
If it's a shared terminal in a computing lab or somewhere, the secure attention sequence is very useful. Otherwise it would be trivial for the previous user to put up a fake login prompt and capture your password. (The 'schoolboy attack'.)
I agree that it doesn't solve all the problems, but if you can close one out of three security holes, that's better than closing zero out of three.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
...by a good old CS vs. Eng. paintball tourney. Let's get it on!
I think it's interesting that Prof. Buxton, one of the most innovative researchers into human interfaces, is one of the people cited in this article. He's responsible for some very interesting work... er, that I can't properly cite because I'm not sure where to cite it from.
But he's done very good work in making, say, Alias | Wavefront's software be very usable by artists. Technically minded artists, to be sure, but there is a level of intuitive access to the program that just isn't found in a lot of other packages.
*n
>Targets of the critics' scorn included convoluted
> commands such as the common "Alt-Control-Delete"
> sequence used to close a program or perform an
> emergency shutdown
So the engineers are getting all concerned about human factors? I guess I wasn't aware that they had traded in their pocket protectors and slide rules.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
You're missing the point. The operating system can trap whatever key sequence it wants - it is the operating system, so all keypresses are processed by it first. Of all the key combinations available on a keyboard, MS chose to use the combination traditionally associated with rebooting the system.
While smart peripherals would help, the real cause of the problem is poor software design. There are more than enough CPU cycles to do everything in a timely manner, but the operating system doesn't schedule the CPU correctly. Brain-dead device drivers also contribute to the problem.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Until they get the 3-D printers working better, the computer is just another tool. And sometimes a lot less useful than a lathe.
...
OTOH, the potentials
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm typing on a PC keyboard on a computer bought less than 12 months ago. Unfortunatley, this keyboard has a RESET button. It's located where the PrintScreen button should be. If you accidentally brush against the button when trying to hit Backspace, your computer immediately shuts down! I use Windows 2000 and it doesn't give you a chance to abort. On Day 2, I removed this key. ;-)
cpeterso
Programmers might not get the satisfaction of building something useful
Au contraire, Rodney. Exactly the reason I left engineering is that no-one in their right mind was going to give me two million quid to make a fast ferry because some hung-over graduate thought it would have fantastic seakeeping. Computing, OTOH, if I think it could be good, I'll sit down and code it. Man, this is way creative.
Dave
DISCLAIMER: Sometimes you are going to have to make software to an engineering quality.
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Take a second, look at almost every piece of electronic equipment that you own... most of it sucks ... design wise... not just including computer stuff...
.. you name it ...
.. but for some reason, getting them all to work together in a synchronous, efficient manner is impossible, unless you of course get all your services from the same company, and who wants that?
... if all engineers and scientists contributed to what makes sense and push good technology instead of market-speak, we'd would have had beta vcr's, be running linux, and stupid shit like DMCA/UCITA wouldn't exist...
....
Why do I have turn 5 knobs and push 4 buttons to make my home theater receiver/tv switch from dss to ps2?
Why do 90% of VCR functions only come on the remote, especially important stuff, like switch to the aux video source?
why does every piece of software come with crappy default settings?
why are we stuck with crappy interoperatability between anything? DV vs. D8mm, firewire vs. whatever, ide vs. scsi
i have a pda, cell phone, pager, email, etc.
I know I'm generalizing, but these 'engineers and scientists' are the same jerks who've been pushing shitty technology down our throats
my 2 cents
I prefer a standalone DVD player to a PC. I prefer to use a Palm for storing addresses. PCs, even notebooks, don't carry around very well. I'd prefer to carry a mini MP3 player around than to carry a PC around. I prefer a PlayStation for many games over a PC.
You mention a total of 3 products here - and they all have various reasons why they're superior. The DVD player is better on a TV normally because the screen is bigger. I would much prefer to watch a DVD on a monitor of the same size vs. a television of the same size, simply because of better resolution. So DVD players lose on this point in my opinion. And it's damn easy to watch a DVD on a computer - stick it in the drive and w/ AutoPlay it happens. Then it's easier to control the DVD it's self with a mouse then with a stupid remote control with a bad interface.
The other 2 devices are an issue of portability - and they'd be more powerful if only they could get more power into that same space, which will happen in time. Why carry around both a Palm and a mini MP3 player when you can carry around one device which is more robust?
Certianly you're not going to use your computer for a microwave, that's just ridiculous. But with a central computer that's powerful enough to not be upgraded every year and a half you have a lot more time to invest in add-ons. You get that DVD player, you get that huge monitor, you get those nice controllers to play games with that are just like your Playstation. And it all ends up cheaper.
Imagine - instead of buying a DVD player, a television, a device to surf the web, a CD player, a tuner (you'd still need an amplifier of some sort), and a game console you buy a computer. There's several devices all rolled into one. Who wants all that crap laying around their house when they can have a central computer which powers all of this? And why can't this same central computer power multiple monitors, etc... It's a great deal.
That doesn't get rid of the need for a portable computer, and your portable computer could even hook up to your central computer, but why carry around both a Palm and a MP3 player? Who the hell wants to do that? Why don't a throw a CD player and a tape walkman into my backpack just for good measure?
I think people often confuse the idea of the desktop computer going away and computers becoming integrated into our lives. Of course computers are going to become integrated more in our lives. That takes time though, before it becomes really useful we need omnipresent wireless access with omnipresent IPV6 so everyone's toaster can be on line (http://toaster.myhome.com).
But all together it's really annoying to hear scientists bitching about this stuff. Everyone's just under this delusion of internet-time and they think that the infrastructure of the world will change at that same rate. Infrastructure does not change over night.
There's a more pernicious problem: biotech needs a combination of boring, run of the mill CS that does a difficult job reliably and efficiently, as well as novel techniques and algorithms. The trouble is the first type of thing does not appeal to CS researchers, and the second doesn't appeal to software developers (often). Generally, academic research is more interesting than building guis, WebApps and sticking together relational databases, so academics are prepared to get paid less. Funding bodies are reluctant to admit this, so they won't pay the money required to get the software developers everybody needs to put together reliable platforms, and the CS researchers don't want to spend their time doing it (and probably don't have the practical experience either).
The end result is lots of apps that are interesting from a CS point of view but completely useless to the people that paid for it. Or alternatively, dreadful from a CS perspective, but actually useful to the biologists that wrote them.
This is, no doubt, a general problem in the experimental sciences, which increasingly rely on information technology for data analysis and programming.
Perhaps my bile was uncalled for, but I'm sick of people implying "good design is easy, why doesn't someone just do it?"
People are always full of good advice that's harder to follow than they think.
Making good software requires an intimate knowledge of the user that is often practically unobtainable until you have a nearly finished product. When you have a geekish user targetted, they can probably do a good job of describing their needs and reacting to generalized descriptions of UI approaches. Most normal people struggle to describe their needs and mentally "help you" to much by ascribing to the proposed software capabilities that bridge the gap between what you are describing and what they need. These people can only contribute well when you have a nearly workable user interface that they can actually work on and which you can observe.
Only when you have a pretty functional product do you get the user feedback you need to throw out your bad assumptions, rip out your bad code and start from scratch.
This is why RAD and rapid protototyping tools like VB, PowerBuilder and Delphi are useful. In my experience there's lots to hate about these things, but they do allow you to do a lot of experimentation with UI.
I'm working now on a vertical market application that everyone agrees is very powerful, but most people agree is in many places hard to use. I am gradually improving things as I get to know the users better, but it is hard work and very risky -- what one person likes may be hated by another.
The terms in which we sell software are a problem for us too -- push a button and whee! The world is at your feet. Improving user interfaces requires a considerable taste for crow.
As software designers, we use a lot of stock approaches to things, and our tools have support for these stock approaches. The problem is that they are often a poor fit for tasks as the users understand them. For example, most RAD application tools have pretty good support for "master-detail" type screens. These were designed to handle typical header/line-item forms like invoice-line item break downs. It's tempting to use them for all kinds of 1 to many relationship -- except that unless you are talking about accounting it's an unnatural fit to most tasks.
One interesting area I've been working on is PDA clients. It's been interesting because these stock approaches don't work on the PDA's limited screen real estate. This means that you absolutely have to go back to the drawing board and throw out the stock desktop approaches. In many cases the result is a more usable client. It's definitely inspired me to take a more clean sheet look at the knottier UI problems I have.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the article:
... The vast majority of computers have few interactive features and are largely unable to forecast human behavior, Buxton said, rendering them less advanced than airport toilets that flush automatically when the user departs the stall.
The essence of the speakers' complaints was that computer engineers have spent the last five decades designing computers around the newest technology--not for the people who use the machines.
I think these folks are jumping into a middle of a huge cultural debate they don't understand.
That is the computer as tool vs. the computer as agent debate.
From your post, I'd place you in the computer-as-tool camp -- with the proviso that it is a novel and infinitely flexible kind of tool.
The people cited in the article are naively jumping on the computer-as-agent bandwagon.
I think a computer that understood what I wanted and did it for me would be a wonderful thing (if it didn't put me out of a job) provided we could build such a thing. But I think the longing for this has been created by the general abandonment of psychological and ergonomic principles as a guiding force to UI development in favor of stylistically driven designs (e.g. the put-it-in-a-toolbar movement of the early 90s and make-it-look-like-a-web-page movement of the late 90s).
You wrote:
The engineers are being engineers. Who can blame them? They like single purpose tools. Heck, we like single purpose tools too, and that's why we generally embrace the UNIX philosophy of making a program do one thing, and do it well.
Having built a number of pathologically flexible interfaces myself, I can say with some authority that normal users want tools that do one thing well too. When a user wants to twaddle the flim-flam, he wants to click on the flim-flam and get a pop-up menu that does twaddle (an object centric design); or he'll live with a menu choice called "twaddle" that allows him to select the flim-flam as the target (a functional design). What he doesn't want is a tool that allows him to construct a search template that will match the flim-flam and compose a series of operations to accomplish twaddling.
In other words, the user doesn't want to think about the tool you build, he wants to use it to accomplish his ends with the minimum of superfluous thought.
What these guys are really craving are not intelligent tools, but intelligently designed tools. They're thinking on this issue is just fuzzy because they're coming in late:
"If Rip Van Wrinkle went to sleep in 1982 and woke up today, he'd be able to drive our modern computers with no problem because they're essentially unchanged,"
Since when can usability be argued as a sign of unusability? If Rip Van Winkle woke up from the 19th c., I could show him how to use my favorite power tool -- the sawz-all -- in about ten seconds. That is because its design is perfect for what it is supposed to do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What if the system can't bring up a dialog?
Isn't that what ctrl-alt-delete is for?
Usually, in that case, the mouse will still work in Windows or X. In Linux I hit ctrl-alt-esc and my pointer turns into a jolly-roger. I then click on the misbehaving window. If your mouse won't move, you can either hit that reset switch (I hope your FS does journalling) or, in Linux, hit alt-sysrq-s, alt-sysrq-u, then alt-sysrq-b. That is, in order, sync all FS, unmount all FS (actually remount RO), and boot.
Either way, modal dialogs will not work in many cases and you'll have to go to lower levels to recover somewhat cleanly.
If there was an LCD and a couple of buttons on the front panel, however, I would fully support a confirmation.
jibe - see gibe
gibe - intransitive senses : to utter taunting words. transitive senses : to deride or tease with taunting words
Which is where the confusion comes from. In the sentence "I jibe him and you jibe with me while the yacht jibes" each jibe has a different meaning (taunt, agree, and change course respectively).
Um, not to burst anyone's bubble here, but most of my graduating EE/CompE class of 2000 is employed directly or indirectly as a programmer. What they program typically isn't windows, but more often than not embedded systems, control systems, etc. There _are_ software systems where instability is not an option, period - are you being fatalistic when you say that bugs are par for the course?
Engineering was a great choice for a basis of a primary software-based career; Getting to build a computer from being tossed some ram, a CPU, a latch and some miscellaneous components was great experience and helps when you actually write software for a machine you didn't build (which in 99/100 cases is what actually goes on). It also leaves open the pure hardware side of the world too, in case the software industry blows up (which might happen, who knows).
Engineer and Programmer are not mutually exclusive. This is also being posted from Canada, where a MCSE isn't enough to call yourself an engineer, either. :)
..don't panic
Nah, all we really want is a standalone, networked hard drive that any of our separate devices can connect to/disconnect from while running.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Um, and exactly what is it that makes an AGP graphics card similar to e.g. a WinModem? It's not as if any major part of the "intelligence" required to drive my GeForce256 AGP graphics board is done by my host CPU, right? In fact, it's almost the other way around, considering that the card has on-board hardware for stuff like transform and lighting. I think AGP should be taken off that list.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Thanks for clearing that up. I got confused by my "responder's" confusion over AGP and USB... However, if I may be just a bit too picky, I think that AGP really is a port and not a bus. There can only be two devices ever using an AGP connection: the host CPU (through the chipset) in one end, and the graphics adapter in the other. You can't add another device to it. The 'P' in AGP is for "port". Still, in everyday use it "feels" quite a lot like PCI, so...
Also, I do think that "original" plain vanilla PCI operates at 32 bits, and 33 MHz for a total bandwidth of ~132 MB/s. There are versions (I don't know their exact names) that use 64 bits and/or 66 MHz, though.main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I'm neither a computer scientist nor an engineer, but I must at least take issue with part of the complaint. The criticism that "Wall Street rewards needless complexity and shuns those who build the most simple, human-centric devices" seems simply ill-informed. The bulk of VC money in the late nineties didn't get tied up in companies developing "needlessly complex" technologies. Consider:
1) theman.com received $20,000,000. Rather than suffering from needless complexity, it suffered from needless simplicity. (A website that advised Gen-X age men on good gift ideas for moms, or free pickup lines for cheap chicks?)
2) boo.com received $130,000,000. Their website suffered from needless complexity, but one could hardly say it was the fault of computer scientists (unless you consider flash animators and guys who sorta know javascript as computer scientists).
3) DEN received $60,000,000. They made 6 minute long short films targetting demographics supposedly ignored by television programming (latino gangland culture, teenage christian dungeon & dragon players, drunken fraternity morons, etc.). Needless stupidity, to be sure. Anything but complex.
4) Eve.com wasted $29,000,000 of VC money to build an ecommerce site for cosmetics and other ephemera for females. (The pitch to the VC, Bill Gross of Idealab, took 90 minutes, and didn't involve any computer scientists)
5) iCast.com cast $90,000,000 at streaming video. They're dead, too.
The list goes on and on. There is over a quarter of a billion above thrown at companies founded not by computer scientists but by:
A poet & an ex-model, a couple of ex-hollywood honchos, previously unemployed MBAs and other non computer scientist types.
FWIWIA.
Not really.
1) If you're using a public terminal or something similar, the people who provide it can probably just record the keystrokes at the keyboard level.
** Third-party hardware cannot be made secure by the addition of code to one component **
2) If this is your private system which has become compromised, secure login info is the least of your worries.
** Local machines are not made secure by the addition of code to this one area **
This is a really old, mostly useless standard left over from the rainbow book series. It looks good on paper, but won't get you far in the real world.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
As a CS/Scientist in biotech, I am well familiar with these issues. The problem that the scientists are really hitting on is a perceived lack of communication between the CS field and the rest of science. Don't get me wrong, not all CS people don't communicate with thier collaborators and not all CS people need collaborators, but some do and they don't have any. Doing cs in a vacuum when you are developing tools for others to use is really frustrating for those of us who need the tools but they don't quite do what we need.
-Moondog
See, there's these things called modal dialogs that prevent the user from taking any further action unless confirmation is received.If there is an action that could be incredibly destructive to the users data (like shutting down), you pop these one of these suckers up and the user will have to either confirm or deny that they made the decision for the dialog to close. When you employ such user interface design conventions, you can do things like put a power-up/power-down key on the keyboard. User hits power key on keyboard to start computer, and when they want to shut down, they hit the power button again and click on the shut down dialog button to confirm. It's just that bloody simple.
Actually, this makes a lot of sense. A God of creation who is also a God of destruction. Apollo was the God of sickness and healing.
In the M$ world, c-a-d is the most powerful incantation, only to be used at times of great stress. Compare init(8). Admittedly, init is too great a God to involve himself in starting a user's session.
Warning of goat sex link!
-no broken link
It's easy to criticize modern computers, as their user interface is not modern. Designing a legacy human interface was a calculated decision however. People are accustomed to the windows (as in the object, not the MS software) interface, and when things change people get scared. When people get scared, money stops flowing.
From a human interface standpoint, computers might as well be aliens from another planet. We taught them to speak to us with windows about 20 years ago (don't nitpick time with me :) and now that is the de facto standard. Computers that don't "speak that language" are considered toys in the public eye (see PS2, furbies, games on cell phones).
The essence of the speakers' complaints was that computer engineers have spent the last five decades designing computers around the newest technology--not for the people who use the machines.
I don't think it is appropriate for them to suggest computer interfaces have become obsolete because no one was paying attention, or because no one cared to advance the interface. On the contrary there is a great deal of research on the subject, any computer science student has probably taken a human interface course or pieces therein (I did).
I think another big problem is that it's posh to be one of the "tech elite" in the business world. Someone who can handle their computer is generally considered more skillful, and seems to have more potential than one who can't. Logically this is because they are able to learn new things, and have no difficulties with abstraction. That is important in business, and in life.
Anyone agree?
I am now a 16 year old kid.
...and it's '16-year', not '16 year'.
--
For example, he said, computer users must know that to turn off the computer they have to click on "Start"--not an intuitive step to end a computing session.
;-)
You know, when i want my computer to shut down, i just type "shutdown."
maybe i want to reboot the computer....i type "reboot"
I don't think most Scientists are wrong for flaming the computer industry, but there is innovation out there....they're just looking in the wrong places
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
---
I guess the point is that while it may take the intelligence of a rocket scientist to run some systems, the rocket scientists would rather be working on rocket science, not computer science.
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
To a large degree, even though it is not named, well, for example there is this bit:
Targets of the critics' scorn included convoluted commands such as the common "Alt-Control-Delete" sequence used to close a program or perform an emergency shutdown. They also lambasted computer designers who refuse to distribute the machines' intelligence to smaller devices scattered throughout the home, instead insisting on packing a single box with maximum functionality.
Strangely, this sounds rather familiar. Certain large companies will not be named. They do not have to be. The marketroids have strangled the future.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You know, there's a reason it's such a 'convoluted' command, It keeps people from accidently executing it!.
I think that's hardly the point.
The point is that Ctrl-Alt-Delete is totally nonsensical from the general user's perspective. Why on earth should that mean "reset?"
My choice of solution would be a reset button that you have to hit two, or maybe three times, in close succession.
You wouldn't even need to document it; I guarantee you that, when a single push doesn't work, every single user will respond by hitting it repeatedly, and before long, they'll realize that you need to hit it more than once.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
...and DON'T FORGET TO CAPITALIZE YOUR I, MISTER!!!! ...and it's '16-year', not '16 year'.
Keeping
jibe: To be in accord; agree: Your figures jibe with mine.
jive:
1. Music. Jazz or swing music. The jargon of jazz musicians and enthusiasts.
2. Slang. Deceptive, nonsensical, or glib talk: "the sexist, locker-room jive of men boasting and bonding" (Trip Gabriel).
I'll let you decide which version that our friend timothy meant.
From our friends at dictionary.com.
Keeping
Strictly speaking, that is also incorrect - said computer can achieve said task if it is allowed to run unhinder for an infinite time :)
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Well, voice-operated computers sounds like a neat idea, until you stop to consider the consequences:
- I dont know about you, but I can usually type faster than I can talk.
- Imagine yourself speaking to your computer for 8 hours straight, 5 days a week. Heck, I doubt even professional speakers do that sort of thing.
- A room full of people typing and clicking away is slightly noisy. A room full of people talking to their computers would be quite stressing.
So, all in all, i'm ok with using keyboard and mouse to work on the computer. Now, what I'd really would like to see in reality would be a functioning Holodeck. Playing VR-Quake would be sooo cool!
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
When trying to install the beast, the provided drivers claimed a windows file was missing (original Win 95 upgrade). The file missing was the USB driver! The USB driver would not install on a non-OSR 2 version of Win 95. It is very easy to see where I got misslead into beliving the video card will not work without the "USB support" I guess the USB support is unrelated to ther video card driver but what is missing just happens to tag along with the USB support driver. If anybody has the real iformation, let me know! Any MS driver info seems a little vague.
The truth shall set you free!
I did not spend another $100 upgrading the OS to support it. I also did not pirate a copy of OEM Win 95 or 98 to support it. I jerked it out and went to a PCI card instead and just blaimed it on the OS and WIN hardware. I learned the hard way that the AGP port is a USB device and the original Win 95 does not support USB, even with all the service packs installed. By the way, Linux supports it ;-). I later upgraded the OS to Linux.
The truth shall set you free!
Brain dead device drivers are only part of the problem. Devices without a controller and memory buffer are the other. Thank goodness hard disks took a step in the right direction on that one. IDE drives have integrated drive electronics AND lots of buffer memory. The CPU can just shove stuff at it and go back to something important like rendering the next scene in Quake with out skipping frames. The less time the CPU spends on being a modem and printer, the more time it has to render smooth video and service mouse interupts. Now if there was only a way to buffer the sound card and CD so CD reads don't break up the sound and drop video frames.
The truth shall set you free!
I think they have a point in the MS area. Notice how all the hardware becomes WIN hardware with less smarts of their own? Examples I can think of are AGP video cards, Win Printers, Win Modems, and WIN sound cards. Their is no real reason your computer should stop playing music, printing, downloading or whatever because the OS is busy with something else. Put the smarts back into the devices so they can again buffer data and function on their own. A win modem is a waste of CPU cycles, even if it can voice answer the phone. My new computer can't even play the startup wave file properly. It stutters 3 or 4 times because the cpu is busy with disk IO. The cheaper the better concept has hurt the quality of the design.
The truth shall set you free!
Now, I'm not accusing anyone. I'm not saying all software developers are out to screw over the hardware people, but look...
Those who write the software are the last stage. Regardless of how well the engineers designed the hardware, the CS people can either make or break their designs with good or bad code respectively. CS people essentially have engineers at their whim.
So yes, I certainly agree they're jealous... but in more than one way. They're jealous because CS people, in a way, have more power over the flow of technology.
Bob Pease of National Semiconductor has written several articles poking holes in the Taguchi Method. One example was that of a voltage regulator designed by the Taguchi Method - it was very insensitive to part tolerances - However it didn't regulate worth a damn.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I hate to burst your bubble.. but AGP has nothing to do with USB. The problem with Win95 rev 1 is that it simply doesn't support either one (or much more than minimal broken agp, IIRC).
AGP, PCI, USB, IEEE1394, ISA, EISA are all busses.
AGP is an design extension of the PCI bus which allows for convienient memory mapping (Allowing host memory to be used for video mem, pooling and locking), different clocking, and different DMA strategies. Think of it as an extended PCI specification.
PCI was a complete redisign of EISA, with particular interest in bus speed, and wider bus transfers. Best of all was autoconfiguration of IRQ, DMA, and port mapping. PCI operates at 66MHz.
USB = Universal Serial Bus. It is a chained 4 wire serial bus that has much more in common with ethernet than with AGP. It's basically a transmit/receive bus. IEEE1394 is very simular.
EISA and ISA are old standard busses which oftentimes required hardwired IRQ, DMA, and IO ports (because of it's inability to autoselect empty slots and lack of a decent bus controller. These were typically 8, 16 and (EISA)32 bit busses. And they were way slow, operating at 4 MHz or so.
So there you have it.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I prefer a standalone DVD player to a PC. I prefer to use a Palm for storing addresses. PCs, even notebooks, don't carry around very well. I'd prefer to carry a mini MP3 player around than to carry a PC around. I prefer a PlayStation for many games over a PC.
I'd prefer it if my microwave had it's own embedded computer for timing, rather than having to hook a PC up to it in order to cook up my KD.
Judging by sales, I'd think the general public agrees with me, too.
Fact is, it's simpler to just hit a single button on a separate physical device than it is to hit a bunch of buttons on one. It seems that many programmers completely forget about ease-of-use on a physical level.
Of course, I'm just a grumpy old engineer, and an embedded one at that. I guess I'm the guy you're all rallying against right now...
I prefer a standalone DVD player to a PC. I prefer to use a Palm for storing addresses. PCs, even notebooks, don't carry around very well. I'd prefer to carry a mini MP3 player around than to carry a PC around. I prefer a PlayStation for many games over a PC.
:)
Ya, it would be great if there was a standalone word processing device that I could go to, to do my papers. And then, one right next to it that would do spreadsheets. And next to that, one that would check my email. And one more, with a nice big monitor, to browse the web! Seems kind of wasteful, we should just make all these functions on one device? Wouldn't it also be really cool if said device could play my mp3's, or play games, or play dvd's? Oh wait.......
I don't buy this multiple device idea. While it might be true that the devices you mentioned are doing well in sales, arent they a little more specific in purpose then the tasks I mentioned? The PC has lasted this long due to its general applicability to a slew of applications.
Also, which one of your devices (aside from the playstation) would be worth the plastic it was made out of without a PC it could dock/communicate/exchange-data with?
Of course, I'm just a naive young software-developer, and I'd be out of a job if not for the PC.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
There are a lot of technologies out there that suck. Computers have many problems. But "have contributued nothing useful"? How many of these scientists and engineers would be where they're at without computers? Indeed, how many of them would have been able to schedule, arrive at, and execute their trip to this meeting?
I dont know why they would say such a stupid thing... I'll assume we all took what they said out of context/too seriously.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
And makes it even more confusing for grandmothers trying to logon to an NT box.
"Control-Alt-Delete, but wont that stop it?"
Mark Duell
Of course, when people say that "design" will save the world, they usually mean their idea of design, which might not jibe with yours or mine.
No timothy, when they say "design", I beleive they are referring to things like usability testing. In other words, taking a software package to groups of users, and designing statistically sound experiments to see what users find easy and fast to use. In other words, users ideas of good design - not yours, not mine.
If you're interested, maybe read some sites on design.
Moreover, I think they are also saying that VC's should at least be aware of what theoreticians are thinking about so they make better use of their investor's dollars
The moment someone designs technology as an ends and not as a means, that technology is issued a death sentance. It might be commuted for 15 or 20 years, but it will eventually happen. The PC isn't dying, it's been slowly murdered for the last two decades by many companies (one in Redmond Washington comes to mind) who have made the PC so ridiculously difficult to use and maintain that people are being driven to use network appliances. For many years, makers of software and hardware have lost touch with the needs of their consumers. The latest buzzword compliant technology gets higher priority than what could actually help someone use their computer more efficiently and effectively. The perfect example (from soooo many to choose from) would be the 3.5 magneto optical disk. It was rewritable, damn reliable, as small as a floppy and, if it would have been produced in massive quantities, massively cheap. But that didn't meet with the agendas of the technology industry. They backed zip drives and superdisks that were far less reliable and held far less data. When it became absolutely critical to hold data sizes larger than 100+MB, they came up with another kludge: CD-RW--Technically ungraceful (has to rewrite the entire disk every time written to), has a file-system that requires special software (for windows and I think mac) to read, and still has trouble fitting in your pocket. Yet another missed opportunity for the tech industry.
One more example (this time in the present), firewire. Apple, one of the few companies to move computer technology ahead (despite all of its numerous business/PR flaws) has started putting internal firewire buses in their computers. Why didn't any other computer/motherboard companies think of this? Don't they understand that firewire cables are far less of a hassle than ribbon cables, and block airflow far less? Don't they reckognize the ease of use of being able to chain FW drives together? Don't they understand that external firewire is probably the easiest way for non-geeks to add new hardware (without the need to buy hubs)? But where is intel? Where is Western Digital? Where is Seagate, or Asus, or Abit, Tyan, or any of the others? Nowhere, that's where. In fact, they barely put any stock in USB. Rumor has it that when apple announced that it was killing serial and replacing it with USB, an Intel executive called Steve Jobs to thank him for taking the bold move "Getting all the others [OEMS] to go to USB was like herding cats".
To capitalize on the obvious pun, technology sucks because too many people are pussys
Programmers might not get the satisfaction of building something useful and might not experience the artistic delight of design, but we at least don't have to work as hard. And when it comes to the bottom line, that's all that counts.
What are you talking about? Programming (for me, anyway) is ALL about the satisfaction from building something useful and the artistic delight of design - in programming, you build something from quite literally nothing - you create order from chaos. Programming is speech, but it's much more than that - to be a good programmer, you have to think in abstract ways and be able to think truly dynamically - static thinkers have no places in the art of programming. Anyone who says they are programming for *just* money is NOT an artist. Good code is truly poetry, and good programmers are truly artists.
Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades
Funny..computers appear to be useful enough to give PowerPoint presentations to a crowd to quickly and easily present information to a large group. I find it a bit hypocritical they'd bash computer design and ease of use and use PowerPoint instead of some other presentation medium.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
In explaining such issues to friends not familiar with the industry, I'll often draw parallels to similar situations. With this one, I'd say the computer craze is now at the point the car craze was in the late 1960's. Hobbyists are still common but on their way out. More and more people want the physical ideas of the technology eschewed for its practical purposes. Perhaps this economic turn is analogous to the oil crisis. (and quite similar. I've heard that at least some of is due to the californian legislator and power companies scratching each others back to create the energy crisis out here. Personally, it wouldn't surprise me, since I feel absolutely no trust toward the motives of either group)
---
Seriously...I just have visions of what would happen if my appliances started communicating with each other...
Fridge: Ok everyone, we know Alex has a final tomorrow at 8am.
All Kitchen Appliances: *evil laughter*
Fridge: Everybody turn on in 3...2...1...NOW!
*All appliances in the house turn on at once*
*Circuit breaker trips*
(At 11am the next morning)
Alex: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
You know it'll happen. One day. When you least expect it. They'll turn on you.
the engineers have bought into the myth of the dying PC. Horsepucky. The PC is here with us forever, and as time goes on more and more things will be integrated into it.
Distributed systems are a nice thing in principle, but some problems can be broken up only so far. And then when it comes down to it, nobody wants to buy a specialized piece of a computer when they can get their generalized computer to work.
Look at the history of tools. First there were separate tools, each one doing a single or small number of jobs. Even a Swiss Army Knife was limited to about as many tasks as it had specialized attachments.
People like to poo poo the computer as being "just another tool". But the computer is far far different than any other tool that came before. The computer has the ability to be an INFINITE (or at least huge enough that you won't exhaust the possibilities in the lifetime of the universe) number of tools.
The engineers are being engineers. Who can blame them? They like single purpose tools. Heck, we like single purpose tools too, and that's why we generally embrace the UNIX philosophy of making a program do one thing, and do it well.
But the difference is that our specialization is in the software, and the specialization they are proposing is in the hardware. If I want a single purpose tool, I don't need a computer to get that.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Angry denial reiterated.
Supporting claim. Second supporting claim.
Revelation of inconsistencies in the complaints.
Setup for attempt at witty attack on academics.
Punchline of witty attack.
---
It's too bad Microsoft couldn't build applications the same way, safe from Trojan Horses.
--Mike--
When engineers sneer at computer science, I just chuckle to myself. Because I know something they don't know: they're just jealous.
Engineers are jealous of programmers. It's that simple. Programmers have an easy life, after all. I only work a few hours a day, get paid big bucks, and for what? For telling a machine what to do. For the act of mere speech. It's Rapunzel's tale incarnate: I spin words into gold.
Engineers have too many constraints; the standards are too high. When the Tacoma Narrows bridge fell down, heads rolled. But when a bug in the latest version of NT disables an aircraft carrier, Microsoft doesn't get blamed at all. Bugs are par for the course in our industry, and we have no intention of changing it. It means higher profits from fixes and lower expectations. How are engineers supposed to compete with those sorts of odds?
I admit I considered going into engineering when I started my college days, but I was quickly disuaded. The courses were too involved, whereas the CS courses were a breeze for anyone who didn't fail calculus. And I don't regret it at all, really.
Programmers might not get the satisfaction of building something useful and might not experience the artistic delight of design, but we at least don't have to work as hard. And when it comes to the bottom line, that's all that counts.
That's because when someone comes up with a useful technology, even something as simple as LZW compression or an MP3 encoder, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT in their product. Writing products that use someone else's file format is called a "copyright violation". Standardising on one crypto algorithm is called patent theft. CPUs with compatible MMX instructions gets you sued by Intel. Making DVDs playable on "non-approved" systems gets you jailed, or orders from people halfway around the world.
So yeah, "CS types develop complex and useless technologies." because we have to carefully avoid reinventing someone else's wheel or we get sued into bankruptcy.
One result is millions of different wheels of different diameters, shapes and track widths that are all incompatible with one another. Sounds pretty messy, right? It also happens to resemble what we see today in the computing industry.
The other result is people getting fed up with all the incompatibilities and looking for a standard, any standard. And since the standard is proprietary, naturally this will favor the growth of monopolies, e.g., Microsoft, who thes uses their position as OS "standard" to create other standards, such as Excel and Word formats, whilst actively blocking anyone else from participating in that standard.
IMO both patent lifetime and copyright lifetime ought to be cut to 10 years tops for all things computing related, hardware or software, because stuff in this field ages faster than any other traditionally patented and coyrighted work.
And there needs to be an irrevocable expiration for abandoned patents and copyrights too. It's absolutely insane that Atari 2600 games are still locked away by copyright, while no one is prodcing them. And they'll be locked away for over a century under current IP law. Is this right?
If it wasn't for us software guys, you scientific types would still be writing programs in Fortran.
Oh that's right, you ARE still writing in Fortran. My bad.
Anybody remember the original Apple II?
.. typically these were pieces of firm foam rubber that you would place underneath the RESET key (you had to pry up the keycap) .. resulting in a key that was still "pressable", albeit with a bit more effort.
//c, and IIgs), Apple listened to their users' complaints, learned from their mistake, and required a Ctrl-RESET combination in order to actually trigger the reset. That hard-learned lesson carried over to other hardware and software manufacturers, including the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
The RESET key, located at the top-left corner of the keyboard, triggered a software reset. This had the effect of (depending on the software you were using) terminating the program and dumping you back to a BASIC prompt or erasing whatever unsaved data you had or doing a hard reboot of the machine. Users quickly found out (the hard way) that this button was way too easy to press by accident. In fact, this problem was so pervasive that magazines such as Creative Computing began advertising for "RESET key protectors"
In later versions of the Apple II/II+ (and in subsequent machines such as the IIe,
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Targets of the critics' scorn included convoluted commands such as the common "ALT-CONTROL-DELETE" sequence used to close a program or perform an emergency shutdown.
Put it under F1, see if that makes them happy. You know, there's a reason it's such a 'convoluted' command, It keeps people from accidently executing it!.
I thought my sarcasm was pretty good, thank you very much.
Perhaps my bile was uncalled for, but I'm sick of people implying "good design is easy, why doesn't someone just do it?"
Good design and usability are difficult. Do you think that the industry doesn't know that billions of dollars and instant fame and fortune are at stake here? Do you think that the industry doesn't try really, really hard to get that money?
There's a right way to criticize usablity--one author who does it right is Donald Norman (I'm sure there are others, but on this topic I've only read Mr. Norman's books). He manages to carefully consider what is wrong with a designs, discusses the alternatives, and points out how usablity could be improved.
There's also a wrong way. Say something "Why can't my computer be as easy to use as a toilet?" God, I'm getting pissed off again. What's the feature list of that toilet? And what's the feature list of your computer; can you even hope to cover that list in any amount of detail? In fact, does your computer actually even have a standing feature list, or do you actively install new software (and thus new features) constantly? Dammit, everybody who uses a computer has complex needs--I have a web browser, an email client, a remote telnet session, an mp3 player, and a "find file" all open RIGHT now, and I suspect that I'm pretty tame compared to the average slashdot reader. I'm going to play an online game with friends in another state shortly. I could spend hours describing what I want EACH ONE of these to do. I happen to think that all facts considered, the usability is pretty good. (And I might add: Damn, it's cool to live in the year 2001. This stuff rocks.)
Are things perfect? Of course not. One company has a monopoly on the desktop market and has very little incentive to innovate (in spite of their claims the contrary) and every incentive to continue to keep the status quo. Yes, the "START" button is retarded. Should we strive to improve the state-of-the art? Of course. Would it be awesome if it was easier to do my taxes? Sure, but are you absolutely you want the automated solution you described when it sacrifices transparency (are you sure your taxes were done correctly in that system) and possibly privacy (who's keeping track of all that information flowing between your income-payers and the government?) I actually think that TurboTax made my taxes about as easy as I'd like--it asked me a simple set of questions, I answered, and it was done. Any easier, and I'm not sure I'd completely trust it.
I actually don't know why you're arguing, since in at least one respect, you agreed with me. You said:
Simplicity of interface, sheer useability, takes a lot of talent, skill and creativity.
If you think about it, the article in question basically said these are all trivial, require little skill or talent, and they said it with a condescending attitude. It's actually really really hard. Dismissing the problem is unwarranted and deserves and equally scathing reply.
Dammit, I hate these fuckers.
First of all, they contradict themselves. "Computers are too hard," they whine, but when a computer interface remains consistent and usable for twenty years, "If Rip Van Wrinkle went to sleep in 1982 and woke up today, he'd be able to drive our modern computers with no problem because they're essentially unchanged".
Second, they recommend creating "simpler" and "distributed" devices instead of monolithic boxes that do everything. What the hell does this mean, what devices really need more intelligence? All I can think of is one of those computerized thermostats. Whoopee.
Look. Computers are complex because your needs are complex. Worse yet, my complex needs are inconsistent the needs of others. Try to download mp3s on your toaster. Try to do your taxes while downloading porn while instant messaging your friend in France while checking the weather on one of their great appliances. Try to use that "more intelligent than a computer" airport toilet to write up your Powerpoint slides, you pompus pricks.
Actually, in this case, that might have actually worked.
I just love it when Scientists fling mud and proclaim that the 'real-world' isn't science.
In mathematics, we have the very 'real' Taguchi quality control that revolutionized manufacturing processes, but according to my Math professors, "It's not real mathematics, just some linear algebra application."
On the topic of manufacturing, Metal can now be formed and machined into virtually any shape, Ceramics and metals can be mixed and then burned to form Aluminum tools (molds) for injection molding parts. "That's just an trick to sintering the ceramic" my ceramics professor told me.
My point is that industry types, whether they are applying nueral networks to read handwriting or creating thinner flat panel displays, solve the same complicated types of problems that the more 'scientific' community solves. The scientific community discredits their work because "Theoretically it can be done, so why bother doing it." It's as though the companies that want to enhance their products by funding research shouldn't fund the research that is most likely to enhance their products!
I'm sorry to sound harsh because this strikes close to home for me. I was on track for PhD, but quit and now I'm having a lot more fun developing optimized neural networks to do hand writing recognition.
Keeping