Goodbye, Ctrl-S

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 23, 2014 @04:20AM from the couldn't-save-itself dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'Save your work!' — This was a rallying cry for an entire generation of workers and students. The frequency and unpredictability of software crashes, power outages, and hardware failures made it imperative to constantly hit that save button. But in 2014? Not so much. My documents are automatically saved (with versioning) every time I make a change. My IDE commits code changes automatically. Many webforms will save drafts of whatever data I'm entering. Heck, even the games I play have an autosave feature. It's an interesting change — the young generation will grow up with an implicit trust that whatever they type into a computer will stay there. Maybe this is my generation's version of: 'In my day, we had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the TV!' In any case, it has some subtle but interesting effects on how people write, play, and create. No longer do we have to have constant interruptions to worry about whether our changes are saved — but at the same time, we don't have that pause to take a moment and reflect on what we've written. I'm sure we've all had moments where our hands hover over a save/submit button before changing our minds and hammering the backspace key. Maybe now we'll have to think before we write."

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Never used this keystroke by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-23 04:22 · Score: 5, Funny

I've been using computers for over 30 years and have never once used this keystroke.
1. Re:Never used this keystroke by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-23 04:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I've been using computers for over 30 years and have never once used this keystroke.
  In 30 years you've never produced anything worth saving? That's quite a feat.
2. Re:Never used this keystroke by BronsCon · 2014-05-23 04:32 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Quite possibly, he's a Mac user, so it would be Command-S. That, or someone loves their mouse a little too much and never bothered to learn keyboard shortcuts.
  
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  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
3. Re:Never used this keystroke by Noah+Haders · 2014-05-23 05:21 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I'm a mac fan, but I have to say that apple screwed the pooch with mavericks on this one. for the stock apple programs they got rid of the save button entirely and now everything auto saves. This is ok, but the really bad part is they got rid of save as - you know, you make some changes but decide you want to keep the original so you make this file v2 or whatever? Even worse, bowing to pressure they added back in the save as, but accessible as a secondary choice with option-click.
  
  the whole thing is just weird and to tell you the truth it made me stop using the apple programs so I never got used to it or fully figured it out.
4. Re:Never used this keystroke by immaterial · 2014-05-23 06:12 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I want Save As back as a first-class citizen as much as anyone, but the entirety of your rant there is simply flat-out wrong. You say there's no save option, but (as you half-acknowledge after complaining it doesn't exist) there is - and yes, it shows up in every document-based app. You say you have to go to Finder to duplicate a file, but the whole complaint here is that Save As has been replaced by Duplicate in the menu. The actual, still 3-step process is: Choose "Duplicate" (no need to save beforehand as it is the current state that is duplicated), type new file name, and (either the first time you do an explicit save or when you close the new document) deal with the Save dialog. The only way that is more difficult than Save As is that it disconnects renaming the new file from the save dialog. And if you prefer documents revert to the last manual-save state on close, simply check that box in the system preferences.
Bah, we already said goodbye to CTRL-S years ago.. by Gavin+Scott · 2014-05-23 04:23 · Score: 5, Funny

When it stopped meaning "Suspend output to terminal" along with it's partner CTRL-Q.
In-Band serial flow control ftw!
G.
Good! by stewsters · 2014-05-23 04:28 · Score: 5, Funny

Truly it is the year of the Linux Desktop. Long live :w
Commits code changes automatically by vivaoporto · 2014-05-23 04:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

My IDE commits code changes automatically
TFA doesn't mention this and, if the summary writer meant "commit" as in version control commit, this would be a killer bug in the whole process.

Version control is not meant to be used as a backup, every commit should be deliberate, reviewed and well explained in the comments. Vide the post mortem of the heartbleed bug (or many other similar ones).
You missed the biggest downside by DJ+Jones · 2014-05-23 04:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

What if I don't want to save my changes?

"You can use the 'undo' command they say..."

Yes but the undo command isn't persistent between applications, much less a power failure.

You haven't solved anything, you've merely shifted the problem.
Auto-save is NOT your friend by ChrisC1234 · 2014-05-23 04:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sometimes, I don't want to save. I will open a document with the explicit purpose of making changes that I don't want saved. Even Gmail's autosave has burned me pretty badly. I spent an hour typing out a very long email. Toward the end of it, something happened, and the whole body of text was gone. I'm still not really sure if it was a keyboard shortcut I inadvertently triggered, browser bug, or what. But I just thought "no biggie... I'll just go back to the auto-saved version". So I open up the autosaved version, and the latest auto-save happened AFTER the email body was deleted. So much for autosave @#$!#$@!!!!
1. Re:Auto-save is NOT your friend by Just+Brew+It! · 2014-05-23 04:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Agreed. Definitely a case of "please do what I asked for, not what you think I wanted". A properly implemented auto-save feature does not overwrite the original document; it saves a secondary copy, to be used only if the system crashes and you need to recover your edits.
2. Re:Auto-save is NOT your friend by Frosty+Piss · 2014-05-23 04:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A properly implemented auto-save feature does not overwrite the original document; it saves a secondary copy, to be used only if the system crashes and you need to recover your edits.
  This is what MS Office does. Of course, no one here uses MS Office, so that's not much help...
  
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Wow, déjà vu by hubie · 2014-05-23 04:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

This sounded so familiar to me, but I can't believe it has been over eight years ago. I must be remembering a similar story posted much more recently.
Kids these days by TubeSteak · 2014-05-23 04:38 · Score: 4, Funny

Excuses that no longer work:
My floppy disc isn't working
My computer blue screened before I saved
My e-mail was down
I don't know why your computer can't read that format
Every excuse I ever used to get a day's reprieve could not work now.

--
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Re:Correction by just_another_sean · 2014-05-23 04:38 · Score: 4, Funny

Oh god, please don't tell me this is going to be the year of the Emacs Desktop?
If so I may just consider getting a job as a gardener....

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You insensitive clod! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-23 04:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apple users don't Control, they Command you insensitive clod!
Welcome to the 1980's... by kylemonger · 2014-05-23 04:45 · Score: 5, Informative

... when GNU Emacs had auto-saving and backup versioning at any keystroke granularity you liked thirty years ago. Next we celebrate the boon of split screen editing.
Re:I'd rather not use by 0123456 · 2014-05-23 04:49 · Score: 4, Funny

Perhaps you've heard of a thing called a power outage.
That's where you reboot and the file is full of garbage because it crashed half-way through writing the new file to disk and the metadata was updated but not the contents, right?
Re:IDE autocommit? by Daniel+Hoffmann · 2014-05-23 04:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why would anyone want to autocommit possibly broken code?
Re:I guess this joke is now obsolete, then... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-23 05:11 · Score: 4, Funny

Buddha does incremental backups though..
Should have been first post by Dishwasha · 2014-05-23 05:13 · Score: 4, Funny

I totally had first post on this one, but I found out I actually have to click both a preview button and submit button for it to save to this forum.
Re:IDE autocommit? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · 2014-05-23 05:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Why would anyone want to autocommit possibly broken code?

Maybe they work for Adobe?