Well, it's still an excuse. It's just not as lame an excuse as it appears at first glance.
Anyway, I don't fault them. Data in Seattle is a bit slow, but it's pretty reliable, and from my experience, their coverage (in general) is better than Verizon's-- or at least I know plenty of locations where my friend's Verizon phone won't work but my phone works fine.
This guy's quote is BS, if you as the owner of your traffic don't know how much demand there is either by system monitoring and/or usage patterns for specific type clients (with demograhaphics tagged along with it, because ATT sure as hell knows its clients profiles and/or can buy such data from 3rd parties) then they need to get out of the business.
No, what's he's saying is that since the network is already full to 100% of capacity, it's impossible to tell how much more capacity they need in specific areas. Which is true; since every tower is 100%, there's no place that's obviously worse than any other place. They have "capacity clipping", to coin a term.
So if they have a redundant (say) janitor, they should re-train him to do high-capacity networking instead of cleaning toilets? Is that what you're getting at?
Here's a pro-tip: employees aren't interchangeable cogs.
Just use FatELF on platforms where file size isn't an issue (i.e. most of them) and don't use it on platforms where it is. That's not a "problem," that's a "we made up a problem because we're too lazy to do it."
Because I'm an jackass. And because I think it's hilarious.
And why have you already labeled me a "douchebag"?
Anybody who gives a shit what their IQ is is a douchebag. That would be like basing your personality on your Slashdot ID-- it's retarded, it doesn't indicate *anything* about who you are, except how well you can take a particular type of test.
In addition to that, I'm always suspicious of people who quote extremely high IQ values-- my hunch is that they're giving the un-normalized scores. IQ scores raise over time, so if you're taking a test with the 1960 normalization, then of course you're going to see super high scores like 160. But a 1960 IQ test says absolutely nothing about your IQ relative to the current population.
My wager is that Mensa is giving you an extremely flawed IQ test, and since people score high on it, nobody ever goes back to say, "hm, that score looks a bit funny to me..." (Someone going and proving Mensa's test flawed would be, in my eyes, much more intelligent than someone who claims to have a 160 IQ score.)
And anyway, at this point in history, even The Simpsons did an episode on how useless Mensa is.
Furthermore, I do not plan on staying at this level of job (or even this industry) for the rest of my life.
Yeah, you could move into genius-ology.
If anybody here needs to be told "don't be a douchebag", I think it's you.
No, I'm a jackass. That's a totally different category.
So I'll give you this: hard tasks aren't worth doing if you're actually in the afterlife and the God of the Underworld is only assigning the task to you as a form of torture. There, you got an exception to the rule.
Is that relevant to what we're talking about? No.
I'm arguing that it isn't worth doing, not that it's hard
Yeah, but the best reason you're given that it's not worth doing is, "it's hard." I went back and re-read the original post, and that's the only message I got from it.
There are a lot of posts in this thread giving reasons why this is a good thing, the problem is that most of the benefits are: 1) Better usability 2) Better hosting of closed-source software
Since open source people generally don't give half-a-shit about usability, and some actively resent the concept that people should be able to use a computer without a PhD, well, there goes number 1. (Here comes the troll mod, sic it to me!)
And since open source people generally are deluded into thinking that it's impossible for proprietary software to co-exist with GPL software, well, there goes number 2.
A usable system that can run Photoshop? Who would want that!? (Oh wait, ask Apple. Or, hell, Microsoft-- the new incarnations of Windows are pretty damned usable.)
Real multi-arch could be useful, but the number of arches on Linux is just too overwhelming. To get somewhat decent coverage for Linux binaries, they'd have to run on x86, ARM, and PPC. Plus possibly MIPS, SPARC, and Itanium. Most of those in 32-bit and 64-bit flavours.
So, to summarize: we shouldn't do it because it's hard.
To which I reply: everything worth doing is hard, the easy things have already all been done.
Or alternatively: aw, poor babies! Want your blankie and pacifier?
Then be like the Mac world, where that's worked fine since 1984.
Windows isn't the end-all, be-all of the computing world. And frankly, if you were interested in improving usability, I don't see why you'd look at anything *except* OS X. (And maybe Office 2007.)
Yeah, but it would be nice if they did it without the constant penis-measuring.
How many times have you pointed out a bug or deficiency in Linux, and the instant knee-jerk reply is, "well that doesn't work well in Windows either!!!" What's the attitude here? That Linux doesn't need to bother fixing X if Windows also does X poorly? That makes no damned sense.
You say you haven't met a Mensa member who wasn't a "total douchebag"... how many have you met in total?
Five or six.
Some people really are that stuck up, others may just be frustrated and it comes off as intolerant or douchey.
It doesn't matter *why* they are douchebags, only that they *are* douchebags.
But some of us really want to help people with our talents
Your impressive tech support talents? Please. People like Steve Jobs have talents. People like Richard Branson have talents. You can't even get a decent job.
and we need to understand how to interact with those people in order to do it.
A good rule-of-thumb would be "don't be a douchebag."
It does in fact imply that some problems are down to the design of the US plug.
So now you're suggesting that we retrofit EVERY old building to modern wiring standards?
You're being intellectually dishonest-- compare the modern British standard with the modern US standard, otherwise it's apples and oranges.
For the record, no building in the US built after the mid-80s has: 1) An outlet without a ground 2) An outlet that in a room with plumbing without a built-in GFI
My house is from 1927. I have every US example in that article somewhere in my house... hell, in my basement I have live cloth-insulated wires, that's fun. (Or cloth not-insulated-anymore wires, since that cloth insulation rots off in 80 years, whoda thunk it.)
Anyway, I had an electrician come in to put in a dedicated circuit for my computer setup, add a few more outlets in the kitchen, and add an outlet for my shaver in the bathroom. He was pretty impressed. He had to tear out a lot of the older stuff because of newer standards, but he didn't touch anything he didn't have to by law. So I still have cloth-insulated live wires in the basement.
IIRC, my kitchen circuit goes through a 30 amp fuse box (the well-designed kind you could jam with pennies), and then into a 20 amp breaker in the basement.
Completely unrelated point: why are breaker boxes always put in the darkest corners of the house? Does it never occur to electricians that we might need to get to the breaker box WITH THE LIGHTS OFF!?
I'm the founder of Mensa with an IQ of 199.9. I have problems similar to yours. You would think people would be pleased when I constantly tell them about the vast powers of my gigantic brain, and yet there is nothing but constant resentment from them. I attribute this to their comparative retardedness, and not to my being a gigantic asshole.
(I've yet to meet a Mensa member who wasn't a total douchebag. That might be your problem.)
(Oh, and the fact that you're doing tech support? Proof positive that IQ means exactly dick, if you needed one.)
From the description it sounds like Microsoft Update was broken with respect to VS, somehow.
The most insane part is that it goes through the whole install process-- downloads the patch, asks you to close VS, shuffles through files for over an hour, tells you it's all updated with a happy little Close button. But when you check VS's version, it didn't actually change anything at all! I mean, how does a bug like that even happen? What the holy hell was the installer doing for that hour and a half? It boggles the mind.
Anyway, I'm not blaming you, I'm actually more pissed at SQL Server's installer, which IMO should be classified as a violation of the Geneva Convention. (Can you tell I've had to install a few SQL Server instances this week?)
You should pop me off an email or blog comment, so we could hash through this.
Now that I'm trying it on my work machine, it's actually behaving closer to what you describe. (At least if I'm reading you right, I've never used Eclipse, so I really have no clue at all what a "perspective" is. And VS certainly doesn't seem to have anything that tries to explain that metaphor.)
Contrary to what happens on my home computer (where I wrote the last post), if I then double-click a Solution, the Solution will get its own window completely separate from the.js window and with the correct UI elements visible. That's good-- just give the JS window a different icon, so I can tell it apart easier, and I'd be happy.
Note that it opens up the Source Control Explorer by default, with the appropriate UI elements. (BTW, what's an "Explorer?" It the little pane to the right is an "Explorer", but the main content of the window is also an "Explorer", WTF does that term even mean?)
Can you tell the difference? Other than the Source Control Explorer window flashing, there's *nothing* in the UI to indicate that I now have an open Solution. The Solution Explorer didn't appear, nor did the Toolbox or Properties Explorer. The only difference, as far as I can work out, is that the File menu activated Close Project.
Now if I manually go and show the Solution Explorer, then it'll have all the Solution files in it and all will be well. But why should I have to manually show it even single time?
This might be a bug, but VS is working off such a complicated UI metaphor that I have no way of telling what's a bug or not. What your team really needs to do is simplify the metaphor to something you can explain in less than a paragraph without referring to a competing project:)
Actually, I think I just realized what (conceptually) is wrong with Visual Studio.
VS uses a Solution metaphor, which is basically just a project full of projects. Each given VS window can have one Solution open at a time. That's fine.
The problem is that VS also can open a whole bunch of different tasks that don't count as Solutions. For example, the TFS source control browser doesn't count as a Solution, so if I double-click a real solution is takes over that window. Ditto with a Javascript file I just double-clicked to edit, that's not a solution it's just a file. Or the Javascript debugger.
Making that even more confusing, whatever was opened first controls the UI of that particular VS window... if I open TFS source control browser first, the VS window has no Explorers or Toolbox because those don't apply to it. But if I later double-click a C# project, that window gets re-used for the C# project *without adding the project-relevant UI elements*.
Now if I take that setup and double-click a JS file, the JS file crams into the same window once again, because it's not a Solution. So now I have a Javascript editor with a Solution Explorer and Toolbox.
I could be wrong, maybe the behavior is more complex than this. But it seems to match the clicking-around I'm doing as I type this.
A better way of doing this would be to have a "everything else" VS window where things like source control, ad-hoc file editing, debuggers go, and for which the UI changes each time you change a tab. Then each Solution should have its own independent window with a static UI.
Well, whatever, I'm not an expert either. I just know that by the end of the day, I usually have like 9 VS windows open, all containing random shit, and I have no idea what's going on with them.
The part that really throws me about VS is how it reconfigures itself, seemingly at random, when you load different projects/files/etc.
For example, we use Team Foundation Server as source control. In a typical day, I have TFS's source browser open while I'm working on other things-- Word docs, or email, or whatever. Fine. But then I need to do some work on a C# program, so I click the C# project in Explorer and it opens in the same VS window... well, ok.
But now it gets weird. Since TFS's source browser has no "solution", the Solution Explorer isn't there. I have an open project, but it's not showing me the project items, which is really dis-concerting... and even worse, if the project happened to be saved with no open tabs, the VS UI does *nothing at all* when you open a project. (Well, it does some stuff to the menus, but the window looks identical to before.) So I always have to manually show the Solution Explorer and Properties Explorer, and usually the Toolbox also.
What I'd MUCH rather have is TFS source control browser being treated as a completely different instance of VS, instead of just a tab in VS. Then when I opened a C# project, I'd get a whole new VS instance with the correct UI elements shown.
Oh, but it gets even weirder with Javascript. I'm running a JS project in a browser, and I hit "Debug" and choose VS as the debugger. Now, the JS file I'm running is RIGHT THERE in VS, but it seems completely unable to detect that the file I'm debugging is the same thing as the file I'm looking at... so I get a new VS tab, which is crazily showing the exact same file as the one I was editing a minute ago, except it's non-editable. Which means I always, and I mean *always*, try to edit it and get that idiotic error "you can't edit this file, dummy, it's being debugged" or whatever it says. Irritating as hell.
IE8 fixes that latest problem, except I'm still running IE7 for QA purposes.
I think the problem I really have is that VS is designed around the assumption that you sit down, open VS once, and open a single solution which is the *only* thing you work on each day. My work isn't like that... I'm editing HTML here, JS there, oh quick change to the C# site, another quick change to the DB schema, etc. I'm constantly opening and closing new projects, and VS seems to have a new and exciting UI configuration every single time I do so.
I'm not trying to suggest the widgets are broken (although they are weird in many ways), but the holistic experience for me just isn't there... I feel that every time I open up something that uses VS, I have absolutely no clue how it's going to look. "Is the Solution Explorer going to be there this time?" "Is the Properties Explorer?" "Is the Propeties Explorer going to be below or beside the Solution Explorer?"
That said, it's not true that there's "little to no" usability testing and UI design review, for VS at least.
The testing I need is, "hey, spend a few hours looking over my (a typical customer) shoulder, and see how weird this all is." Some groups do that, I know Office and Windows does. Maybe VS is doing that, but they don't watch people who work like I do.
VS has a lot of features I really love, although I have to admit I've been slowing moving over to Expression Web for all my HTML/Javascript needs. The only thing I really use VS for HTML-wise anymore is the "Format Document" function and the Javascript debugger.
Oh, and BTW, did you know the "Check for Updates" item in the VS Help menu does not, and has not ever, worked? Oh, it LOOKS like it works, but after you the install process, you actually end up with the same version of VS as before? It's devious. http://blakeyrat.com/2008/10/ms-sql-server-2008-installer-woes/
Last version of Psi that I've regularly used was 2 major releases before the current one; I don't recall seeing that button there back then (or at least it didn't look as wrong as on the screenshot).
I would argue that Microsoft and Apple both manage it better than Ubuntu does, at least if you measure by usable features. Linux has a kajillion features, but the majority of them are completely unusable by the average person.
Really? Even though they default to a wireless manager that you call, and I quote, "a piece of shit"?
If NetworkManager is a piece of shit, and if it's part of Ubuntu, how can you love Ubuntu? I don't understand this love/hate relationship thing you got going here.
(BTW, I agree with you entirely. I commute on a train with incredibly spotty wifi connection, and there are numerous apps on OS X, Windows, and Linux that simply can't cope. I stopped using OS X because of it's habit of locking-up Finder for 5-10 *minutes* at a time when it had issues with wifi. Live Sync (not really part of Windows, but eh) throws a total spasm when it fails to log in correctly, and is moronic about reconnecting.
Developers working on Internet applications/protocols should be forced at gunpoint to test their application on my commuter train.)
Ugh. I just downloaded and installed the program. The widget is a menu, FYI, but God it's hideous! It's completely ignoring my Windows theme, and drawing a huge fat black arrow in the middle of what appears to be a button. Windows doesn't have a "button-menu" control that I'm aware of, so I guess I can forgive that it exists, but it could at least look like it fits in.
Also: the text selection highlight is wrong, it's supposed to be a dark blue background using my theme. And HOLY SHIT, Control-C to COPY doesn't work! COPY DOESN'T WORK! COPY DOES NOT WORK and you're holding this up as a good Qt4 app?! Jesus.
By "bug" do you mean any inconsistency with stock UI controls?
An inconsistency is otherwise known as a "bug," yes.
I really wouldn't go so far as to call it that, because it really is the norm on Windows.
Yes, there are many buggy apps on Windows. Nobody ever claimed Windows apps were bug-free.
In fact, many Microsoft applications don't use stock controls themselves - Office doesn't, for example.
Office writes their own widgets, but (as far as I can work out) they behave 100% identically to the OS-standard widgets. Therefore, they aren't buggy. (Usually, the only difference is that Office adds their own theming.) Now, that said, there very could well be a case where the Office widget works differently, and then, yes, it would be a bug. Nobody ever claimed Office was bug-free.
Huge parts of VS2010 were rewritten in WPF, too (and it doesn't even try to look native anymore, even though it could - rather, it has its own distinct theme).
Yeah, and I think that's a huge mistake. When a programmer who is a bad UI designer doesn't know how to implement something, what's he going to do? Find a similar problem and see how VS solved it... and most of the time, VS gets it wrong. This is a huge problem, and leads to what you pointed out previously, about buggy Windows apps. (Oh, and same applies to Office.)
It's obvious if you work with Microsoft products that VS and SQL Server, for some reason, get little-to-none usability testing, as opposed to virtually everything else Microsoft creates. Why is this? Maybe Microsoft perceives that it's not a problem if "pro" apps are hard-to-use? I dunno. Like I said, I think it's a huge mistake.
SQL Server is actually even worse than VS. Even it's installer is basically equal parts confusion, meaningless buzzwords, and bugs. There's no reason a database package should be hard-to-use.
In any case, try Psi - that one is a Qt4 application that tries to look native. I'm curious as to what abnormalities you can quickly find in that.
The *screenshot* on the webpage has a wrong down-arrow control. I didn't even need to download the program.
It looks like they hacked off the end of a scrollbar and tinted it blue. Hell, I can't even really tell what widget it's supposed to be... is that a combo box arrow that somehow got detached from the rest of the box? The combo box arrow would at least look correct: http://schend.net/images/screenshots/combo_box_arrow.png
With something like that, I have absolutely no clue how to interact with it. I can assume that clicking it causes something to appear below it, but what is that something? A menu? A combo box? Who knows!
Is that seriously the best example you have? I'm starting to form a theory that most programmers have no eye whatsoever for detail... you're kind of confirming my suspicions.
I find it interesting that you declare "raise on click" to be "incorrect." You don't even pretend that it's a matter of opinion, or concede that the earliest successful GUIs all did raise on click.
Microsoft doesn't "fix" it because it's not a bug.
It does sound like it is libraries. A program running mulitple threads where the user code is in a different thread would not have this problem.
A.K.A. a buggy program.
It's not Windows' fault if a program locks-up its UI thread. Programmers have to at some point be responsible for what happens in their program.
Give me a larger-than-trivial Qt application, and I (almost) guarantee I can find a bug in it in less than half an hour.
You are, however, correct that most of my experience of shit-ily ported software is based on GTK+. But it's *so* embarrassingly shitty, it amazes me that the Pidgin developers would even want to release a Windows build, if that's the best they can manage.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's still an excuse. It's just not as lame an excuse as it appears at first glance.
Anyway, I don't fault them. Data in Seattle is a bit slow, but it's pretty reliable, and from my experience, their coverage (in general) is better than Verizon's-- or at least I know plenty of locations where my friend's Verizon phone won't work but my phone works fine.
This guy's quote is BS, if you as the owner of your traffic don't know how much demand there is either by system monitoring and/or usage patterns for specific type clients (with demograhaphics tagged along with it, because ATT sure as hell knows its clients profiles and/or can buy such data from 3rd parties) then they need to get out of the business.
No, what's he's saying is that since the network is already full to 100% of capacity, it's impossible to tell how much more capacity they need in specific areas. Which is true; since every tower is 100%, there's no place that's obviously worse than any other place. They have "capacity clipping", to coin a term.
So if they have a redundant (say) janitor, they should re-train him to do high-capacity networking instead of cleaning toilets? Is that what you're getting at?
Here's a pro-tip: employees aren't interchangeable cogs.
Just use FatELF on platforms where file size isn't an issue (i.e. most of them) and don't use it on platforms where it is. That's not a "problem," that's a "we made up a problem because we're too lazy to do it."
Well, that is true, but the problem can be chipped away at from multiple angles.
Why are you being so mean?
Because I'm an jackass. And because I think it's hilarious.
And why have you already labeled me a "douchebag"?
Anybody who gives a shit what their IQ is is a douchebag. That would be like basing your personality on your Slashdot ID-- it's retarded, it doesn't indicate *anything* about who you are, except how well you can take a particular type of test.
In addition to that, I'm always suspicious of people who quote extremely high IQ values-- my hunch is that they're giving the un-normalized scores. IQ scores raise over time, so if you're taking a test with the 1960 normalization, then of course you're going to see super high scores like 160. But a 1960 IQ test says absolutely nothing about your IQ relative to the current population.
My wager is that Mensa is giving you an extremely flawed IQ test, and since people score high on it, nobody ever goes back to say, "hm, that score looks a bit funny to me..." (Someone going and proving Mensa's test flawed would be, in my eyes, much more intelligent than someone who claims to have a 160 IQ score.)
And anyway, at this point in history, even The Simpsons did an episode on how useless Mensa is.
Furthermore, I do not plan on staying at this level of job (or even this industry) for the rest of my life.
Yeah, you could move into genius-ology.
If anybody here needs to be told "don't be a douchebag", I think it's you.
No, I'm a jackass. That's a totally different category.
Sisyphos did something hard.
Yes, but he happened to be IN HELL at the time.
So I'll give you this: hard tasks aren't worth doing if you're actually in the afterlife and the God of the Underworld is only assigning the task to you as a form of torture. There, you got an exception to the rule.
Is that relevant to what we're talking about? No.
I'm arguing that it isn't worth doing, not that it's hard
Yeah, but the best reason you're given that it's not worth doing is, "it's hard." I went back and re-read the original post, and that's the only message I got from it.
There are a lot of posts in this thread giving reasons why this is a good thing, the problem is that most of the benefits are:
1) Better usability
2) Better hosting of closed-source software
Since open source people generally don't give half-a-shit about usability, and some actively resent the concept that people should be able to use a computer without a PhD, well, there goes number 1. (Here comes the troll mod, sic it to me!)
And since open source people generally are deluded into thinking that it's impossible for proprietary software to co-exist with GPL software, well, there goes number 2.
A usable system that can run Photoshop? Who would want that!? (Oh wait, ask Apple. Or, hell, Microsoft-- the new incarnations of Windows are pretty damned usable.)
Real multi-arch could be useful, but the number of arches on Linux is just too overwhelming. To get somewhat decent coverage for Linux binaries, they'd have to run on x86, ARM, and PPC. Plus possibly MIPS, SPARC, and Itanium. Most of those in 32-bit and 64-bit flavours.
So, to summarize: we shouldn't do it because it's hard.
To which I reply: everything worth doing is hard, the easy things have already all been done.
Or alternatively: aw, poor babies! Want your blankie and pacifier?
Then be like the Mac world, where that's worked fine since 1984.
Windows isn't the end-all, be-all of the computing world. And frankly, if you were interested in improving usability, I don't see why you'd look at anything *except* OS X. (And maybe Office 2007.)
Yeah, but it would be nice if they did it without the constant penis-measuring.
How many times have you pointed out a bug or deficiency in Linux, and the instant knee-jerk reply is, "well that doesn't work well in Windows either!!!" What's the attitude here? That Linux doesn't need to bother fixing X if Windows also does X poorly? That makes no damned sense.
You say you haven't met a Mensa member who wasn't a "total douchebag"... how many have you met in total?
Five or six.
Some people really are that stuck up, others may just be frustrated and it comes off as intolerant or douchey.
It doesn't matter *why* they are douchebags, only that they *are* douchebags.
But some of us really want to help people with our talents
Your impressive tech support talents? Please. People like Steve Jobs have talents. People like Richard Branson have talents. You can't even get a decent job.
and we need to understand how to interact with those people in order to do it.
A good rule-of-thumb would be "don't be a douchebag."
It does in fact imply that some problems are down to the design of the US plug.
So now you're suggesting that we retrofit EVERY old building to modern wiring standards?
You're being intellectually dishonest-- compare the modern British standard with the modern US standard, otherwise it's apples and oranges.
For the record, no building in the US built after the mid-80s has:
1) An outlet without a ground
2) An outlet that in a room with plumbing without a built-in GFI
My house is from 1927. I have every US example in that article somewhere in my house... hell, in my basement I have live cloth-insulated wires, that's fun. (Or cloth not-insulated-anymore wires, since that cloth insulation rots off in 80 years, whoda thunk it.)
Anyway, I had an electrician come in to put in a dedicated circuit for my computer setup, add a few more outlets in the kitchen, and add an outlet for my shaver in the bathroom. He was pretty impressed. He had to tear out a lot of the older stuff because of newer standards, but he didn't touch anything he didn't have to by law. So I still have cloth-insulated live wires in the basement.
IIRC, my kitchen circuit goes through a 30 amp fuse box (the well-designed kind you could jam with pennies), and then into a 20 amp breaker in the basement.
Completely unrelated point: why are breaker boxes always put in the darkest corners of the house? Does it never occur to electricians that we might need to get to the breaker box WITH THE LIGHTS OFF!?
I'm the founder of Mensa with an IQ of 199.9. I have problems similar to yours. You would think people would be pleased when I constantly tell them about the vast powers of my gigantic brain, and yet there is nothing but constant resentment from them. I attribute this to their comparative retardedness, and not to my being a gigantic asshole.
(I've yet to meet a Mensa member who wasn't a total douchebag. That might be your problem.)
(Oh, and the fact that you're doing tech support? Proof positive that IQ means exactly dick, if you needed one.)
From the description it sounds like Microsoft Update was broken with respect to VS, somehow.
The most insane part is that it goes through the whole install process-- downloads the patch, asks you to close VS, shuffles through files for over an hour, tells you it's all updated with a happy little Close button. But when you check VS's version, it didn't actually change anything at all! I mean, how does a bug like that even happen? What the holy hell was the installer doing for that hour and a half? It boggles the mind.
Anyway, I'm not blaming you, I'm actually more pissed at SQL Server's installer, which IMO should be classified as a violation of the Geneva Convention. (Can you tell I've had to install a few SQL Server instances this week?)
You should pop me off an email or blog comment, so we could hash through this.
Now that I'm trying it on my work machine, it's actually behaving closer to what you describe. (At least if I'm reading you right, I've never used Eclipse, so I really have no clue at all what a "perspective" is. And VS certainly doesn't seem to have anything that tries to explain that metaphor.)
In any case, starting with a computer with no VS running, here's what VS looks like when I open it by double-clicking a .js file:
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/vs_opened_js_file.png
Contrary to what happens on my home computer (where I wrote the last post), if I then double-click a Solution, the Solution will get its own window completely separate from the .js window and with the correct UI elements visible. That's good-- just give the JS window a different icon, so I can tell it apart easier, and I'd be happy.
TFS, however, doens't behave the same way. Here's what VS looks like if I just open it using the Start menu icon:
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/vs_source_control_explorer.png
Note that it opens up the Source Control Explorer by default, with the appropriate UI elements. (BTW, what's an "Explorer?" It the little pane to the right is an "Explorer", but the main content of the window is also an "Explorer", WTF does that term even mean?)
Here's the same window after I open a Solution that just happens to have no saved open tabs:
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/vs_opened_solution_from_source_control.png
Can you tell the difference? Other than the Source Control Explorer window flashing, there's *nothing* in the UI to indicate that I now have an open Solution. The Solution Explorer didn't appear, nor did the Toolbox or Properties Explorer. The only difference, as far as I can work out, is that the File menu activated Close Project.
Now if I manually go and show the Solution Explorer, then it'll have all the Solution files in it and all will be well. But why should I have to manually show it even single time?
This might be a bug, but VS is working off such a complicated UI metaphor that I have no way of telling what's a bug or not. What your team really needs to do is simplify the metaphor to something you can explain in less than a paragraph without referring to a competing project :)
Actually, I think I just realized what (conceptually) is wrong with Visual Studio.
VS uses a Solution metaphor, which is basically just a project full of projects. Each given VS window can have one Solution open at a time. That's fine.
The problem is that VS also can open a whole bunch of different tasks that don't count as Solutions. For example, the TFS source control browser doesn't count as a Solution, so if I double-click a real solution is takes over that window. Ditto with a Javascript file I just double-clicked to edit, that's not a solution it's just a file. Or the Javascript debugger.
Making that even more confusing, whatever was opened first controls the UI of that particular VS window... if I open TFS source control browser first, the VS window has no Explorers or Toolbox because those don't apply to it. But if I later double-click a C# project, that window gets re-used for the C# project *without adding the project-relevant UI elements*.
Now if I take that setup and double-click a JS file, the JS file crams into the same window once again, because it's not a Solution. So now I have a Javascript editor with a Solution Explorer and Toolbox.
I could be wrong, maybe the behavior is more complex than this. But it seems to match the clicking-around I'm doing as I type this.
A better way of doing this would be to have a "everything else" VS window where things like source control, ad-hoc file editing, debuggers go, and for which the UI changes each time you change a tab. Then each Solution should have its own independent window with a static UI.
Well, whatever, I'm not an expert either. I just know that by the end of the day, I usually have like 9 VS windows open, all containing random shit, and I have no idea what's going on with them.
The part that really throws me about VS is how it reconfigures itself, seemingly at random, when you load different projects/files/etc.
For example, we use Team Foundation Server as source control. In a typical day, I have TFS's source browser open while I'm working on other things-- Word docs, or email, or whatever. Fine. But then I need to do some work on a C# program, so I click the C# project in Explorer and it opens in the same VS window... well, ok.
But now it gets weird. Since TFS's source browser has no "solution", the Solution Explorer isn't there. I have an open project, but it's not showing me the project items, which is really dis-concerting... and even worse, if the project happened to be saved with no open tabs, the VS UI does *nothing at all* when you open a project. (Well, it does some stuff to the menus, but the window looks identical to before.) So I always have to manually show the Solution Explorer and Properties Explorer, and usually the Toolbox also.
What I'd MUCH rather have is TFS source control browser being treated as a completely different instance of VS, instead of just a tab in VS. Then when I opened a C# project, I'd get a whole new VS instance with the correct UI elements shown.
Oh, but it gets even weirder with Javascript. I'm running a JS project in a browser, and I hit "Debug" and choose VS as the debugger. Now, the JS file I'm running is RIGHT THERE in VS, but it seems completely unable to detect that the file I'm debugging is the same thing as the file I'm looking at... so I get a new VS tab, which is crazily showing the exact same file as the one I was editing a minute ago, except it's non-editable. Which means I always, and I mean *always*, try to edit it and get that idiotic error "you can't edit this file, dummy, it's being debugged" or whatever it says. Irritating as hell.
IE8 fixes that latest problem, except I'm still running IE7 for QA purposes.
I think the problem I really have is that VS is designed around the assumption that you sit down, open VS once, and open a single solution which is the *only* thing you work on each day. My work isn't like that... I'm editing HTML here, JS there, oh quick change to the C# site, another quick change to the DB schema, etc. I'm constantly opening and closing new projects, and VS seems to have a new and exciting UI configuration every single time I do so.
I'm not trying to suggest the widgets are broken (although they are weird in many ways), but the holistic experience for me just isn't there... I feel that every time I open up something that uses VS, I have absolutely no clue how it's going to look. "Is the Solution Explorer going to be there this time?" "Is the Properties Explorer?" "Is the Propeties Explorer going to be below or beside the Solution Explorer?"
That said, it's not true that there's "little to no" usability testing and UI design review, for VS at least.
The testing I need is, "hey, spend a few hours looking over my (a typical customer) shoulder, and see how weird this all is." Some groups do that, I know Office and Windows does. Maybe VS is doing that, but they don't watch people who work like I do.
VS has a lot of features I really love, although I have to admit I've been slowing moving over to Expression Web for all my HTML/Javascript needs. The only thing I really use VS for HTML-wise anymore is the "Format Document" function and the Javascript debugger.
Oh, and BTW, did you know the "Check for Updates" item in the VS Help menu does not, and has not ever, worked? Oh, it LOOKS like it works, but after you the install process, you actually end up with the same version of VS as before? It's devious. http://blakeyrat.com/2008/10/ms-sql-server-2008-installer-woes/
Last version of Psi that I've regularly used was 2 major releases before the current one; I don't recall seeing that button there back then (or at least it didn't look as wrong as on the screenshot).
I would argue that Microsoft and Apple both manage it better than Ubuntu does, at least if you measure by usable features. Linux has a kajillion features, but the majority of them are completely unusable by the average person.
I love Ubuntu.
Really? Even though they default to a wireless manager that you call, and I quote, "a piece of shit"?
If NetworkManager is a piece of shit, and if it's part of Ubuntu, how can you love Ubuntu? I don't understand this love/hate relationship thing you got going here.
(BTW, I agree with you entirely. I commute on a train with incredibly spotty wifi connection, and there are numerous apps on OS X, Windows, and Linux that simply can't cope. I stopped using OS X because of it's habit of locking-up Finder for 5-10 *minutes* at a time when it had issues with wifi. Live Sync (not really part of Windows, but eh) throws a total spasm when it fails to log in correctly, and is moronic about reconnecting.
Developers working on Internet applications/protocols should be forced at gunpoint to test their application on my commuter train.)
No, you should be getting angry. You should be demanding quality. Where's the QA?
Demand better and you'll get better. If you're ok with "nothing works," then nothing will work.
Ugh. I just downloaded and installed the program. The widget is a menu, FYI, but God it's hideous! It's completely ignoring my Windows theme, and drawing a huge fat black arrow in the middle of what appears to be a button. Windows doesn't have a "button-menu" control that I'm aware of, so I guess I can forgive that it exists, but it could at least look like it fits in.
Also: the text selection highlight is wrong, it's supposed to be a dark blue background using my theme. And HOLY SHIT, Control-C to COPY doesn't work! COPY DOESN'T WORK! COPY DOES NOT WORK and you're holding this up as a good Qt4 app?! Jesus.
By "bug" do you mean any inconsistency with stock UI controls?
An inconsistency is otherwise known as a "bug," yes.
I really wouldn't go so far as to call it that, because it really is the norm on Windows.
Yes, there are many buggy apps on Windows. Nobody ever claimed Windows apps were bug-free.
In fact, many Microsoft applications don't use stock controls themselves - Office doesn't, for example.
Office writes their own widgets, but (as far as I can work out) they behave 100% identically to the OS-standard widgets. Therefore, they aren't buggy. (Usually, the only difference is that Office adds their own theming.) Now, that said, there very could well be a case where the Office widget works differently, and then, yes, it would be a bug. Nobody ever claimed Office was bug-free.
Huge parts of VS2010 were rewritten in WPF, too (and it doesn't even try to look native anymore, even though it could - rather, it has its own distinct theme).
Yeah, and I think that's a huge mistake. When a programmer who is a bad UI designer doesn't know how to implement something, what's he going to do? Find a similar problem and see how VS solved it... and most of the time, VS gets it wrong. This is a huge problem, and leads to what you pointed out previously, about buggy Windows apps. (Oh, and same applies to Office.)
It's obvious if you work with Microsoft products that VS and SQL Server, for some reason, get little-to-none usability testing, as opposed to virtually everything else Microsoft creates. Why is this? Maybe Microsoft perceives that it's not a problem if "pro" apps are hard-to-use? I dunno. Like I said, I think it's a huge mistake.
SQL Server is actually even worse than VS. Even it's installer is basically equal parts confusion, meaningless buzzwords, and bugs. There's no reason a database package should be hard-to-use.
In any case, try Psi - that one is a Qt4 application that tries to look native. I'm curious as to what abnormalities you can quickly find in that.
The *screenshot* on the webpage has a wrong down-arrow control. I didn't even need to download the program.
It looks like they hacked off the end of a scrollbar and tinted it blue. Hell, I can't even really tell what widget it's supposed to be... is that a combo box arrow that somehow got detached from the rest of the box? The combo box arrow would at least look correct: http://schend.net/images/screenshots/combo_box_arrow.png
With something like that, I have absolutely no clue how to interact with it. I can assume that clicking it causes something to appear below it, but what is that something? A menu? A combo box? Who knows!
Is that seriously the best example you have? I'm starting to form a theory that most programmers have no eye whatsoever for detail... you're kind of confirming my suspicions.
I find it interesting that you declare "raise on click" to be "incorrect." You don't even pretend that it's a matter of opinion, or concede that the earliest successful GUIs all did raise on click.
Microsoft doesn't "fix" it because it's not a bug.
It does sound like it is libraries. A program running mulitple threads where the user code is in a different thread would not have this problem.
A.K.A. a buggy program.
It's not Windows' fault if a program locks-up its UI thread. Programmers have to at some point be responsible for what happens in their program.
Give me a larger-than-trivial Qt application, and I (almost) guarantee I can find a bug in it in less than half an hour.
You are, however, correct that most of my experience of shit-ily ported software is based on GTK+. But it's *so* embarrassingly shitty, it amazes me that the Pidgin developers would even want to release a Windows build, if that's the best they can manage.