Software disenchantment

Discussions of applications and operating systems and any problems, tips or suggestions. Win XP, 9x/2k, Linux, NT, photo editing, Virus/Spyware help
Post Reply
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32773
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Software disenchantment

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Interesting rant from the perspective of a software programmer. It's something that bugs me. We keep writing slow, bloated software and just get a faster computer when we can't stand it anymore.

There's a reason I keep using Office 2003, and it's not because I'm cheap. Office 2016 doesn't do ANYTHING more than 2003 does that I need, and 2003 runs like a greased pig on a modern PC, while 2016 can take a full minute to initialize (AND wants to run a 'helper' app in the background all the time to speed up load time". Same thing with Quickbooks which has become an incredibly slow, bloated and buggy POS over the past decade.
Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.

Only in software, it’s fine if a program runs at 1% or even 0.01% of the possible performance. Everybody just seems to be ok with it. People are often even proud about how much inefficient it is, as in “why should we worry, computers are fast enough”
http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

Image
User avatar
Err
Life Member
Posts: 5842
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 11:54 am

Re: Software disenchantment

Post by Err »

We have Office 365 at work and I hate it. Microsoft's apps can play nice with one another either. I have to disable Office Uploader every time there is an update because it doesn't play nice with OneDrive. There's also no option to turn off Office Uploader. You have to dig into the Office files, rename the exe's, and create blank text files renames to the old exe set read only. If you have Office Uploader and OneDrive running at the same time, they conflict and cause Office to crash. I lost progress on 5 excel workbooks I was working on due to this BS.

I like the part of the article where he asks what is Windows Update doing that it takes 30 minutes.
User avatar
wvjohn
Posts: 9238
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 7:09 am
Contact:

Re: Software disenchantment

Post by wvjohn »

Truth for sure. I rarely use MS products (besides windows), I've always used worfperfect, since from the start that was designed for legal work. The crap on webpages is ridiculous. Even with an adblocker on, you still have to wait for the ads to try and load. I get that a lot of what is on the web is a "service" one way or the other, that's ok. Just make it work.
User avatar
Executioner
Life Member
Posts: 10133
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:34 am
Location: Woodland, CA USA

Re: Software disenchantment

Post by Executioner »

Yeah don't get me started on Office 365, and now at work, we have to deal with windows 10, and the IT department making bandaid fix for some 20 year old software that we use to edit and store our documents. I also have a copy of Office 2003 that works perfectly, but I also have Office 2007 and 2010. After 2010, I'm not interested in any of these updates to office.
User avatar
b-man1
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 10:23 am

Re: Software disenchantment

Post by b-man1 »

Where's the love for MS? ;)

Don't worry, the pain isn't just on the customer side. Internally, most of us are required to run the "dog food" versions that are well ahead of the released versions...and it can be...interesting. The internal IT is also quite aggressive with patching and forcing things on us. I had a coworker giving a presentation in front of 50+ people and his laptop decided to install patches and reboot in the middle of it. :)
Post Reply