I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer.
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@KentNavalesi I spent too much of my life trying to configure sound cards on MS-DOS, so I wouldn't say the past was perfect either
I just like to think we can always do better.
@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit I'm at the stage now where I'm starting to think that giving someone a 20 minute primer on Linux then letting them get on eith it has to be easier than constantly fighting with their firewall, antiviral, and shifty OS every week.
Personally, ive found several problems with Win11 recently that require opening Powershell as admin just to do something that used to take a couple of clicks with a mouse - something that the Windows evangelists always said was stopping people moving to Linux.
I'm now seriously considering a 2nd SSD for dual booting into something, possibly Mint. -
@jtonline @NatalyaD @jalefkowit TOO MANY ARE ALREADY AFFLICTED WITH WINDOWS
@DJDarren @jtonline @jalefkowit
I worked with a neurodivergent student who DID literally throw their laptop out of the window. That was a tricky arrange-a-replacement cos the funding entity considered it deliberate damage and we had to really bash into them that it was disability related behaviour.
And a lot of work was done with laptop 2, "whatever happens, do NOT break this laptop, cos you won't get a third".
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@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
@jalefkowit I've been sharpening the pitchforks.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit It's gotten to the point where I often *can't* help non-techy people with computer problems anymore, because I haven't used either of the major proprietary OSes since the 00's - so, even as someone who has spent basically their whole life being the Computer Person in a lot of my social circles - the ecosystem most people are in is so divorced from anything I use that beyond basic stuff I can improvise through, I've lost the ability to really do community tech support.
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@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
For the same reason they haven't come for kayfabe panto politicians with pitchforks and torches. Ego-value is vested in a lifetime of this being something other people are competent at, at least are supposed to be competent at. (Cf. James Scott, Seeing Like a State.)
The complexity and confusion is embraced as proof that, absent those brief inescapable interactions with the monolithic fetish object that is "computers", as broad hand-wavy category, it's largely someone else's problem.
Heck, myself was writing poetic-satirical short stories in middle school, well before AOL was even mailing out free floppies, about how computer touchers we becoming a priestly class, the mystery of the machine serving the interests of both the touchers and those who called on them for exorcisms.
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@NatalyaD @jalefkowit @DJDarren doh, v was a much easier description than upside down ^!
I've had more recent opportunity to type it... And I knew what you meant, which is all that matters.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit It is so true. I used to do support for a legendary in his field Professor Emeritus, who was slowly losing his critical faculties - Microsoft's constant changes to their software was what finally drove him to quit for good. Today I just about lost my shit trying to help a blind user navigate Windows 11 for the first time.
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@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi The 70s micro and early DOS PC and Mac era, really the whole floppy/tape era, had another thing going for it: If something went wrong you just turned it off and on again. Nothing you did on your BASIC coding disk could break your homework disk. None of this "if my kid plays with my phone for a minute my e-mails will be deleted, $200 worth of burritos will show up at my doorstep, and my co-workers will receive ten photos of their potty" situation.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit People should have a normal person who just tries to make their way through their software before it gets publicly released with an abysmal UI. For all that I love @peertube, I think they have a pretty large problem with this.
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@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi at the same time as the first iPhone was released, other phones (I worked for Symbian, a now extinct smartphone OS company) came with an extensive printed manual.
To be fair, you could guess most of it anyway but it shows the assumption that any device required a manual. -
@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi The 70s micro and early DOS PC and Mac era, really the whole floppy/tape era, had another thing going for it: If something went wrong you just turned it off and on again. Nothing you did on your BASIC coding disk could break your homework disk. None of this "if my kid plays with my phone for a minute my e-mails will be deleted, $200 worth of burritos will show up at my doorstep, and my co-workers will receive ten photos of their potty" situation.
@mirth @inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is unintentionally a parable of increasing automation increases the scale of disasters, and I have to think about this for a while.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit Not computers per se, but as an example of usability improvements that got ruthlessly killed off by the dominant players - BlackBerry Hub: I've had to get someone off a BlackBerry 10 device when they were shutting down services for it and the most painful part was reintroducing them to the concept of "your messages live in several different apps". And then "most of them also try to silo you in by making it harder or impossible to forward things elsewhere".
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@mirth @inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is unintentionally a parable of increasing automation increases the scale of disasters, and I have to think about this for a while.
@sysadmin1138 @inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi Interesting way of looking at it. Computers also went from being mostly a calculating and storage thing to having communication be the primary use for a lot of people, which complicates the situation.
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@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
@jalefkowit @ajroach42 I assume that it's not just because the developers, including people like us, don't test with 'normal' users (which is probably true) but testing UI for error conditions is very hard - you have to generate the errors on demand and then put in the effort.
Also, the rate of change is such that you don't get the chance to do full UI testing for all new versions.
So we're dependent on developers thinking about this - and most minimise thinking about error handling anyway
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@jalefkowit @ajroach42 I assume that it's not just because the developers, including people like us, don't test with 'normal' users (which is probably true) but testing UI for error conditions is very hard - you have to generate the errors on demand and then put in the effort.
Also, the rate of change is such that you don't get the chance to do full UI testing for all new versions.
So we're dependent on developers thinking about this - and most minimise thinking about error handling anyway@imcdowall @jalefkowit This is absolutely not why things suck.
The incentives of capitalism are towards Dark Patterns and systems that lie to you.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
Jason Lefkowitz Honestly, even for those who have. The current systems are horrifying.
Fermented & putrescent 70s design (optimized for limited hardware & ease of implementation, at the time, rather than correctness or ease of use) stretched far past any reason out of inertia.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit @sjkilleen
Started with "hide the details from the user". No, don't(!), because now we even have experienced users who can't find what it is they need to resolve an issue
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Someone posted a reply saying that computers were harder in the past so it's fine they're hard now, which earned them an instant block. Thanks for identifying yourself as the kind of person I want nothing to do with
@jalefkowit well they're half-right. Computers were hard before GUIs became commonplace and mature.
But they conveniently glossed over the fact that there was a period of about 15 years when computers were easy. That ended when most companies that build software realized they could manipulate users instead of serving them, that they can ship "experiences" instead of tools.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
Preach Brother! Preach!
