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On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:01:53 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospam com> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 47d44731$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> It takes me more time to do equivalent tasks now to what I did 15 years
>> ago. That's the point.
>
> But what are you doing exactly? Unless your job consists exclusively in
> opening and closing applications and doing absolutely nothing in
> between, that goes *** completely *** against my (20-year) experience of
> using engineering and office software. Startup times are sometimes
> longer, duh. What about the rest, like actually using the software for
> the kind of tasks that are expected in 2008? And here I'm talking about
> office software: spreadsheets, presentation software, databases and word
> processing. That's really looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses,
> sorry.
No, I'm talking about use of office software - see my example, for
example, of using Word and watching it catch up with my typing. When
that happened, I half expected Clippy to jump in and say "in order to see
your text as you type it, you need to type more slowly" or something
stupid (and about as helpful as Clippy *usually* provided me before I
turned it off) like that.
But I've only been using office and engineering software for 25 years
myself, so I obviously don't know what I'm talking about. ;-)
The problem is that much of our "modern" software includes features that
no sane user wants to use. I'll admit that if I were to try to do a
crosstab with Lotus 1-2-3, I'd not have been able to do it (because the
feature wasn't there AFAICR), and that is something I use today that
isn't in the older software.
It may entirely be a perceptual thing - but that doesn't make it any less
of a valid observation.
Jim
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Gilles Tran escribió:
> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> a �crit dans le message de news:
> 47d44731$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> It takes me more time to do equivalent tasks now to what I did 15 years
>> ago. That's the point.
>
> But what are you doing exactly? Unless your job consists exclusively in
> opening and closing applications and doing absolutely nothing in between,
> that goes *** completely *** against my (20-year) experience of using
> engineering and office software. Startup times are sometimes longer, duh.
> What about the rest, like actually using the software for the kind of tasks
> that are expected in 2008? And here I'm talking about office software:
> spreadsheets, presentation software, databases and word processing. That's
> really looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, sorry.
Saying "people don't restart the app all the time, so startup times
don't matter" is just like saying "computers are fast nowadays, so
optimization doesn't matter".
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
> Saying "people don't restart the app all the time, so startup times
> don't matter" is just like saying "computers are fast nowadays, so
> optimization doesn't matter".
Heh, yeah, basically so. But when user uses multitasking to beat startup
times (you don't need to start software often, 'cause you can keep them
open at the background) makes optimization (especially memory-) more
useful :).
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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47d455a1$1@news.povray.org...
> The problem is that much of our "modern" software includes features that
> no sane user wants to use.
Uh, that's really patronizing. Featuritis does exist, but it's a too common
fallacy to think that because one doesn't need certain features the're
completely useless, like in those funny Slashdot discussions where legions
of clueless nerds remind everyone that because *** they *** are happy using
The Gimp to make lolcats everyone using Photoshop is an idiot.
>I'll admit that if I were to try to do a crosstab with Lotus 1-2-3, I'd not
>have been able to do it (because the
>feature wasn't there AFAICR), and that is something I use today that
>isn't in the older software.
1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards, and not just because
of crosstab. Really useless, like a brick. And I loved it for years, until I
switched. You'll pry my bloated Excel from my dead cold hands ;)
G.
--
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer art
- Posters
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> The problem is that much of our "modern" software includes features that
> no sane user wants to use.
it's not just feature bloat: the sheer number of code libraries and multiple
layers of indirection given modern programming environments is a huge factor
for slowness. Thus, hardware gets faster and faster and software bloated and
bloated. For us, it's always about the same.
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On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:35:14 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 47d455a1$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> The problem is that much of our "modern" software includes features
>> that no sane user wants to use.
>
> Uh, that's really patronizing.
It wasn't intended to be.
> Featuritis does exist, but it's a too
> common fallacy to think that because one doesn't need certain features
> the're completely useless, like in those funny Slashdot discussions
> where legions of clueless nerds remind everyone that because *** they
> *** are happy using The Gimp to make lolcats everyone using Photoshop is
> an idiot.
It's not a question of "so many features *I* don't need to use", but "so
many features that *most* users don't need to use". Pivottables are an
example, actually - though I use them a lot, most of the spreadsheet
users I work with have no idea even how to use them effectively. I've
had to teach people how to use them because they were doing it by hand.
(Which actually, I realise, doesn't prove my point).
>>I'll admit that if I were to try to do a crosstab with Lotus 1-2-3, I'd
>>not have been able to do it (because the
>>feature wasn't there AFAICR), and that is something I use today that
>>isn't in the older software.
>
> 1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards, and not just
> because of crosstab. Really useless, like a brick. And I loved it for
> years, until I switched. You'll pry my bloated Excel from my dead cold
> hands ;)
I don't know that 1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards -
I think a lot of tasks that people use Excel for these days aren't much
beyond what 1-2-3 was capable of.
As for what I use, I'm an avowed OpenOffice 2.3 user. You can have your
Excel, oocalc does everything I have a need for, and the price is most
definitely right. ;-)
Jim
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On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:17:45 -0500, nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> The problem is that much of our "modern" software includes features
>> that no sane user wants to use.
>
> it's not just feature bloat: the sheer number of code libraries and
> multiple layers of indirection given modern programming environments is
> a huge factor for slowness. Thus, hardware gets faster and faster and
> software bloated and bloated. For us, it's always about the same.
Yep, that's kinda my point. :-)
Jim
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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:39:50 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>>
>> Saying "people don't restart the app all the time, so startup times
>> don't matter" is just like saying "computers are fast nowadays, so
>> optimization doesn't matter".
>
> Heh, yeah, basically so. But when user uses multitasking to beat startup
> times (you don't need to start software often, 'cause you can keep them
> open at the background) makes optimization (especially memory-) more
> useful :).
Yeah, but for $50, you can add another 2 GB of memory to the machine, so
why not?
One of the reasons for Microsoft's success in the industry is their huge
programs. Hardware vendors *loved* Microsoft in the early days, because
in order to use the software, you had to buy the biggest, baddest, *most
expensive* machine they could sell you.
Why on earth would HP, for example, recommend NetWare (a solid, stable,
and secure network OS) in the mid 1990's? It ran on a 386 with 16 MB of
memory, and it ran forever. There are *still* installations of version
2.x and 3.x (current is 6.5) that are perfectly functioning because the
damned thing *just works*.
Conversely, the earliest server releases of Windows required gobs of
memory and processor, and each successive release required more memory,
more disk space, more of everything. The hardware vendors got a
permanent customer upgrade cycle, service contracts, the works - because
the system was overcomplicated, bloated, and a resource hog.
That's not to say there weren't other factors for Novell's decline (some
of which were by all means self-inflicted), but having something that
didn't make any of the hardware manufacturers any money certainly hurt.
It's a shame when the technologically superior product loses due to a
case like this. Even more so when anti-competitive behaviour comes into
play (as is well documented fact).
im
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On 9 Mar 2008 15:16:01 -0500, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>
>A lot of the bloat comes from inefficient coding - after all, I can put
>32 GB of memory in a machine nowadays, so why do I need to worry about
>optimisation?
>
>The type of optimization that was taught in CS classes in the early 90's
>doesn't seem to even be a concern any more because "the machines are fast
>enough and have enough memory that it doesn't matter if we're sloppy in
>our coding".
Isn't that how you get cheap programmes, though? If you reuse code and generic
solutions combined with not testing fully the production costs are kept low
(ish). BTW I'm not arguing it is just an opinion I've developed over the years.
I know next to nothing about programming and the only lesions I've ever had was
in the 70's writing assembly code for fault finding. Myself, I can't code for
toffee and I know it.
Regards
Stephen
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 20 years ago, I could run WordPerfect for DOS on a DOS machine that was
> an 8086 or 80286 and got decent performance - instant responses and
> whatnot.
Was WordPerfect for 8086 wysiwyg? I doubt so.
The programs are doing different things. If you want to compare software
on equal terms, compare it to LaTeX.
--
- Warp
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