this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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xkcd

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xkcd #1172: Workflow (imgs.xkcd.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Title text: There are probably children out there holding down spacebar to stay warm in the winter! YOUR UPDATE MURDERS CHILDREN.


Transcript[Changelog for version 10.17 of a piece of software.]

One change listed: "The CPU no longer overheats when you hold down the spacebar"
Comments: LongtimeUser4 writes: This update broke my workflow! My control key is hard to reach, so I hold spacebar instead, and I configured Emacs to interpret a rapid temperature rise as "control".
Admin writes: That's horrifying.
LongtimeUser4 writes: Look, my setup works for me. Just add an option to reenable spacebar heating.

Every change breaks someone's workflow.


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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds awfully familiar. One of our customer wanted a very specific option our system does not provide - because it makes no sense at all. But instead that the customer discusses what is good and what is not, based on our >40 years of international experience in the field, we just got a bunch of drawings telling me that I should do something in the way a political committee with no professional input had decided.

Customer pays for it, customer gets it. Fun fact: I know they will get sick of what they cooked up in no time, so I already installed a "kill switch". As soon as they get sick of their stupid idea, I can reverse it with a single option. Bossman says to take the same amount of money for switching it back, and he knows they will pay.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the option, if you don't mind me asking?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a remindme bot or smt? hahaha

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I saw somebody mention that you can use a mastodon remind me bot on lemmy just fine. But I don't remember what the name of the bot was.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wow, that sounds great. Hopefully someone remembers the name soon.

@[email protected] 1 hour

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@can Here is your reminder!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@can Ok, I will remind you on Thursday Aug 3, 2023 at 1:23 PM PDT.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Counterpoint: devs frequently downplay user's needs and inflate the importance of their own ideas, and because they're often in an echo chamber of their own team's environment, they never hear meaningful kickback from anyone they respect (because they certainly don't respect users).

Then they share this comic back forth literally every time users complain.

Someone, in the slack channels of reddit's devs, shared this exact comic with this exact attitude because of the backlash. And it was met with the same approval as the comments here.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is it exactly. Was a product manager and this is exactly the issue I faced with devs that had no real world usage experience.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

People often forget the value in field verifying and it drives me insane.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wh have met with the users who use our product. But they don't seem very able to articulate what it is they actually want or need from the system. It's always vague ideas and nothing actionable.

Them: Oh we need to be able to find customers even if they can't remember their account number.
Us: Yes but you can, just enter the company name.

This is usually met with either a vague "yeah" or "no not like that", and then they never elaborate.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Our users are literially the most irritating people on earth

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I met a user for a tool I built at work. It was the worst.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nah. I'm pretty sure they're mad too. They just can't really do anything against it since it's not their decision

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like a future forever paid customer to me. Want overheating back? Pay $4.99 per month in perpetuity and ongoing maintenance costs lol.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The more subscription models there are, the more people there are creating cracks for subscriptions

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

War drives innovation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Aren't there situations where you can't crack something? Constant requests to home server and stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Anything running on your computer can be cracked; that's simply the nature of being in control of your device. (Web) Apps where the important stuff runs on a server can't be cracked because there isn't any DRM in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you do realize you can't "crack" maintenance right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

As personal, individual user, who gives a shit? I'll just wait until a large enough gap between my version and the current version is there to warrent getting a more updated cracked version

I used an outdated version of photoshop for years.

If you NEED regular maintenance builds, it's probably for enterprise, in which case you open yourself up to a whole lot of legal bullshit by making money using pirated software in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Minecraft players when an update changes something thats been a certain way from the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That's the reason quasi connectivity exists.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you bet im still on 1.8 for the combat, lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You bet I'm still on beta 1.8 for that machine gun bow combat

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

"Mods was a bug, now it's fixed, no more hacking the game, users will be able to play as intended."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

And this is why I don't update my installed Python modules fequently...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Emacs itself is actually impressively good at not breaking workflows, given how configurable the package is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Other software: Don’t like this change? Go fork yourself.

Open Source software: Don’t like this change? Go fork it yourself.

Emacs: What do you mean you don’t like this change? You wrote the Elisp for the package yourself.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Not in my experience. The three most dangerous things in the world are:

  • A programmer with a soldering iron.
  • An HVAC tech with a software patch.
  • A user with an idea.
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"So I've been thinking..."

"Well that's dangerous!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Haha as a programmer who has worked on a handful of soldering projects this is so true.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I should put down the soldering iron I guess

would make my electronics projects less horrible

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about the designer... Can they program

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No. Usually not really

This is why most open source projects are ugly

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

One sentence horror story:

Full-stack developer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What if I'm a bit of both?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I recently had a user claim the upgrade from office 2019 to 365 broke her laptop screen.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

god I fuckin hate corporate buzzwords

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The horror!