I’m interested in who “people” are in this case. A lot of studies about people turn out to be studies about American culture, or WEIRD culture at best (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic). I’ll admit my reading wasn’t thorough, but I couldn’t find a section that told me who was studied or who they think it’s reasonable to generalize to.
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The last month we have been meeting weekly to discuss the organization’s service philosophy. While this might be a worthy goal, 2 hours weekly for a month that reiterates the previous meeting talking points while adding very little new and useful is time I could be more productive in that was taken away. I am further insulted by the injunction at the beginning of every meeting to cut the chatter, turn off text chat, and share with love. We get it!!
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This isn’t just about software.Whatever problem arises we want to throw a solution, preferably a technological one, at it. The obvious example is pollution from fossil-fuel-burning cars. From catalytic convertors through carbon sequestration we keep piling on new fixes while ignoring the simplest solution, to stop burning fossil fuels in cars. However this choice is driven less by a psychological tendency than by the fact that one makes money by creating a new “solution” to a problem but one makes no money by eliminating the problem.
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I was on a work call the other day when the person running the call and sharing his screen decided he should capture some notes and action points and … opened MS Word to do so. I was briefly dumbstruck. I actually cannot remember the last time I opened Word, other than to read something someone insisted on distributing in that format.
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I logged into Nature using my university credentials, then dug about four clicks deep to find the open data that’s been turned into a paywalled article.
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Here’s another part:
"We recruited 203 participants from people passing by a table in a highly-trafficked area of a large public university in the United States. Six sessions were excluded for procedural or random-assignment protocol violations, yielding a final sample of N =197 participants. We preregistered these exclusions and an analysis plan at OSF | Preregistration.docx. "
So yes, not your typical people from the world, but American university occupants.
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I’ve recently heard that most studies like this are not studies of “human traits”, but American university student traits. This just fits with that perfectly.
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I’d say Word 97 was the best, and everything since then has been mostly bloated versions of the same thing, or worse. Word for DOS mostly sucked and Wordperfect was far better back then. But if you’re still into it, you can still download a legal copy of Word 5.5 from the DOS site.
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As a software developer, I see this all the time. My big thing is to rip out pieces of code whenever possible, but I typically get a huge amount of pushback for this, even when I demonstrate conclusively that the removed pieces are causing a problem and not useful even in a best-case scenario.
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When I first started working for my current employer we had a similar issue, and it went on for years before they finally dealt with it. I remember filling out a survey where I said something like, “you’ve made our laptops so secure they’re even secure from the employees they’re issued to. Can I please have an overhead projector, transparencies, and markers so I have a prayer of getting through a presentation?”
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In software more widely, Microsoft makes things worse by adding stuff nobody wants, needs or will use, and Apple makes things worse by removing stuff quite a lot of people want, need and use.
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Definitely applies to automotive maintenance. Many times I’ve been able to easily fix a car by taking off the malfunctioning part. Currently running a honda civic with vtec disabled, and I’ve replaced multiple EGR valves with blank plates. In the case of the civic, vtec let it make sportscar noises without much improvement in performance (adjusted the valve timing and ignition timing to allow higher RPMs for more ‘vroom’ noise without any actual additional vroom) and the EGR valves slightly improve gas consumption during the few minutes the engine is warming up. Both are delicate assemblies exposed to harsh conditions which translates to massive failure points, and when present but not working make the engine barely run. Removing them lets the engine run normally.
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This is probably my number one reason for quitting most web apps. It seems like every time I find the perfect thing, they add new “features” that interfere with the behavior that interested me in the first place while failing to address problems with existing functionality.
I understand the rationale from the developers’ points of view. I used to judge apps by how frequently they added new features, and I’m sure many people still do. But I have been burned enough to have learned my lesson. I check the changelog (when it is available, at least) to see how stable the feature set has been. If the development model seems to be “moar feetchures!” it’s always a hard pass for me.
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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci
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and replacing it by new “standards” ( and dongles. many many dongles. )
i find optimization passes are a great time for ripping out old code. people generally find the speed ups are a good trade off for the inevitable bugs that come with changing anything.
but, basically, i think people tend to over-identify with the code they write, so rewrites of other people’s code tends to be viewed as a criticism of their work rather than the healthy collaborative process it should be. the corporate world where people are paid and promoted based on the perceived value of their work doesn’t help. ( as opposed to say, the progress of the team. )
sometimes going first – opening your own work up to other people for review, discussion, etc. can help.
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“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” – blaise pascal
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To quote Lotus Cars founder Colin Chapman, “Simplify, then add lightness.”
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I’ve moved from carrying a Swiss Army knife to a single-blade
What I really want is a Swiss Army knife with just a Phillips screwdriver (and no blade).
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