There are a number of comments here where people open up about their contrasting experiences of not being a part of a programming community. Those are well addressed, I think, but there is another point to consider.
We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think the users deserve consideration nonetheless.
Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. This is on top of all of the problems that existed before LLMs, like human error and perverse financial incentives. Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people. Real people. Harm is caused in both big and little ways to living, breathing actual people. This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with. The devs, the users, the investors, everyone. Those harms may happen at different times and in different ways and the creeping nature of it all might make it easier to ignore, but it’s happening.
“AI” is a blight. You can leave me behind as well.
So do we want to acknowledge that interest in this is probably driven by the desire to abusively scrape the web for LLM training data? I wouldn’t be surprised if the motivation is focused around bypassing the anti-bot restrictions of Reddit alone.
You'll notice I didn't recommend search, or actually anything, as a solution to the problems I mentioned. I think these issues need more research and experimentation before we can arrive at better long term solutions. Also I didn't advocate for hiding things. Instead I think we agree with the idea that less things should be hidden, and the majority of the issues I have with Windows (and macOS/iOS) user interface elements is that they don't do a good enough job of surfacing the things I'm trying to find.
The "Fisher-Price'ing" [1] of the user interface isn't necessarily better in my view. It took the already big and colorful user interface elements and essentially made them bigger. When the video finally gets past the installer there isn't much that wasn't already a part of XP beyond the added, slow UI animations (which is definitely not an improvement, just look at most UI research and anecdotal griping on the web for the last 15 years).
Yearning for XP is something I can relate to. It feels like the last good UI version of Windows. The video is only a nostalgia trip though. Actual improvements on XP's UI would be:
- Removing the hierarchy and modes Microsoft kept piling on since 3.1. These are endemic in the shell. Both the Start menu and Windows Explorer are rife with them.
- Organizing the Control Panel such that it's thematically grouped. All settings involving the display (and thus graphics sub-system) are in a single place, all networking is controlled in one place, etc.
- Reducing the number and complexity of mouse interactions. Context menus should only be needed for the most exceptional cases. Right clicking to accomplish a task should be rare.
- Near elimination of dialogs. Users mostly dismiss them without reading anyway.
- Reduce, to the degree possible, the need to understand the file system, and its hierarchy, to find one's data and make basic use of the system. Watching people try to understand files and the file system hierarchy is pretty painful.
- Reduce the need to manage individual windows, and introduce a way to intelligently place windows across programs such that the user can juxtapose the applications they need to copy/paste between to get work done with minimal effort.
These are just what's top of mind, and I don't fault the creator of the video for making a tribute to XP. I'll add that a lot of these complaints apply to macOS, but often to a lesser degree. Perhaps I'm the old man yelling at the cloud here [2], but this stuff has been eating away at me for years and there doesn't seem to exist the will to address any of it.
Here's hoping I don't have weird taste in games...
A massively multiplayer RTS that is essentially a combination of Factorio [1], Rust [2] (the game), Planetary Annihilation [3], and Z [4].
Thematically what I've wanted is the persistent nature of Rust, with the logistic focus of Factorio, the scale of Planetary Annihilation, and a dash of the absurdity of Z (which I haven't played in a very long time so I might be off a bit there). Controlling units, managing supply lines, planning complex offensives, setting up a defensive posture for when you're offline, creating one or more bases to supply yourself, researching technology to increase capabilities, and a very open system for cooperation (or not) are aspects of games that I have yet to see combined. I am for sure leaving out quite a bit here, but if I had all the time and money in the world I'd throw this all together as a weird experiment and see what happened.
We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think the users deserve consideration nonetheless.
Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. This is on top of all of the problems that existed before LLMs, like human error and perverse financial incentives. Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people. Real people. Harm is caused in both big and little ways to living, breathing actual people. This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with. The devs, the users, the investors, everyone. Those harms may happen at different times and in different ways and the creeping nature of it all might make it easier to ignore, but it’s happening.
“AI” is a blight. You can leave me behind as well.