To much bull$hit, not enough substance

Published on February 9, 2004 By Maultar1 In Misc

I've been in the IT Profession a LOT of years --- since the early 80's when I was a schoolkid making programs to help my teacher sort out her grade books. First on the Vic-20 and C64, then on to the Amigas and IBM's. And I have NEVER seen a time when the IT industry was THIS boring. There's NOTHING new anymore. Everything we have going on now is derived from everything ELSE that we did back then.

And I'm sick to fucking death of it.

Windows XP. The "brilliant hallmark of Windows development". Gimmie a fuckin' break. XP is three, almost four years old already. And XP is simply what the brainiacs at Big Mother One (Microsoft) had come up with ten years earlier. And because of that, the entire OS is riddled with security and function issues that nearly make me want to choke the life out of my PC. What XP does, it does well most of the time. But the things it SHOULD do, it dosen't. It's basically as stupid and incapable as Windows 95 with some anti-crash features and window dressing.

I'm bored, ladies and gentlemen. I'm bored at what seems to be a stalled-out development cycle. We've seen NOTHING new in the past 3 years. And the current state of development regarding Object Desktop products seems to annoy me to no end -- not because the folks there don't work hard (which they DO ), but because of the lack of ANY innovation in regards to new things. "DesktopX 2 has scripting now" --- BIG FUCKING DEAL. The average person can NOT (and WILL NOT) learn DXScript. Who has the FUCKING TIME ?!! Not me, and not many other people.

Make something people can actually use in EVERYDAY computing. Not something that's being used as a test bed for upcoming Microsoft technologies (you think I didn't notice ?! ). Rather than dumping features upon features (which in of THEMSELVES are too complicated most of the time) and confusing the situation MORE, how about simply MAKING THE FUCKING SOFTWARE USEABLE ?! Not something that the programmers and developers and maybe MAYBE 1/25th of PC users can understand -- but ANYONE who uses a PC.

This is 2004. Two-thousand FOUR. You think we could maybe, possibly make products that everyday people can UNDERSTAND ?!

End Rant.

Comments

PoetPhilosopher

on Feb 09, 2004

Not everything is derivative. The gold is in the application. Yeah sure, WiFi is just radio - hell Guillermo Marconi should have invented/discovered it, right ? If it's boring, you don't get out much, or you are not keeping up with the cutting edge. I can give you a list of reading materials if you'd like

Are you doing software development in .NET ? Did you develop software on the microsoft platform before .NET ? Are you doing J2EE development ? Do you remember the days before XML hit the scene ? Makefiles ? Perl anyone ? DLL hell ?

Did you miss P2P ? Are you ready for distributed grid computing ? Are you in touch with the buzz over WinFS ?

That was just off the top of my head. Sorry if there is not enough depth.

I am sitting on my couch, streaming internet radio from... essentially "nowhere", writing to a group of people distributed around all points of the globe. At any point I can take a break and look at headlines that are 15 minutes old, not to mention seeing the 10 day forecast for any of 867 US cities in 10 seconds. Remember when people actually watched the six oclock news?? Hmmm. No substance?

>>> Make something people can actually use in EVERYDAY computing.

What a hillarious oxymoron. When computing becomes so ubiquitous to be "everyday" you won't even recognize it as computing. In fact it already exists: in your microwave, cell phone, and PS2. And if you can't understand computers, perhaps those are the devices you should stick to.

JeremyG

on Feb 09, 2004

all that time with computers seems to have built up alot of anger.

I assue you that the human race is doing all they can to advance technologically. These things take time though.

Dan Kaschel

on Feb 09, 2004

You can be harsh sometimes, Poet.

I think there is some really cool new stuff. But aside from that, I think the question is not "why are computers not suited to the average user," but "why isn't the average user getting a clue?" Honestly, we live in the year two thousand and FOUR. Take the time to figure out these hunks of wire and silicon are.

~Dan

Mackintosh

on Feb 09, 2004

Ouch, lots of anger there, but I do agree with your with regards to DesktopX. I've been a Stardock customer for a long time now, but as hard as I try, I can't find any good use for DX, considering how much development seems to go into it, I can't help but think it could be diverted to some other project.

PoetPhilosopher

on Feb 09, 2004

>>>> I assue you that the human race is doing all they can to advance technologically. These things take time though.

ROFLMFAO (did I get that right?)

I hear the booping and the beeping, and picture you coming out from between these refridgerator sized boxes with a white lab jacket and clipboard and saying that.

PS I don't know what object desktop is but the desktop is DEAD technology-wize so I agree with you on that. Let's let the artists pretty it up while we move on to more interesting stuff.

I had a C64 too. Remember printing out the horizontal lines and making the screen full of waves. Oh that brings back memories.

Maultar1

on Feb 10, 2004

I'm not saying that DX or anything is BAD --- just that it's too hard for most people to figure out right off the bat like most other PC Software. I can't make a WindowBlinds skin to save my own life (to give an example) because SkinStudio is too cumbersome for me to make much of anything work properly.

We need a set of clear-cut standards. Not necessarily dumb things down, but do more with less. And easier.

holy moly

on Mar 18, 2006

greetings from 2006! and no things are better now for new user. i'm quick learner and smart with figuring out these things, but i think that we live in time where all gotta be easy and fast so basically we use desktop x to create very cool and easy/fast workflow tuning desktops but tools to make these things actually need this thing themselves - lol.

bakerstreet

on Mar 18, 2006

... sigh... and I fell for it...

never mind this post. I don't want to support the work of necromancers...

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