Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'
theregister.com
theregister.com
To Microsoft’s credit, they’ve made it incredibly easy for me, a .NET developer, to not have to use Windows any more. So I am, admittedly, grateful for that.
The 2021 .NET ecosystem (post .NET Core transition) is a _very_ different beast.
It now works better without the donkey IMHO.
EDIT: In fact I wish they'd just shoot the damn donkey and focus more on the laser cannon.
The donkey still is important for legacy runtimes, which probably have many decades of lifespan left.
Yep you're quite right, and actually the fast-moving, high-churn transition to .NET Core has been tough on devs still working with (now) "legacy" .NET Framework apps - which as you say, will have many years of lifespan remaining if they still fit the purpose for which they were built.
I don't envy those devs (and I do still have some legacy Framework stuff that I provide support for - but not for too much longer thankfully).
There's an entire universe of enterprise stuff that hasn't caught up, or relies on features that have been dropped from future dotnet Core/5/6+ support.
1) What OS/IDE combination do you use?
2) Is there any reason you've not switched to other languages that are most commonly found in non-windows environments?
3) How is the tooling around .NET diagnostics and memory profiling on the OS you use?
1) Linux and jetbrains rider
2) 30k sloc heavily v&v'd code? Why? The cost and effort would be insane, and, to MS' credit, the current .NET ecosystem is great.
3) First class citizen. Rider (and the other jetbrains stuff) is as good as any other I've used
In my eyes, as someone who has been exclusively a Linux user since 1998, I now include C# in serious consideration for greenfield projects as well as legacy.
Even Microsoft's own Visual Studio for Mac is getting better - but has a long way to go to match Rider.
C# is a lovely language.
It also has quite a big standard library while not being 10 years behind everything like Java is.
It also has quite good performance (speaking in a web development context) compared to other popular choices like Ruby and Python.
I've personally only switched away from using C# in my free time because I was already writing C# during my day job, and that doesn't feel good (or look good on a CV).
1. Any popular Linux distro (or macOS) and JetBrains' Rider
2. They are probably a .NET developer for their job.
3. JetBrains' tools, like dotTrace Profiler, work really well
(And yes it's macOS, and increasingly Linux (but not yet exclusively) for prod servers)
Wouldn't Power Users be regular users of things like keyboard shortcuts, AutoHotKey scripts, etc...?
For example, 99% of my time is spent in seven or eight applications and use the Win-# key to jump between them. Win-1 is file explorer, Win-2 is web browser, Win-3 is email, etc...
For lesser used things I hit the Win key and start typing the name of the thing I want and then hit enter as soon as it's highlighted. The organization or size of the Start menu is not important.
The only feature I use that I would lose is small task bar icons, but that isn't exactly a showstopper for me.
If the list is what Windows' most loyal users are complaining about, Microsoft must be doing a good job. If anything, I think these changes will affect more casual users who spend a lot of time inside the start menu.
Given the long list of stuff they are changing, there’s a high probability that everyone will come out with at least one annoyance. For me it is the impossibility of showing all the icons in the notification area: it’s a small thing, but I can’t stand having them collapsed.
Is this something you set up natively in windows? Or are you using AHK?
If you order the programs that way on your task bar, then you can access them with these shortcuts.
This has been Microsoft's predicament since probably 2000.
You can still keep the OS looking fresh and up-to-date without completely reengineering the UI with every OS generation.
Especially as this "complete reengineering" was so so so much worse each time, with additional "new" layers of (incomplete) UI being added on top of legacy UI that would inexplicably still be there. Simply the worst of all worlds.
I'm a big fan of the old Windows 2000 era UI (which partly, amazingly, still exists today), but I have no desire for it to stay around if they can just come up with something fully cohesive and all-encompassing to *fully* replace it with.
Don't encourage them by starting debates over "features." The start menu should damn near read my mind and get out of the way after serving my needs without requiring that I squint at the screen.
Windows 7 was absolute perfection and then it went downhill after that (lightening fast, typing a character or two presented exactly what I needed every time). They have even broken this core feature several times in Windows 10 by cramming in complexity.
they still don’t want to pick between their UI. Using the new unfinished UI content to navigate to the old one is just stupid.
I loathed that I was getting app suggestions and ads, and there was a greater loss of control over the operating system.
Switched to Fedora latest, haven't looked back.
While it is certainly loathsome, that's not a new feature in Windows 11.
I've read that 11 will actually fix and unify a lot of those disjointed things left in the OS too.
But that's what I mean. 10 is unfinished. They could do those things in 10.
The problem is that Windows is also used by many businesses, network admins, and tech enthusiasts too.
These users are in conflict.
What Microsoft should be doing in my opinion is using its Windows Home and Windows Professional packages to divide the complexity. Windows Home users can have the simplified experience, and Windows Pro users can have the full power. Wouldn't that make everybody happy?
If this is their motivation they have no clue. What messes the most with normal users is changing familiar functions and metaphors. The cost of adapting to changing UI for normal users is much higher than sticking to an older, even less-optimal, one. Sometimes this even causes a loss of function for that user as they give up on trying to relearn e.g. how to make text bold for nth time.
That's a really good point and I agree with your solution. I doubt Microsoft would want to do the work involved in creating essentially two versions of Windows, though.
However, I don't recall the user interfaces being fundamentally different between those versions. And that's what they'd need now if they wanted a smartphonified desktop OS for the "average home user" (whatever that means) and the now over 25-year old interface for professionals.
Just exactly how braindead do you have to be to "take inspiration from smartphones" when deveping a PC-centric OS?
As it's all going, it seems like we are going to have smartphone-like PCs a lot sooner than PC-like smartphones.
Anyhow, good thing I am on Linux.
Of course that's all moot now since they've given up on phones.
> Of course that's all moot now since they've given up on phones.
What I rather had in mind was not the interface, but some other things which are "normal" to have on phones: forced updates, impossible to aquire root rights with factory OS, pre-installed shit apps, ads (like on factory-fresh Xiomi, out of the box). So when I saw "ads" and I know the updates are forced, that's where I meant PCs are becoming more like smartphones.
That smartphones are unlikely to become more like PCs is an issue of hardware.
Windows 11 is a continuation of an existing product and meant to replace it. Regressions (real or imagined) will get lamentations because, well, they're regressions.
- This group is why Windows had a trash terminal that didn't even have a right click menu until recently.
- This group is why Windows Explorer is identical to how it was almost 2 decades ago, with the same terrible search and still things like choking when it encounters a folder of MP3s and still unable to handle folders with 1000+ items without choking and loading in new sets every few pages of scroll.
- This group is why resizing windows still has glitching and tearing.
- This group is why most of the admin and system tools are still designed for 800zx600 screens and why device manager flickers and completely redraws just to add 1 item to the tree display.
Stop listening to this group, Apple and Linux have been able to forge ahead and build modern powerful interfaces that actually utilize the hardware properly because they've been able to ignore the screams every time something that is 20 years old changed.