Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

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> When I see someone who claims not to like when software gets frequent updates, I ask myself: "Do you even like software? I thought new functionality was supposed to be exciting!"

Taking away a much loved feature is exciting? Losing more and more control over your own computer, over things you paid for, is exciting? Waiting an hour for your PS4 to install mandatory updates because you haven't turned it on in a few months is exciting?

Good god this is such a naive opinion. I suppose you think all change is good? Even if the people implementing them are greedy assholes in search of ego strokes or power trips?

What if I changed the balance of your checking account to $0? Would that be an exciting change?

For every update that delivers on its exciting new promise, there are four others that have made the life of its developers easier at the cost of their users.

Developers are the ones getting paid beaucorp bucks here, making their life easier should not be a higher priority than supporting things that users want.

Speaking as a developer and lifelong computer nerd of 30+ years.

Interesting example because the PS4 can update games automatically in rest mode while you sleep. It’s so much better than downloading patches manually like we used to do over our dial up connections.

I don’t think all change is good. I just think the anti-updates crowd are minimizing the good and maximizing the bad. Most software updates in our life are so seamless and uneventful that we might as well forget they exist.

You don’t remember the 20 times Starbucks made you a perfect cup of coffee, you remember the one time they messed up.

I think developers and lifelong computer needs like us completely forget that the regular person doesn’t give a shit about any of this. They just want it to work, and they like getting new stuff.

Seamless updating for most things is a relatively recent development. And yes, I notice it all the time, it's annoying as hell. Again, only occasionally do said updates actually improve anything. If we're lucky it will be as good as before. But often we're not, and something is lost.

(And rest mode or no, whenever I turn on my PS4 -- every couple of months -- there's always a stack of updates to deal with. And it always takes forever)

And Starbucks has never made me a perfect cup of coffee. Their beans are perpetually burnt and their process sucks. Back when I was a customer of theirs I had make my order so complicated it's frequently the butt of jokes. In all their haste to serve me and a thousand others every hour, they've stripped coffee down to the barest of essence, robbing it of any character that might have saved it.

Perhaps you've never known what it is like to truly master something, only to have it ripped out of your hands because reasons. I truly hate not having control over my software.

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