"reorganized"
732 karma · joined October 25, 2011
I mean I'm perfectly aware that language is a descriptive cultural process etc etc but man this bugs the crap out of me for some reason
But even if someone had, I will happily propose that every parent who cares about being a parent is an expert on parenting.
- Complication creep
- Complication-complete
- Complication requests
But yeah, there's a point at which you have to ask where waterfall begins and agile ends in reality it's blurry. Prototyping is essentially in most nontrivial problems, so if you count prototyping as agile then shrug but ultimately it doesn't matter what we call it
We're going to need some evidence for this claim. I feel like nearly 70 years of NASA has something to say about this.
And yeah the adaptation was so, so weak. But it faced the same problem many horror movies do, which is that if you're forced to show the Thing™ it loses all its power.
Ahhhh this makes me so happy. My brother and I, like many, were so obsessed with all the LucasArts adventures, so naturally I mailed them in my idea. I also got a letter back. IIRC it wasn't from a lawyer, but it was definitely a soft "no." There's a chance I still have that letter somewhere.
Man, I am not a "good old days" kind of person but the 80s (well, late 80s early 90s) really were a different time.
So in other words, determinism (or lack thereof) is the hard problem!
This is objectively true. There's an excellent 99PI about exactly this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/
> Thus if you create a system tailored at the average user, then none of your users will be happy.
This is objectively false. Some users will find some frustration or unhappiness with certain things, but remarkably, there are plenty of software UIs that get the job done for just about everyone.
I'm not a Notion booster, and I know there are many other solutions with similar tools/features.
But I'd argue that Notion databases are a very good balance of all of these things. It can be raw CRUD if you want it to be, but it's easy to create custom views that accomplish often exactly what you need.
Not exactly sure what you mean by "looks and works different every time" w.r.t. web apps.
In my experience this is a good example of where the UX details matter significantly. Yes, Airtable exists. But a Notion database row being its own first-class "Page" is a *massive* deal for me. (Again: I'm aware Notion is not the only thing)
If I walk into a city council meeting and start yelling "Why haven't you greened the fish sun???" all I'm doing is wasting everyone's time, and yet I can then say "Hey, I'm just asking questions! They won't answer my questions!" as though I'm some kind of victim and the city council is some kind of mysterious evil cabal.
Similarly, the phrase "Do your research" is designed to signal that I'm the smart one, the one in the know, the one who knows what's REALLY going on, even though I know nothing about x, y or z.
Even more relevant now with LLMs (not that they're an "intelligent species." But a lot of people seem to think they are)
Hackers by and large don't want opinionated, because they're willing to spend the time configuring & customizing AND have the knowledge to do so.
Just about everyone else (as far as I can tell) very specifically do not want this, and for those who do, the amount of customizeability e.g. MacOS offers is enough. Having an immediately-useable computer (recent problems notwithstanding) is of much greater value.
So when you say "The main problem is that Apple wants to be opinionated" I can only conclude that you're coming at this from the 'hacker' POV. But I may be misunderstanding your comment.
I suspect in order for this to be true we'd need a PR campaign that can shift culture on the scale of civil rights.
I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or deride Linux or anything—I agree that technologically it's probably ready. Overall UX I'm slightly skeptical. But the far bigger problem is culture.
There's already been a shift away from "PCs" among younger people. The majority of my kids friends have never touched a "regular computer." I've heard an unsettling number of reports of new hires who have never heard of a spreadsheet.
I'm bringing this up because if kids aren't using PCs as much in the first place and quite literally don't know what an operating system is (and please challenge this assumption; I'm going off of anecdata) it's going to be even harder to try to create cultural awareness and acceptance of linux.
But even disregarding that there would need to be a massive, massive coordinated campaign to create a real culture shift. I'm talking superbowl ads.
Again, not trying to be pessimistic, I'm trying to say that "ready for prime time" at this point has little to do with engineering or even design and far more to do with PR. Once I started launching my own products I quickly discovered (as everyone does) that making the thing is like 5% of the job and the remaining 95% is marketing.
In a way it's anthropologically (and linguistically) interesting that such a bigram can gain this kind of status as a result of marketing, essentially. Probably having 'gold' in there helps. Maybe the app could have optional modes for completely new magic numbers:
- The Platinum Proportion - The Gilded Fraction - The Silver Symmetry - The Coveted Correspondence
It's rentable at the usual places. I might check it out.
The only time I've ever experienced made-up directions were trying to get out of the souk in Marrakech.