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And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

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ajkula66
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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#61 Post by ajkula66 » Wed Aug 16, 2017 8:13 am

dr_st wrote:
Wed Aug 16, 2017 3:12 am
XP-to-Vista was probably the biggest breakage point
I know of quite a few corporations that went straight from XP to W7, completely bypassing Vista like it had never even existed. Can't say what the exact reason for this decision was, though.

My best guess is also that the amount of various "small and obscure" pieces of software that is being heavily relied upon years after it should have been replaced/re-written/whatever, is significant. Do I have the actual data? Absolutely not. I'm not sure that anyone does. But they're definitely out there and, IME, tend to be used industry-wide in more than one case. That's where my original "ton" remark comes from.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

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One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#62 Post by RealBlackStuff » Wed Aug 16, 2017 8:47 am

In the 'olden' days I loved programming in Assembler, Cobol, PL/1, etc. using IBM and Unisys Mainframes.
Those programs lasted forever and a day, and could easily be ported from one computer to another, or from one OS to another.
And I bet several of those are still running!
Try that today...

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#63 Post by Thinkpad4by3 » Wed Aug 16, 2017 9:00 am

RealBlackStuff wrote:In the 'olden' days I loved programming in Assembler, Cobol, PL/1, etc. using IBM and Unisys Mainframes.
Those programs lasted forever and a day, and could easily be ported from one computer to another, or from one OS to another.
And I bet several of those are still running!
Try that today...
Java: Hold on, JVM crashed. Now Ill go install the new update. Ok, now a system security update......

Assembler: run.... :D


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The efficiency of two screens equally sized with equal numbers if pixels are equal. The time spent by a 4:3 user complaining about 16:9 is proportional to the inefficiency working with a 16:9 display, therefore the amount of useful work extracted is equal.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#64 Post by hellosailor » Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:33 pm

Sometimes it is something SO trivial that you'd never find it without hours examining both machines (new & old). Like, the software requires dot net 2.5 to run, and the new machine only has 4.x installed on it. And the updates don't roll-up everything cumulatively you need the old one there. Little nonsense, where an error code should say "requires blah blah not found" but instead, some programming left it for their descendants to fill in those details.

Infuriating.

On my planet, the users had enough of sloppy programming. One night they all turned out with pitchforks and torches and slaughtered the programmers en masse. Stuck their heads on pikes and streetlamp poles, left their bodies for the rats and buzzards.

When the few survivors were found and dragged out of hiding, they become much more careful about programming. Eventually they became a respected and trusted profession again.

Just goes to show that rock-solid programming CAN be done, if you motivate the programmers.
"The only good silicon life form, is a dead silicon life form." [Will Rogers]
-- Harboring a retired T61P with Vista/U/32 and housebreaking a younger W530 foolishly upgraded from Win7/64 to Win10.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#65 Post by coolcat37 » Thu Aug 17, 2017 6:37 pm

hellosailor wrote:
Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:33 pm
One night they all turned out with pitchforks and torches and slaughtered the programmers en masse. Stuck their heads on pikes and streetlamp poles, left their bodies for the rats and buzzards.
Thoughtcrime.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#66 Post by Thinkpad4by3 » Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:08 pm

hellosailor wrote:Sometimes it is something SO trivial that you'd never find it without hours examining both machines (new & old). Like, the software requires dot net 2.5 to run, and the new machine only has 4.x installed on it. And the updates don't roll-up everything cumulatively you need the old one there. Little nonsense, where an error code should say "requires blah blah not found" but instead, some programming left it for their descendants to fill in those details.

Infuriating.

On my planet, the users had enough of sloppy programming. One night they all turned out with pitchforks and torches and slaughtered the programmers en masse. Stuck their heads on pikes and streetlamp poles, left their bodies for the rats and buzzards.

When the few survivors were found and dragged out of hiding, they become much more careful about programming. Eventually they became a respected and trusted profession again.

Just goes to show that rock-solid programming CAN be done, if you motivate the programmers.
Hey, don't get the imaginary bloodshed all over my Thinkpads. Basically, the computerized version of the housing recession of 2007, quite accurate.
Thinkpad4by3's Law of the Universe.

The efficiency of two screens equally sized with equal numbers if pixels are equal. The time spent by a 4:3 user complaining about 16:9 is proportional to the inefficiency working with a 16:9 display, therefore the amount of useful work extracted is equal.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#67 Post by hellosailor » Fri Aug 18, 2017 3:18 pm

"Thoughtcrime."
Yes, like pretending Belgian Chocolate is better than a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar. Or that Belgian brewers have been able to make anything superior to Budweiser.(VBG)

Sometimes, putting the correct heads on pikes is rewarded with the Legion of Merit, The King's Cross, and an OBE. Among a raft of other honors. it works out well for everyone.

Now, go have your Hershey bar and Budweiser, the vox populi heartily endorses both of them.

Which is why the American founding fathers were quit specific, in that only 20% of the citizens were EVER supposed to be able to cast a vote in how things were run.

There is no excuse for bad programming. Not after all these years.
"The only good silicon life form, is a dead silicon life form." [Will Rogers]
-- Harboring a retired T61P with Vista/U/32 and housebreaking a younger W530 foolishly upgraded from Win7/64 to Win10.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#68 Post by dr_st » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:19 am

hellosailor wrote:
Fri Aug 18, 2017 3:18 pm
Yes, like pretending Belgian Chocolate is better than a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar. Or that Belgian brewers have been able to make anything superior to Budweiser.(VBG)
Well, I never tried Budweiser, but Hershey's Milk Chocolate is clearly the most repulsive chocolate I've ever had to stomach. Surprisingly, their dark one is rather good.
hellosailor wrote:
Fri Aug 18, 2017 3:18 pm
There is no excuse for bad programming. Not after all these years.
That's like saying there's no excuse to stupidity. Not after all these years. Despite hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, people are still born ignorant with with varying degrees of intellect. The accumulated knowledge about good programming practice is much larger than it was decades ago, but the bar to entry is also much lower, and the amount of code needed is much larger. So you still have and always will have lots of bad code.

But don't be so pessimistic. Here is the text of a talk that Joel Spolsky gave at Yale almost a decade ago:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/12/ ... rt-1-of-3/
The following part really struck home with me and made me think:
You will frequently hear the claim that software engineering is facing a quality crisis of some sort. I don’t happen to agree with that claim—the computer software most people use most of the time is of ridiculously high quality compared to everything else in their lives—but that’s beside the point. This claim about the “quality crisis” leads to a lot of proposals and research about making higher quality software. And at this point, the world divides into the geeks and the suits.
If you think about it a bit, you will find that it's surprisingly true. Compare the quality of mainstream software to that of mainstream clothes, furniture, electronics, building, food, and suddenly the software is not so bad.
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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#69 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sat Aug 19, 2017 8:12 am

dr_st wrote:
Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:19 am
Well, I never tried Budweiser, but Hershey's Milk Chocolate is clearly the most repulsive chocolate I've ever had to stomach.
That (American) Budweiser is equally repulsive!
You'll never want any of that American cat's piss anyway (Bud or Miller, or Michelob, or Coors, or whatever names they come up with).
American Budweiser is the most gadawful junk I have ever come across! And they stole the name as well!
Compare that to one of THE best: the original Czech Budvar/Budweiser.
But then, I'm probably prejudiced with my Real Black Stuff (Guinness)! :mrgreen:

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#70 Post by dr_st » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:00 am

Well, not all American beer is bad. The west coast has a good selection of fine local brews.
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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#71 Post by hellosailor » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:44 am

"That's like saying there's no excuse to stupidity. "
Not at all. What was the line from Forest Gump? Stupid is as stupid does? And mental (or physical) abilities and lack thereof are to a great extent fixed by genetics and the environment, not something that can be actively reviewed and modified. Yet.
As opposed to programming, where there are definite processes and procedures that can be used for quality control and function checks. I think it was between NT5.1 (XP) and Vista (NT6) that MS announced a big change, from assigning programming tasks that used to be "one programmer, one module of code" to a massive internal process shift to "one module, one programing TEAM". I have no idea how that worked out...except the product still isn't polished.
In the shift from solo to teams, the concept is easy and proven. Two pairs of eyes, two minds, two different skill sets, are more likely to see errors and to have at least one person not as tired and likely the be missing or making them. It is the same thing in the publishing world, where a proofreader with "alien eyes" used to be the norm. Someone who has no idea of what they are reading, will catch errors that the author themself will always miss. In fact, sometimes the proofreaders are not native language readers, or they read the pages upside down. In both cases the result is that every letter--not just sentences--becomes a task, and is checked on a higher level.

In the business world, in the programming world, the international standard is not surprisingly ISO9000 and similar. Microsoft and many others do not follow an ISO process, which includes testing, feedback, and continual correction and improvement. And that's really old hat mundane business process, but they choose to ignore it.

Or then again, there are some folks like Rosie O'Donnell, who prove that you can be *belligerently* stupid, not just ignorant or incapable of understanding, but proudly making a real concerted effort to remain uninformed and refuse to learn, even though they are able to. Like the software companies that believe in "ship now, beat the competition to market, we can fix the product later".

That was also, however briefly, part of Microsoft. I don't recall who was replacing who...Myrvold / Balmer, perhaps?...The decision had been made to throw out NT4's spaghetti code and wrote NT5 all new. And Gates pushed for a 2000 release. The head of the program finally said "Lock out whatever isn't ready and doesn't work, the rest SHIPS NOW WE CAN FIX IT LATER". Yes, that was Windows2000 and a year later, after they finished the missing and broken sections, 5.1 shipped as XP. Proving that you can substantially improve programming--if you are willing to take the time to do it. (And gobs of additional feedback and true alpha/beta/gamma testing.)

I have a good friend who was at one time a C programmer. He was about to lose a holiday weekend because he had a stack of code to fix, and no matter how many times he reread the printout, he couldn't find the bug. Hours later...a comma can be critical, and some cheap SOB was pushing the printer ribbons (remember ribbons?) too far. He finally saw the faint incorrect comma. problem solved. Really, there's no excuse for the little stuff like that. It CAN be fixed.
"The only good silicon life form, is a dead silicon life form." [Will Rogers]
-- Harboring a retired T61P with Vista/U/32 and housebreaking a younger W530 foolishly upgraded from Win7/64 to Win10.

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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#72 Post by dr_st » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:12 pm

hellosailor wrote:
Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:44 am
I have no idea how that worked out...except the product still isn't polished.
So you do have an idea how that worked out...
hellosailor wrote:
Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:44 am
In the shift from solo to teams, the concept is easy and proven. Two pairs of eyes, two minds, two different skill sets, are more likely to see errors and to have at least one person not as tired and likely the be missing or making them.
I have plenty of examples from my own work as a developer, where both the coder, and the reviewer missed something ridiculously obvious, even though none of them was tired. No process depending on humans is ever going to be 100% proof. What are you going to do? Put 3? 4 reviewers on each line of code? It's more productive to use 4 of them to develop 4 times as fast, catch whatever can be caught, then ship and fix things later.
hellosailor wrote:
Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:44 am
I have a good friend who was at one time a C programmer. He was about to lose a holiday weekend because he had a stack of code to fix, and no matter how many times he reread the printout, he couldn't find the bug. Hours later...a comma can be critical, and some cheap SOB was pushing the printer ribbons (remember ribbons?) too far. He finally saw the faint incorrect comma. problem solved. Really, there's no excuse for the little stuff like that. It CAN be fixed.
Not sure how this story supports your claim that "there's no excuse for little stuff like that".

Surely, if there really was no excuse, and you could develop 100% bug-free software, at least one company out there would be doing that. Please find me such a wonderful piece of software, if you will.
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Re: And another reason to avoid Micro$haft's W10

#73 Post by hellosailor » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:36 pm

OK, was the old Windows Cardfile (cardfile.exe) program bug-free?

Of course, the 1024 "card" limit was problematic, but many people kept using it until MS effectively killed it, by blocking 8 and 16 bit apps in the new OSes. And of course with bigger programs like dBase or Lotus, you could even report a problem to tech support, and see it corrected in the next round of updates. Heck, I had DEC ship me literally a whole carton of new software after they reluctantly conceded they had a bug in the old stuff and weren't sure how to fix it. But instead of saying "Gee, you're the only person on the planet who ever has noticed that" they reached out and offered a working fix.

As opposed to the Win10 support team, who have documented four support remakes and literally the bulk of four days on the line with me, still unable to fix a problem. Still unable to diagnose it. Still unable to escalate the support to anyone beyond first-level techs, who couldn't spell MSCE much less pronounce it. [sic]

I don't demand perfection, but I do expect the active pursuit of it.

As they said in China when their population reached the first billion: "If you are one in a million, there are a thousand others just like you ready to step up and take your place." Microsoft? Missed the boat on PDAs and smartphones (to PalmOS and Android). Missed the boat that Chromebook took. Eventually, it looks like their code will be so complex it will be unsustainable spaghetti code. Again.

And somewhere out there, someone will be working on a more elegant solution.
"The only good silicon life form, is a dead silicon life form." [Will Rogers]
-- Harboring a retired T61P with Vista/U/32 and housebreaking a younger W530 foolishly upgraded from Win7/64 to Win10.

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