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Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates Meet for the First Time Ever (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds have apparently never met in person before, despite their pseudo-rivalry.

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[–] 21 points 1 year ago (30 children)

Big tech designing their products to be overly simple is one of the driving forces behind the average user having poor patience and aptitude for tech.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Do you hunt for all of your food and cook it from absolute scratch?

    I bet you sometimes use a grocery store.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    What are you even talking about? You're trying to make an analogy here but it's a really poor one.

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  • [+] -12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It's actually the perfect analogy, you just can't see it because you're stuck in the bubble.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You're right, it's not a bad analogy, you're just failing to make a cogent point. Even though you're trolling, I'll bite:

    "Using a grocery store" encompasses everything from buying fresh ingredients and cooking your meal (assembling a computer from parts, customizing it to your liking) to buying entrees and sides you like at the deli (ordering a custom build with parts you picked, letting someone else do the legwork) to buying whatever TV dinners are on special in the freezer aisle (walking into a Best Buy or Apple Store and buying anything with a screen, because you need a computer and don't care about the details)

    "Hunting for all of your food and cooking it from absolute scratch" would be what, writing all your own software? Fabricating your own CPU from silicon? Obviously vanishingly few people are doing that, though there certainly are people with electronics knowledge going more granular than slotting parts into an ATX motherboard. But that's not what myself (or anyone in this thread from what I can tell) is advocating people do. If you think it is, you grossly misunderstand FOSS. I'm genuinely curious what you think I'm getting at by saying some things are overly simple.

    What I'm frustrated with, to use your analogy, are the companies making TV dinners who don't even include the microwave wattage in their vague instructions on the box. And subsequently, the customers buying them, turning an already mediocre product into a disastrous result, and trashing the company on social media. Then reaching out to the manufacturer only to be told they just need to buy a new microwave. Sometimes the customer doesn't even bother to read and puts the TV dinner in the oven instead, then gets mad when their kitchen fills with smoke and their dinner is inedible because of the melted plastic.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    It is the perfect analogy, because you are a techy, not a survival hunter.

    You buying at a grocery store is out of convenience, the alternative is learning how to hunt like a survival hunter.

    Just like how the average user wants the convenience of easy to use software, because they don't want to learn the alternative like you.

    If everyone was like you, then easy to use software wouldn't be selling so much.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    You buying at a grocery store is out of convenience, the alternative is learning how to hunt like a survival hunter.

    At some point that was an alternative, but today the natural ecosystems have been so encroached upon by human civilization that we can't just decide to become survival hunters - we'd simply starve. Grocery stores are all you have if you're living in a high-rise apartment in most cities, for example. Most suburbs can't support enough wildlife to then be hunted for survival by the humans living there.

    Vegetable gardens might be a better analogy than survival hunting. There are even some initiatives being taken to break the cycle of dependency that grocery stores encourage, which I suspect is what @subignition@fedia.io is getting at: collective effort is needed beyond just letting the techies do their thing in their own corner, otherwise we all suffer. Everyone needs to move beyond their comfort zone at some point, for some amount of time - be it the techies teaching others, or the others learning a bit more about how their tools work.

    the average user wants the convenience of easy to use software, because they don’t want to learn the alternative [...] If everyone was like you, then easy to use software wouldn’t be selling so much.

    I can't tell if you are simply stating how the world currently is or claiming that it is destined to always be that way, but in either case I don't see how "people prefer convenience" is a good argument against trying to help them get over that preference. I don't think convenience is nor should be the end-all-be-all of existence, in fact it can be actively detrimental to life when prioritized.

    Unless I'm mistaken, the average user wanted asbestos in their walls, lead in their paint, and asked their doctor for menthol cigarettes instead of regular ones when said doctor was prescribing them for stress. The average user in the USA couldn't tell that their milk was full of pus and mixed with chalk to the point it was killing their babies, all for the convenience of still owners and milk producers. Their society had built up so much around the convenience of drinking milk in places that couldn't produce it locally, that it took an Act of Congress as well as the development of technology to safely transport milk long distances before the convenience stopped killing people.

    Don't get me wrong, convenience is great when it doesn't come at the expense of our well-being - in those cases it tends to dramatically improve our well-being. I tend to agree with @subignition@fedia.io that currently the software market is overly delivering convenience to the point that it is negatively affecting our collective well-being - with regards to software, at the very least.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    If you think big tech doesnt cut corners and offloads the work to the users you are in a bubble; there's software that is secure, performant, pretty, doesn't break on its own, and doesn't have an obsolescency clock ticking inside. Oh, and doesn't spy on you dismantling society by the minute.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    That has to be one of the most out of touch takes I've seen in a while. You're basically saying that things should be intentionally more complicated, and you expect the result to be people just power through and getting used to things being that way, instead of just stopping.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    To add to subignition's point, there is a value in learning useful software. More complicated software means that there is a learning curve - so while you are less productive while learning how to use it, once you gain more experience, you ultimately become more productive. On the other hand, if you want the software to be useful to everyone regardless of his level of experience, you ultimately have to eliminate more complex functionality that makes the software more useful.

    Software is increasingly being distilled down to more and more basic elements, and ultimately, I think that means that people are able to get less done with them these days. This is just my opinion, but in general I have seen computer literacy dropping and people's productivity likewise decreasing, at least from what I've observed from the 1990s up until today. Especially at work, the Linux users that I see are much more knowledgeable and productive than Apple users.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    ...No. I am saying that too much abstraction of how something actually works is detrimental to the end user. It's not about making things intentionally more complicated, it's about removing the need to understand key components of something ultimately causing more harm than good.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Barf. Or maybe, just maybe, we have other shit to do rather than spend hours trying to figure out how to do one thing in Gimp. It's great that YOU'RE passionate about tech. Some of us have other hobbies. Imagine that holy shit

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Buddy, if I open Photoshop it's gonna take me hours to learn how to do one thing too, what a horrible example lmao. There's like so many easy slam dunks you could've said too.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    Agreed. People just think the first tool that they learned is the easiest to use. I've been a longtime Gimp user and find it pretty easy to do what I want.* The few times someone asked me to do something in Photoshop, I was pretty helpless. Of course, I'm a pretty basic user - I wouldn't dispute that Photoshop is more powerful, but which one is easier to use is very subjective and the vast majority of the time, it just boils down to which one you use more often.

    I've seen the same with people who grew up on Libreoffice and then started smashing their computer when they were asked to use MSOffice.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    If you think Photoshop has anywhere near the learning curve that is GIMP then I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do to convince you and this conversation is dead in the water. If something free was on par even slightly with Photoshop, then a whole industry would have shifted over to avoid the burden of costs. There's a reason the potato shop UI hasn't changed in 20 years.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Also, I never mentioned Photoshop. Open any standard drawing app that was developed recently: Procreate, Infinite Paint, Krita, Fresco. Look how straightforward it is to start working. Look at the Ui. It doesn't get in the way.

    Edit: oh no the FOSS evangelists are not feeling it. I get it. I use a lot of FOSS apps for work. That doesn't mean we have to be evangelical in our defense of FOSS. Recognize there are issues and we can work to fix them. Don't get so defensive, Lemmy. My god.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    You should not expect to use a tool (edit: competently) without spending time learning how to use it. Photoshop has a learning curve too, even if it's an easier one.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    But, also, who thinks Photoshop is easier‽

    As someone who'd learned Photoshop and, eventually, learned GIMP (just because it was easier to run after eventually switching to Linux), trying to argue that Photoshop has an industry stranglehold because it – apparently – is just so much more intuitive than GIMP is absolutely wild. No one I knew learning Photoshop was finding that the UI or layout just magically clicked (or even swiftly got less impenetrable, as time went on).

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Yes, as an artist I will choose the path of least resistance. Open any new drawing app today: Procreate, Infinite Paint, Krita, Fresco and look how clean and easy it is to get right to the point and start working. Now open GIMP and pull my eyelashes out already. The tool should not get in the way of the task. I'm with Steve Jobs on this, sorry. Computers are means to an end. For some they can be hobbies. Linux exists. Have fun.

    Edit: oh no! The FOSS evangelists are not feeling it. I get it. I use a lot of FOSS apps for work. That doesn't mean we have to be evangelical in our defense of FOSS. Recognize there are issues and we can work to fix them. Don't get so defensive, Lemmy. My god.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That really nails it, I think. Tech is a hobby for some, a means to an end for the vast majority.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Yeah, it's very obvious that some of the people responding here don't interact much with non-tech people, and they have DEFINITELY never worked IT.

    Most people aren't interested in learning the more intricate things. And if you try to force them, they're not going to get more interested as they learn, because they literally are not interested in tech. They want to accomplish a task, if that takes a bunch of learning just for one thing, they'll go a different route, or pay someone else to do it for them.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Surely we should cater to those who prioritize convenience, especially at work.

    Most of the problem with regular people learning new tech, is that we (tech people, IT people, etc.) Are fucking awful at teaching people things. We throw out way too much way too quick, and the most key thing is that apparently tech people don't know how to listen or have a conversation.

    Regular people don't hate learning tech, they hate they peolle who teach them. Be better and stop judging people, you aren't as clever as you think.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Keep in mind this status quo is already the result of decades of oversimplification. I am not saying everyone needs to compile the Linux kernel in order to have a computer. I'm saying you should have a basic level of familiarity with the computer you're using, same as any other tool.

    You should know how to check and top up your engine oil, change a tire in an emergency, etc, if you're going to own a car. You should know how to safely handle, operate, store, transport, and clean your firearm if you're going to own a gun. You should know how to empty the chamber or bag, clean the filters correctly, what not to suck up and how to troubleshoot if you do, if you're going to own a vacuum. You should know how to operate it, when and how it should be cleaned, and what not to do while it's running, if you're going to own an electric range. You should know the difference between a web browser and your computer's filesystem, the difference between RAM and storage, and that you can Internet search most errors to judge whether you're comfortable trying to fix them yourself or not, if you're going to own a computer.

    There will ALWAYS be a point where it's more worth paying someone else instead of learning something yourself. But it's about the cost-benefit analysis, and the threshold for what's considered "intricate" is a depressingly low bar where computers are concerned. As I'm sure you are well aware.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    you should have a basic level of familiarity with the computer you’re using, same as any other tool

    Obviously not, they can use it without that understanding just fine for whatever they want to do. That is enough understanding for them. If their computer explodes, they just buy an other one.

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