Petition to stop using environment variables to configure fine-grained program behavior. The only thing worse than that is non-configurable programs.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 21:11:42 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ -
0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 21:14:03 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ Fine-grained configuration methods in ascending order of pain for users:
1. GUIs
2. Configuration files
3. Command line options
4. Environment variables -
0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 21:15:46 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ Unless it's for configuring general stuff like number of threads, optional extensions, etc, environment variables are awful. Users need an explicit, highly visible way of understanding and changing configuration. Particularly in today's automated environments.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 21:19:35 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ This is the age of the iPhone, people.
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moved 2 @sikkdays@ourempty.pub (sikkdays@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 21:39:31 UTC moved 2 @sikkdays@ourempty.pub @arturovm Curious about design. It seems the goal of the GUI is ease of use, a universally accepted interface. Is that even possible? I like the color blue, you enjoy black. We're individuals. The only reason we sit in chairs, or drive cars on roads in a certain way is because that is how people did it before us. It seems to be learned behavior.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 22:50:53 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ @sikkdays Yeah, there’s no UI that will universally suit everybody. Can’t remeber which of the Netflix shows on design had an industrial designers saying that by designing for disabled people, they covered the edge cases and automatically made good designs for everybody.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 22:51:14 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ @sikkdays I’ve been wanting to write an essay about this for years.
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LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Sunday, 09-Sep-2018 23:08:32 UTC LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @arturovm Users don't understand configuration, period. None of these methods is understandable to regular users.
This seems to be partly because contemporary GUIs go to a lot of extra effort to hide such things, so when users try to find configuration options, they cannot. And partly because we techpeeps tell people "don't change anything; call tech support instead".0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ likes this. -
moved 2 @sikkdays@ourempty.pub (sikkdays@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 00:05:22 UTC moved 2 @sikkdays@ourempty.pub @arturovm I understand. When the passion is so high it can almost cloud the progress or even sprout anxiety and perfection. I get it.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 03:20:21 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ @lnxw48a1 Yeah, we:
1. Make it easy for people to screw things up
2. Make things hard to understand for technically illiterate people
3. Blame users when things go wrong in the programs they useIt's a chronic problem, and it's cultural I think. We can do better, as the makers of the tech people use.
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0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ (arturovm@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 03:21:59 UTC 0xDEAD — a.k.a. Marlon Rando ✅ @sikkdays Dang. Maybe I should just write it and iterate on it, you know? Stop waiting for perfect.
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Zen (zensaiyuki@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 04:35:53 UTC Zen @arturovm @lnxw48a1 the problem with any configuration is it changes program behavior. that sounds like stating the obvious, but a lot of users can only navigate computers by writing down or memorising sequences of steps. configuring what happens in the sequence somewhere else can be distressing and confusing.
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Zen (zensaiyuki@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 04:36:50 UTC Zen @arturovm @lnxw48a1 i speak to a broad range of skill levels. obviously power users and programmers may or may not have a problem editing a json file to get their work done.
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Zen (zensaiyuki@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 04:38:57 UTC Zen @arturovm @lnxw48a1 but someone whose main job is not “do computers” will get frustrated when a button is grayed out or missing in msword and the program will not explain what’s happening, and the answer is a setting in a panel buried 5 levels deep.
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Zen (zensaiyuki@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 04:40:22 UTC Zen @arturovm @lnxw48a1 which is why “just make it a configuration switch” to settle an argument about how to design a gui is usually a dumb cop out.
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LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 09:50:42 UTC LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @zensaiyuki @arturovm There is truth to that, but there are settings which even support folks don't understand and there are settings which any frequent user of a program will understand. There are programs where there are more settings than people can handle and there are programs where it isn't possible to make it do what you want/need because there's no setting.
The real issue is that we went too far in the direction of too many settings and settings for things that no one understood. As a result, have reacted by hiding all settings, which also frustrates users immensely. (Only now, us support folks can't intervene to make the program more useful.) -
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 09:57:52 UTC LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @zensaiyuki @arturovm
And finally, once you put a setting in one spot, leave it there. Don't move it or hide it, even between versions of your software. Your "UI refresh" is a support person's nightmare.
MSOffice has had the ribbon for years and people at $EMPLOYER are just now starting to figure it out. Yet, these were people that didn't need to call support for every little thing with pre-ribbon versions of the product. -
Zen (zensaiyuki@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Sep-2018 10:52:33 UTC Zen @lnxw48a1 @arturovm do not even get me started on the ribbon. they pat themselves in the back so hard- but all they did was hide stuff to make it look simpler- without actually simplifying
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} repeated this.
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