
Software sucks - AndrewDucker
https://shitpost.plover.com/s/software-sucks-4.html
======
vortico
The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company
is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Fixing a
bug almost never excites users, and even if it did in this case, they won't
see a measurable increase of users of their software, so you can't prove a
profit increase.

Even if a bug is fixed, the effort might be wasted when a large overhaul of
the system happens because they want to add a huge feature, like a new
searching system or some internal backend refactor. Fixing the bug might be
much more difficult than you think due to the scale and complexity of their
database or some other reason. Then the change needs to flow through the
review and testing pipeline.

My point is to explain that software gets harder with scale, which might cause
a bug like this to cost tens of thousands of company dollars to fix, while the
benefit to each user (and therefore the company) would be a tiny fraction of a
cent, so both managers and financially-aware engineers would easily brush this
off as "not worth it." Any argument of the form "why not just fix it?" would
be countered with "you could say that for any of the 40k open bugs."

~~~
mattmanser
This isn't a bug. Recommendations are just hard.

He's trivializing it, but specifically mentions that including one 5.7 miles
away would be fine. And then promptly says because he visited it before.

That's some complicated intelligence and pattern matching that he's asking
for. What exactly should it be ranking by? Proximity and popularity and
traffic density and Google rating and awhole load of other things.

The rules that Google apply obviously work for some scenarios, but not this
one. Could it be better, obviously, but that's not a bug.

~~~
coldtea
> _This isn 't a bug. Recommendations are just hard._

What is hard about ordering a bloody list of places by distance?

> _He 's trivializing it, but specifically mentions that including one 5.7
> miles away would be fine. And then promptly says because he visited it
> before._

Well, they could first add the bloody sorting, then we can think about whether
they should mark or prioritize previously visited places (which itself does
not take any "complicated intelligence and pattern matching" \-- it's just
persisting visited places and consulting their list).

~~~
fjsolwmv
I like you feigned exasperation at the simplicity of it all and then
immediately noticed one of many many complicating factors.

~~~
coldtea
My point is that all the "complicating factors" are still trivial -- each
alone, or put together.

My second point is also that even if they weren't (for some exotic cases) ,
the most common cases and sane defaults, remain trivial -- and anything else
could be relegated to settings and the like.

My third point is also that no matter how easy or hard the complicating
factors, a screen like the one shown by the poster, is an utter failure.

To continue on this 2nd and 3rd point, it's like people are trying to defend
Clippy, the office assistant, by saying that "AI is hard".

It might be, but getting Clippy out of my bloody monitor and not having it
disturb me when I try to compose a Word document, is very easy. MS could
always do that (and that's what they ended up doing).

------
ramenmeal
Unrelated but similar and I feel like venting... On Google Maps you'll search
for something, and the results are shown as a list that almost covers the
entire map. It's Google MAPS and it hides the map for so many things. I'd
rather go to a place that's 3 miles straight down a free way than 2 miles of
stop lights, but I don't know that if the map is covered!

~~~
lallysingh
Or why's it so hard to get it to show a street name? It will show some, and it
won't show others. If the one you want is in the latter category you've got a
lot of zooming before you see it. Ugh.

~~~
choward
That and for some reason the scale only shows up while your zooming and for a
couple seconds after. I want to see it all the time, damn it!

~~~
sampo
Go to settings and select "Show scale on map" / "Always".

~~~
choward
I swear I've looked for that setting before. Thanks!

------
omalleyt
It's showing him Wawas he's been to before. That's what the clocks mean.

For the search "wawa" it doesn't make a lot of sense to prioritize history
over distance, because Wawas are nearly identical. But for "farmer's markets"
this would probably be a useful feature.

Figuring out how to differentiate between those two examples algorithmically
is super non-trivial though

~~~
RussianCow
This is incorrect: the clocks mean he has selected those search results
before, not that he has physically been there.

Source: Just tested this in-app.

~~~
danShumway
Oof, that's really bad if that's the case; it means that a mis-click can
poison your search results and make them less useful.

I get that Google's all about saving clicks now, but I've noticed between maps
and other apps (Google Music comes to mind) the extra inference sometimes just
makes me scared to click on things.

Can you at least long press or something to remove a location from your
history?

~~~
l9k
This is usually true for any big website you browse on the internet. Any click
on Facebook or Amazon is influencing the content you're going to see.

Google has a user history website where you can see everything they recorded
from Search and other apps, and you can delete the entries

~~~
danShumway
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with modern recommendation systems. It's
like somebody decided "no, the user can't click a 'show-me-more-like-this'
button, it has to be automatic" and now I have to treat every website like I'm
doing reinforcement training with a cat.

But at least with AI there's something marginally close to an excuse, because
you need a ton of data to make it work. With maps it's just plain and simple
bad UX design, I can't think of any reason why locations shouldn't be sorted
by last visited instead of last clicked.

> Google has a user history website

From a usability standpoint, if it's not accessible from the same same
interface where your results are displayed, then it doesn't exist.

------
Tyr42
I think the clock icon next to the entries they're complaining about means
that it's surfacing them because the user had looked at those particular
stores' search results before, and would likely want to revisit those search
results.

------
HyperTalk2
I feel that the worst new "feature" in Google Maps is when you're on your way
to your destination and it suddenly suggests you might first want to go to a
random place you've never heard of before. You then have 3 seconds to tap "No"
before it silently adds the destination (and 15-30 minutes of extra driving)
to your route. I have found no way to disable this feature.

I'm worried that there could be people who were in a hurry to get somewhere
and perhaps wound up in a grave instead because they felt the urgent need to
look away from the road and fiddle with their phone to reset their map
destination while on the highway.

~~~
xanderstrike
Huh? This has never happened to me and I use Google Maps daily. Is there an
update note or something for this?

~~~
mental1896
Same. This is news to me as well.

------
bitwize
Google Maps apparently thinks I'm Prompto from Final Fantasy XV, and will send
me alerts of points of interest (usually restaurants) suggesting I take
pictures of them.

Uh, no. If I want to go somewhere, I'll ask you, Google Maps. It's shit like
this that makes me glad I switched to OsmAnd (despite the latter lacking in
features, such as finding an optimal foot/bus/train route).

~~~
fjsolwmv
You can turn off those adnotifications. They are kind of annoying, but one
popup plus a button to block future popups is a small price for a powerful
app.

~~~
Doxin
For those unfamiliar. On android phones you can just long-press a notification
to disable that notification category from that app. Granted most apps lump
all their notifications in a single category, but google maps is not one of
them.

------
chx
Budapest, a city of two million has place names only unique per district,
there are 23 of them. So this is ubiquitous there, for example if you enter
"deak ter" it will bring up some insignificant spot out in the boondocks
instead of the central square of the city with three underground lines, the
terminal of the airport bus and so on...

------
protomyth
He should be happy it actually looked up the place he wants. I go to
maps.google.com and not only does it give the wrong town for my location
(correct GPS coordinates, it just won't acknowledge the town exists even
though it is the reservation seat of government), but the first result for
"gas station near" is a Catholic Church and then gas stations in the next,
next town over. Google doesn't seem to know about businesses on the
reservation. Apple, sadly, is worse.

------
cjhanks
Usually happens due to very high uncertainty in localization estimates.

~~~
sharkbot
Looks like it prioritized historical locations over nearby locations. The
little clock icon usually represents a prior location that was selected.

Could be an interesting design approach to know which locations are
"fungible". I.e., one Wawa is as good as another, but your parent's house
isn't a replacement for mine [1].

[1] I'm sure your parents are very nice, of course :)

~~~
jonknee
And ironically the OP was complaining that it didn't return him to the same
WaWa:

> Last time I asked for directions to a Wawa, it was to the one on Oak Lane,
> 5.9 miles away. Why doesn't it guess that I might be trying to go back to
> the same place?

------
tuukkah
Consider using a better geocoder? [https://pelias.io](https://pelias.io)

------
interdrift
Have had this problem many many times, maybe someone from big G will tell us
why

------
wintorez
Software does not suck; requirements, especially from non-technical stake-
holders suck. Every single piece of software starts with a single and easy to
understand idea, then different stakeholders arrive and start adding inputs
and often conflicting requirements, and then software starts to suck. None of
these would have happened if we knew how to say "No". :(

~~~
Double_a_92
I see you've read that terrible book by uncle Bob and now you're a
professional coder. :)

~~~
canihavelogin
What book are you referring to?

~~~
Double_a_92
The Clean Coder

------
shastacans
Case in point, the site is down.

------
Gary404
I'm working on b2b software and when working with the designers at
[http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro) I've learned many things from
their approach as to why (a lot of) software sucks. Personal example: I've
been measuring qualitative feedback users have been giving us and passing it
to them to make design updates. They (design team) would come back with me
with questions about data & metrics. They were more interested in what the
users DID vs what they told me. This sounds small, but has made a huge
difference in the way I look at product design & development. The things users
told us in a few cases, didn't match the way they were acting in the product.
After some research, we found out why and managed to redesign those features
and solve the problems.

The thing with most software, just like ours, is that many of us engineers
don't have the deeper design knowledge to really understand how a product
needs to be build from a user's perspective.

~~~
fgonzag
One thing I've learned is that the user's complaint is always valid, the
user's proposals seldom are.

That is to say, users know when they don't like something, but they are often
wrong about why they dislike it or what is interrupting their workflow. Our
job is to find and fix the root cause starting from user feedback, and fix the
product in accordance to what the user is actually trying to accomplish.

This is often very hard

~~~
milesvp
What's interesting about this, is that user complaints can be suspect too. I
read an anecdote recently about the American auto industry. They'd ask people
about what they didn't like about the cars they bought. And they'd get all
these complaints, then try to build cars based on those complaints. The
problem was, many of the complaints were for things that took them out of the
market for the car they bought. For instance, people who bought sports cars
would complain about lack of doors, or lack of back seat, and so GM or Ford
would build a car that wasn't quite a sports car, because it was too big, and
it wasn't quite a sedan (for whatever reason, too sporty? whatever that
means?), and so no one bought it.

I honestly don't know what the solution to this problem is, since feedback is
invaluable. I guess, always be careful?

~~~
stevekemp
I'm suddenly reminded of the car that Homer built:

[http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer](http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer)

I suspect there is a lesson there about using aggregate feedback, rather than
listening to single individuals.

------
passivepinetree
The HN hug of death strikes again.

Cached version from Google:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E3wiNT...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E3wiNTW62PUJ:https://shitpost.plover.com/s/software-
sucks-4.html)

~~~
mjd
Definitely not. My site hits the front page of Reddit a few times a year and
handles it just fine. Today's HN hit was only about twice as much traffic as a
typical day.

~~~
mjd
Case in point: my article about traffic control systems
([https://blog.plover.com/tech/highway-
stuff.html](https://blog.plover.com/tech/highway-stuff.html)) is on the front
page and has already received twice as much traffic as this one, and the West
Coast hasn't even come to work yet.

