Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...)
I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longer the center of the discussion. Or should not be. What we have is a single back end that's difficult to work on, and which can only target one platform. It's compiled C. Naturally, that's not so bad, as we see Perl is everywhere that Linux is. Which is ... basically everywhere.
But how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM? How about a Perl 5 to Javascript compiler (sort of like Clojurescript)? Or just any other target you can imagine. I really feel like the difficulty of working on the Perl 5 internals limits the language--and ultimately, will kill it.
"Kill it," of course, is a relative term. Perl 5 will most likely never truly die. Indeed, I'm writing (what I think is pretty cool) Perl 5 code right at this moment, and putting it on Github and CPAN.
But in terms of attracting new blood, new developers, young teams of vocal and enthusiastic programmers... I just don't see that happening. To me, it's a great sadness. I have yet to find another language that I love as much as Perl (and I wouldn't mind doing so, at this point).
I like Perl 6 (P6). I would like Perl 5 folk pondering P5's internals or its future to properly investigate and understand P6's role.
> how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM?
In the opening few minutes of Patrick Michaud's 2013 video "Perl on the JVM", he notes that Jesse Vincent suggested "Perl 6 is Perl's best (only?) hope for running on JVM/.NET".
> I really feel like the difficulty of working on the Perl 5 internals limits the language--and ultimately, will kill it.
There's been a serious effort to clean up the internals in recent years. But yeah, part of the point of P6 was to develop much better internals.
Rakudo and the NQP compiler toolchain are not only well designed but also almost entirely written in P6 code. (Counting NQP as P6.)
> attracting new blood, new developers, young teams of vocal and enthusiastic programmers... I just don't see that happening.
Even in the face of its disastrous reputation, P6 still manages to attract new blood. Aiui the guy who writes the P6 weekly news (http://p6weekly.wordpress.com/) contributed to the Python core before getting in to P6. This year I've seen smart kids visit #perl6 for the first time, chat knowledgeably about a lisp or ML, and start to contribute. Some well known P5 folk such as Nicholas Clark (one of the few folk ever paid by TPF to hack on the P5 internals) and lizmat have fully turned their focus toward P6 in the last year or so.
> I have yet to find another language that I love as much as Perl (and I wouldn't mind doing so, at this point).
What about hanging out on #perl6 for a while (prime time is about 8am thru 8pm EST, 7 days a week) to chat with folk and see what there is to see?
I hope I'm being helpful. There's definitely a glass half full / half empty dilemma with talking about P6.
Let me now include a standard caveat list I created last year in an attempt to ensure balance in the force:
"Perl 6 is not remotely as usable and useful as Perl 5; it has dozens of users, not millions; it is 100-1000x slower than Perl 5 for a lot of stuff; the P6 documentation is immature and incomplete; the spec has not reached 6.0.0; the Rakudo compiler has not fully implemented what's already in the spec; most of the concurrency and parallel implementation has only just begun; P6 can not currently use CPAN modules; Perl 6 has syntax and semantics that are not backwards compatible with Perl 5; Perl 6 culture is -Ofun which some think is incompatible with getting things done; some folk think that Perl 6 code looks like line noise... In summary, there are infinitely many things wrong with P6."
I hope that hasn't brought you down to earth with too big a bump.
Try Scala. It's a very expressive language that does not sacrifice on power (JVM/type safety).
As a long time professional Perl programmer, I've given up on it. The heartache it has caused on enterprise teams I've been on is not worth the rise in blood pressure. And I'm starting to think that it is inefficient in its yield per unit of effort ratio. Writing good, scalable, clean, modern Perl requires so much couching and qualifying. My teammates couldn't even write good Perl. And so despite my want of evangelizing it, pitching to younger programmers is probably not useful/efficient.
Aiui folk who love Perl tend to have a natural affinity for Scala. Stevan Little (the Moose and P5 MOP guy) chose Scala for Moe and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it.
I'm in to P6. ionforce, please indulge/educate me:
> {Scala|P6 is} a very expressive language that does not sacrifice on power (JVM/type safety).
I hope you see where I'm coming from and are willing to play ball. :)
First and foremost, P6 is incomplete, immature, slow, etc. and almost no one is using it to do anything serious. Aiui Scala is used in a wide range of production settings. This is likely the end of any comparison for most folk.
Scala runs on the JVM. Aiui there's no attempt or intent to run it on anything else. Rakudo (P6) runs on the JVM. It also runs on other VMs including MoarVM. See http://moarvm.org
Scala can "seamlessly" call Java code and vice-versa. Rakudo/JVM can call Java code, but it's currently ugly looking. Java code should be able to call P6 code using Rakudo/JVM but the necessary work isn't complete.
Aiui Scala has solid concurrency and parallelism features. P6 has a good story regarding the language's design as it relates to concurrency and parallelism, but implementation only began last year. See http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-nlpw-reactive.pdf for some of the best Rakudo currently has to offer concurrency-wise.
Scala does type inferencing and you can add explicit types. Its type hierarchy is Java's. P6 also does type inferencing with optional explicit types. But it's type hierarchy is not the same as Java's.
Scala has traits, pattern matching, and higher order functions. So does Rakudo.
> But no, I'm not bitter. =)
Of course not. There's more than one way to do it. :)
I guess I'm not allowed to participate in the discussion, I've had to delete several comments already that were getting steadily down-voted.
It's not a claim to be a miracle or cure-all. This is exactly the type of cynical, know-it-all bullshit that frustrates me so much. It's nothing else but a claim, based on years of my own personal experience, to the benefits I myself have experienced, and the benefits others have experienced. And they've been more than happy to share with me.
I brace myself now for more down votes, since here I reply in a reasonable and conversation-furthering manner. =/
Its about anecdotal vs empirical evidence. And lets face it, all these miracle foods are being promoted (in the general health food market) as some saving grace to health. And they are doing it claiming to be, basically, a magic pill. Just put a dash of this, or a spoon of that, into your smoothie or onto some toast or into your oatmeal and BAM! Now you're healthy!
You might be feeling great, but have you done a scientific study to know if its just a placebo effect? My guess is that its not a placebo effect, but not because it has "super foods" in it. But because it has "FOOD" in it. As in, good whole and natural foods. I'm not a vegetarian, or anything close to that. But as a society, we need to eat healthier. This, is something that we should be touting. Eat fruits and vegetables - the more color the better. Eat less highly enriched starches and other highly processed foods. You don't have to stop eating everything that's unhealthy, you have to enjoy life. But if we all ate our recommended servings of fruit and veg we'd be reversing lots of obesity just because we were being intentional about our nutrition. And that is what it boils down to.
"We see our pasty, doughy, sickly selves in the mirror and somehow just deny the obviousness of the truth. We then armor ourselves against anything that might pierce our bubble of denial, so as to protect our inflated egos. I say "we" and "our" because I'm not so different, either. It's just that, for various reasons, years ago I saw the light re: health and fitness"
Isolated even further: "I'm not so different, either."
You include yourself and then exclude yourself in the very next sentence.
I know you're excited and eager to share what you feel has empowered & enlightened you but you shouldn't take it to heart when not everyone else is on the same wavelength.
Instead of seeking that "evidence," consider this: is the average geek not supposed to be smarter than the average person? (Is this generality more acceptable because it's flattering? For that matter, is there any evidence of this, either? But for now, let's assume it's true.)
So on that assumption, which we grant temporarily, why then should we not expect these smarter people to make smarter lifestyle choices? Should we not expect geeks, in other words, to do better, not just the same as?
Or at the very least, to be armed with the correct information so that, when the time comes to make those choices, he at least recognizes when he is choosing poorly? Of course the real question is: how do we get people (smart people included) to choose wisely? This is the sixty-four thousand dollar questions.
Claiming some kind of magic smoothie will improve your health is the type of health-nonsense we need less of, not more, it doesn't serve any purpose improving anyone's lifestyle. That's probably why you got downvoted into oblivion, not because 'average geeks' don't care about their health.
Mind you: I'm not saying your smoothie is not healthy, or that it doesn't matter what you eat or how you live. Just that blanket statements such as 'my smoothie has improved the life of everyone I introduced it to' is about as scientific as astrology or tarot cards, and IMO has no place on a site like this.
My point was that your premise is based on something that we don't know. Perhaps the average geek is smarter than the average person (for some definition of smarter), but perhaps they're also healthier. We just don't know.
While I believe that you were genuinely trying to be helpful to the community by offering an easy way to be healthier, we are generally a suspicious bunch and when there are a number of claims made based on unsupported hypotheses, there's going to be complaints.
It's one thing to say: "I do this and it seemed to do good things for me". It's another to say "I do this and so should you".
I see both happening. I see major attitudes of helplessness or victim mentality. Or just ambivalence. Go to any mall. We all know this story.
But also, it then becomes a thing where those who do have their head in the right place to pursue health in a practical and beneficiary (edit: beneficial) manner, these folks often do turn around and moralize. It's too bad.
The real truth is, we need to forget about those types of things, for a little while at least, and concentrate purely on the facts. The consequences. What is actually occurring. Because in the end, it doesn't matter what peoples' intentions are, or motives, or desires, or anything else. What matters are consequences.
That said, of course it's incumbent upon anyone promoting health to offer a helping hand, only, and never anything else. Never any judgment. Because not one of us is "above it."
I've been helping my family and friends with this recipe, and it's changing lives. Literally. My father, who I taught how to eat vegetarian, has stopped needing insulin! (After heading steadily down the standard American road...sad...)
If you add this smoothie to your daily life, and change nothing else, you will feel better. A lot better. You can still eat bacon and eggs for breakfast (I don't recommend that, but you can), and you can still eat a pulled pork sandwich for dinner (also, don't recommend), but if you have this smoothie around the middle of the day, you will feel better and experience benefits. More or less immediately from day one.
You are quite literally what you eat. How could it possibly be otherwise?
EDIT: easily worth any down votes I may receive here. Computer enthusiasts and professionals, for the most part, in my observation, have a huge blind spot for their health. Huge. So down vote away, my friends. As long as you are also involved in your health!
I don't think you are getting downvotes because developers don't care about their health. It's because you are saying that ONE smoothie is changing lives... which is a ridicolous statement. And it honestly sounds like an attempt for self promotion.
Also, serious question: why is sharing something in a higher bandwidth format than just typing "promotion?" Do you not promote your own thoughts and agenda any time you enter a comment? When I have no product, nothing for sale, no ads on the video, nothing like that, how does one conclude that sharing something, which is just me, commenting, really, in a higher bandwidth format, how do you conclude "promotion?" As I say, serious question.
Well you have no proof whatsoever of your claims. No question that it's a healthy thing to consume, but saying it will change lives from day one without changing anything else is just a very bold statement to make without backing it up with anything.
Kudos for the recipe though.
It is not a claim about the future. It's a fact, referring to the past. Of course I will not, but I could easily fish out thank you letters and comments about positive change from a private forum.
I promote your health, sir. Not myself. Forget about me. Think about you. And in particular, note that I don't have any ads on my video. It's really about you. If you can believe that. Sometimes people try to do good for its own sake, even in this day and age. Crazy, huh?
Fine. "Everyone who has tried this, and it's about 20 people at this point, from local people (my family, for example, local friends) to those I only know online--every single one of these people has experienced benefits and shared their happiness with me."
How's that? Don't be a cynic. Don't be too far above it all. Don't "know it all" already. Just try it. Because, while the video is new-ish (I used to have a different one, years ago), my doing this is years in the making. Years. This is no fly-by-night experiment.
So-called hard drugs are ... well ... they ain't health food.
But presumably I'm writing to an audience of utilitarian thinkers, so it should be trivial to load up the arguments onto a balance beam: for, and against.
We have lived through the against side it. We know exactly what those consequences are, for society. Importantly, criminalization does ZERO to limit demand, and thus, supply. Zero. This is demonstrably true. So, now imagine a world where all of those same people who already choose to abuse drugs to the point where it becomes a severe health and social hazard, except those activities are not illegal anymore.
Yes, you still have the dangers of those people acting irrationally, or even rationally, but just anti-socially, in pursuit of their high. But this happens now, already. With the added negatives of the so-called war on drugs (which in reality is a war on the American people, especially black people), just thrown into the mix.
Like so many others have done, I could write at great length (and so could you, dear reader, most likely; many of you) about this subject. It's completely fucked, in a word.
And I live in Colorado, so if you'd like to hear about what's happened after pot was legal, I can tell you: nada. Zip. Nothing bad. Zero. And that won't ever change, either. Yeah, pot's not cocaine, but believe it or not, doing a few lines of blow doesn't turn a normal human being into a psychopath. Or, if it does, that same person would become just as dangerous after a pint of vodka.
One thing I've always wondered: what would street dealers do if they couldn't make money selling crack anymore? I somehow doubt they'd give up and get a job at McDonald's.
Legalizing drugs might therefore lead to an increase in robberies, muggings, kidnappings, sex trafficking, etc as these former dealers need to find new ways to support themselves. Thoughts?
Just ask yourself one question: what did all the bootleggers do after alcohol prohibition was dropped? Exactly. There's a sort of twinge of classism (or even racism) in your comment, by the way.
The assumption that people who participate in a normal capitalist marketplace are inherently criminals is just silly. They do what they do because it's a bustling marketplace. Period.
> Just ask yourself one question: what did all the bootleggers do after alcohol prohibition was dropped?
"Bootlegging helped lead to the establishment of American organized crime, which persisted long after the repeal of Prohibition. The distribution of liquor was necessarily more complex than other types of criminal activity, and organized gangs eventually arose that could control an entire local chain of bootlegging operations, from concealed distilleries and breweries through storage and transport channels to speakeasies, restaurants, nightclubs, and other retail outlets. These gangs tried to secure and enlarge territories in which they had a monopoly of distribution. Gradually the gangs in different cities began to cooperate with each other, and they extended their methods of organizing beyond bootlegging to the narcotics traffic, gambling rackets, prostitution, labour racketeering, loan-sharking, and extortion. The national American crime syndicate, the Mafia, arose out of the coordinated activities of Italian bootleggers and other gangsters in New York City in the late 1920s and early ’30s."
Well, so some of them moved on to other activities that also shouldn't be criminalized, then. I speak about gambling. Which is de-facto legal now, because of how many Indian casinos there are in so many states. Prostitution? We have a long way to go in decriminalizing this. But slight progress is being made. Just another stupid moralizing law that achieves nothing.
Now as to protection rackets, extortion, etc. These would remain unaffected, most likely.
But can we agree that at least some (perhaps most) of the enterprises they moved into, most of the total crime these criminals are responsible for, are just also yet more normal human activities that should never have been illegal?
Can we also agree that decriminalizing normal human behaviors, while it won't eliminate all crime (that was never a claim I made), it will reduce the total overall amount of crime? How could it not?
It's tautological to say that decriminalizing things reduces crime. It would be more productive to do a cost benefit analysis. Most of the advocacy I've seen is starry-eyed and simply ignores or rejects the idea that the social costs--for example marginally or completely unemployable addicts. There's a fair point that this is true of legal drugs (alcohol) but it's not something we should want to expand (c.f. drunk driving), so it should be advocated according to a reasonable analysis of the trade-offs.
Yes. I am very simply saying that if certain vices (not sure how I even feel about employing that word, actually) were made legal, then by definition many of us would cease being criminals. Sure. It's pretty simple. Seems almost stupidly simple. But I argue that the actual situation we face really is just this simple. These should never have been illegal.
The analysis is being performed in my state right now. Re: legal pot. And the results, although only about 5 months' worth, are overwhelmingly clear: legalizing has zero negative consequences, while also having huge benefits; the benefits being both financial and of course, the big win is for the people, who are no longer being oppressed by counter-productive, society-damaging law.
What if it's not as complicated as we've been led to believe, in other words? Could that be? Could it actually be as simple as legalization? I argue yes, it is.
While I agree that the statement is tautological, it isn't necessarily irrelevant. Consider this. People who are released from prison are significantly more likely to commit another crime landing them back in prison than the average person. On one hand,some might conclude that it simply is because those in prison have some sort of inclination towards that life and simply are an ill fit for the society in which we live.
On the other hand, what if that wasn't really the case, what if it was how desensitized to hatred and violence most prisoners become after a stay in prison. And it was this desensitization combined with the relationships formed in prison, which inherently only could be with other "criminals," that led to an increased propensity to commit a crime?
If that were the case, then decriminalizing things reduces crime, not only by it's tautological implication, but because it reduces the desensitizing effects prison has, leading to the in-and-out cycle experienced by many in the prison system.
I recognize that the world is not 100% like the case I presented, but I would argue the truth lies somewhere in between (like it does in most issues) and that decriminalization or alternative punishments (especially with teens) have potential to significantly reduce crime, by all rights, both in number and it's relative proportion to the hypothetical rate pre-decriminalization.
Yes, I can agree that prison is sub-optimal and I would like to sees more reform. On the other hand, having had a family member violently murdered, I would like to point out that the rest of us should have the right not to have to see certain people free ever again. There are better tools, like being confined to one's house, for the more petty crimes. On that, I think we agree, as we do also on the fact that reducing recidivism is in everyone's best interests.
The biggest problem with prison it seems to me is that it pulls them further away from normal society and changes their social circle to one made of criminals. This then leads to all the other ills, as they experience a daily life of overt racism, violence and apathy. As you say, though, it's not 100%. I once knew a guy who, based on what I know of him, is most aptly described as a drug loser. He (amazingly) stayed out of prison for some years after pulling all sorts of really stupid crimes and bragging of them. He managed to avoid issues by being a skilled liar and there being a lack of solid proof. Also, there was the time he fled from the jurisdiction. In the end, he was turned in by his own parents after he attacked and seriously injured them. So as you say, it's "prison made them worse" is only part of the story and many of them. It's certainly true from what I can see, but it doesn't mean they were anyone you'd want to hang around in the first place. FWIW, that person had a loving home and parents who did everything they could to help him (counselors, doctors, etc.). I believe the doctors mostly resulted in him selling or trading his meds and/or taking them with alcohol...
While I do not want to see people go to prison for minor offenses, my biggest worry with decriminalization is that it will turn out to be like deinsitutionalization--i.e. they'll end up on the streets causing problems for everyone else with no real support from society. This does not seem like a net benefit for everyone who is not already a criminal.
Add to that the fact that felony conviction (and many drug crimes and other invented crimes are felonies) significantly reduces one's chance to ever find good well-paying employment, while prison comrades would be dangling the possibility of quick earnings under one's nose without the necessity to prove yourself twice as hard as the next guy on every step - and the picture becomes even more slanted towards recidivism.
Having worked with such people in a place where they were employed, being one of the few places in the area that did NOT reject folks for that, I am instead referring to violent or erratic behavior, inability to follow simple instructions, propensity to not show up for work (especially after being paid) as well as the fact that they can endanger others.
I have personally witnessed all of the above except for that violence, which I've only heard bragging of and, eventually, a conviction for. This was a factory environment. It does not take great skill to work there and it pays a very decent wage for unskilled labor and should be within the means of almost anyone capable of being useful.
> Or, you know the, hundreds of thousands incarcerated instead of out in the workforce.
Be careful what you wish for. I only hope you are someday able to work with some of the people I've met.
Instead of accusing people of racism, why I don't you try actually answering the question? "OMG, he said crack rather than meth, therefore racism!" So, what did all the bootleggers do? I don't have any idea, so I'm probably a racist too... I do know alot of them became politicians, so I think the suggestion that they might turn to a different criminal enterprise is entirely on point.
According to Freakonomics, a lot of low-level drug dealers make less than minimum wage. So why do they take those jobs? Can they not find legal employment (ue to lack of opportunities, disqualification due to criminal record, insufficient education, etc. or are they rejecting legal employment for a job that's more exciting, more acceptable among their peers, has a higher maximum vale despite lower expected value, etc?
If they're rejecting legal employment it's entirely plausible they'll move on to a different (probably criminal) enterprise that has similar characteristics.
No they really can't find other work. Drugs are the only option in many areas. Philippe Bourgois's book In Search of Respect is a good read on this. So there will be more issues in areas with no jobs after legalization.
I don't know, what did the low level bootleggers and enforcers do after prohibition ended? If I was one, I'd have moved on to similar work in narcotics and prostitution.
People choose to risk jail time and physical harm to make mediocre money as a street dealer because they have no better options. Most of them don't even have high school diplomas, what else are they going to do? If we don't do anything other than eliminate the black market for drugs their next best option is still going to be some sort of crime.
Sure. But you assume there's a permanent class of criminals whose only interest is crime. The principle interest in the drug game is money. It's a business.
What I'm saying is, there's not a "fixed amount of crime," which you imply; you basically say it's like squeezing a balloon. The amount of air doesn't change, it just gets displaced a little bit.
What we need is a sociologist (or someone who has otherwise done the reading) to come in with studies and numbers. I'm sort of working outward from my reference, Pinker's The Better Angels Of Our Nature, and suggesting that crime, too, overall crime, is dropping. And would drop even more if the laws were written correctly. In other words, there's not a fixed number of criminals, nor a fixed amount of crime.
That's exactly why it's so important to decriminalize (or outright legalize). Because the theory behind criminalization simply doesn't work. It is you who are naive, sir. Please see my other comments above. I explain this. I hope I explain this. What didn't I convey?
Oh, no I'm not naive. You think some Pinker book shows that complete legalization would result in people involved in the drug becoming upstanding members of society. You talk of "criminals" as some kind of theoretical agent.
I can see that were not going to connect here. And I shouldn't have called you naive. I should have said your position is naive.
But is it really such a stretch to expect alignment between swiftly declining rates of violence and declining rates of all anti-social behavior.
Keep in mind, doing drugs, just recreationally doing drugs, minding ones own business IS NOT A CRIME (or shouldn't be) and isn't anti-social (or doesn't have to be, and isn't for most casual users). Think: casual alcohol drinkers. As most are. Are there alcoholics? Of course. But that does nothing to diminish my case. It was never expected that all crime would vanish (or perhaps...you expect that?).
Most gangs are not directly involved in the sale of narcotics, instead they are involved in extortion "taxing" those who are selling drugs in their area. If drugs disappear they will find another black market to tax like gambling, fencing stolen goods or selling weapons. However the difference is they won't make a million dollars per month taxing somebody running an illegal gambling operation unlike jacking cocaine drivers. It will be a much smaller criminal enterprise, they won't be able to afford a small army of thugs to terrorize an entire city like they currently do here now with all their windfall narco profits.
As for non violent street peddlers I imagine they will go into exports, shipping narcotics to countries where it's still illegal. After Marijuana was symbolically decriminalized by police here refusing to arrest people for possession, and the black market was swamped with declining prices, many former dealers and growers instead decided to operate unlicensed tourist operations selling weed travel packages, and running their own storefronts for legal drugs using their profits as street dealers to bootstrap it.
Sure, but even if some number of drug dealers moved on to other crime, would there not necessarily be less crime, overall, if a major aspect of normal human life were to suddenly be decriminalized? In other words, when everything is a crime, we are all criminals. That's my basic position on the war on drugs, and so many other things.
But that is where the violence occurs. That's where the anti-social consequences occur. Are felt most directly. Impose most directly on peoples' lives.
So while it's true those big shots will move (or attempt to move) to other areas (politics springs to mind), decriminalizing would have a major impact on the street level crime. Again the analogy of prohibition. But also, see other countries, where even more legalization (than just pot, which we see here in Colorado now) has already occurred. There are models, and there are successes. I'm not aware of any failures, in fact. Well, except US drug policy, and all policies like it.
Lol. Sure. I used to have the special edition DVD...before I let go of all my DVDs. I would just say: don't worry about that. Just soak in the beautiful ambience of a film which features prominently the art of Giger, both in set design, and creature design!
You might want to add a spoiler alert at the beginning of your comment. I'm sure most of HN has already seen the movie but for those who haven't, knowing that can ruin the suspense.
[Spoiler?]
If the movie is called "Alien", is it really a spoiler to say that you see the alien by the end? I suspect that most of the movie is spent dreading the eventuality that we all expect. ;) Granted it's been a long time since I saw the movie, so I might have forgotten why it's a spoiler.
edit: I suspect that I saw Aliens before Alien, and therefore already had an expectation of what it would look like. Thanks to the sibling/cousin comments for explaining that :)
[SPOILERS] Yes, just at the end, so the thing you’ve been imaging in your mind for the whole movie is completely destroyed by the shape of a human being. All that monstrosity that gives life to a human-like. And that happens in the exact moment a human-like animal kills it expelling it into space from the ship. Genius.
Edit: whoops, I didn’t read your comment correctly. I don’t remember where you see its full shape, the airducts is the most plausible place as far as I remember.
For the record, I like Ridley Scott's cuts. I guess I'm specifically alluding to Blade Runner here, as another example.
Second note: I'm noticing already other comments focusing on how much knowledge we have outside of Alien, almost like punk rock posturing. It's okay to like something that's popular and beautiful! Watch Alien! This is not an underground punk band guys, a great genius has just died. =)
Speaking of punk rock, Mr. Giger can claim some significant cultural influence in that sphere too.
Klaus Flouride, the bassist for the Dead Kennedys had mentioned in an interview from 2003 that personal differences between band members, regarding the "Work 219: Landscape XX (penis landscape)" painting, were the breaking point determining the band's breakup:
...the Frankenchrist thing was, say, a final straw as far
as [Jello Biafra] going in a different direction than what
we wanted to do. I felt that the poster itself was shock
for the sake of shock value. We'd shocked people before,
but we'd always tried to have a point behind it. I didn't
see the point he was making. But we didn't quit after the
lawsuit happened. We quit when he decided that that poster
was gonna be in there one way or the other, and we could
take a hike if we wanted to. So we said, "Well, why don't
we call it 'Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys?,'" since
that's what it was becoming anyway at that point. [1]
The poster was printed and inserted in the Frankenchrist
album with an additional sticker on the outside
shrinkwrap, warning buyers of the contents. The resulting
trial for obscenity nearly drove the label into
bankruptcy. [2]
The artwork caused a furor with the newly formed Parents
Music Resource Center (PMRC). In December 1985 a teenage
girl purchased the album at the Wherehouse Records store
in Los Angeles County. The girl's mother wrote letters of
complaint to the California Attorney General and to Los
Angeles prosecutors. In 1986 members of the band, along
with other parties involved in the distribution of
Frankenchrist, were charged criminally with distribution
of harmful matter to minors. [3]
...it provoked a legal offensive against the band
beginning in April 1986. As well as having his flat torn
apart by the police, Biafra was charged with "distributing
harmful matter to minors," a charge which he repulsed on
the basis of the First Amendment right to free speech and
which was dismissed the following year. [4]
Is this where we get to complain about how horrible Google Maps suddenly is?
Because wow. I can speak about this. It's terrible. First and foremost, and they have their "reasons" of course, but my Samsung Rant (yeah just a feature phone) always had great maps. Just a simple Java app, built on the maps API. Well that doesn't work anymore. Like, nothing. Google basically says "Get an Android phone, sucker." F U Google. Is what I think of that.
Secondly, the desktop (and basically the tablet experience too is the same) has gotten terrible. It takes a really long time before my mouse event matters. By this time, the screen, since it's still resolving and moving things around the canvas or whatever the hell it's doing, well by the time my mouse event registers, the object I wanted has moved away. I'm now doing something else!
Directions. Just so retarded. The accordion shit on the left. Just show me the effing directions, like you used to. I don't want to tab around a widget in the upper left. Plus you have toggle it open in the first place, and it's not very responsive, either.
Also, just simple double-clicking to zoom. Extremely less useful than it used to be: just this one simple thing.
What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable.
As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters".
Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has a usable UI. It isn't perfect, and maybe even looks "dated" in some ways, but it generally works and is understood by its existing users.
So-called "hipsters" (that is, people who have an uncompromising view that they're talented "designers" or "UI experts", with a massive ego to back this up, and a fixation on being "trendy") get involved at some point. These people are often relatively young, often have limited experience, and are usually more focused on making designs look "pretty" and "modern" rather than usable.
Needing to create work for themselves, these hipsters, coupled with managers who need to appear to be leading something seen as "productive", start on a UI redesign. Often this is done without the involvement or insight offered by the existing developers of the product, nor any of the product's users. Changes are made purely to look "better", with limited to no consideration of how it'll impact the usability of the product.
The end result is a total cock-up like this, or like the poor UI of Chrome (and the imitations of it by Firefox, Opera and IE), or a project-killing release like GNOME 3, or an abysmal failure like Windows 8.
UIs were generally far more usable in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of the 2000s, before "hipsters" got involved with design. What we see today is a total jumble of inconsistent and incoherent UI design, where usability and efficiency are considered significantly less important than "looking trendy".
It's funny you would make a dichotomy between the "old guard" and the "hipsters", and blame the latter for the problems of the new Google Maps. If there's anyone on Earth who I can name as part of the "old guard" of online mapping, it's Bernhard Seefeld, who invented draggable tiled online maps when he launched map.search.ch in 2004. (Google Maps was launched in 2005.) For the last few years he's been working as the product management director for the new Google Maps.
If I had to come up with a reason why the new Google Maps feels worse in many ways, my guess would be second-system syndrome.
IMO it's definitely Second-system syndrome. Maps worked fine and didn't need much added/changed, but someone decided that they needed to keep iterating and now we're stuck with all the cludge built on top of it now.
It wasn't iteration. They threw away code and started from scratch. Things you should never do [1].
Several months ago Google releases totally new version of Google Maps. Google Maps consistently stays as a poor product since then. I think that even first version of Google maps (introduced in 2005) was better.
Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't no Steve Jobs. That's for sure.
It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing, in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful. To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes cements it. Yet here we are...
> I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious.
It doesn't matter how many smart engineers and ux designers can see the obvious, if one person from upper management can't :( (See also: G+ real names policy)
My guess is the original person leading the Google Maps project was very, very competent, and they either moved to another project or quit - and got replaced by someone really awful. I think it happened at some point pre-2013, because Maps was great until then, and has been in decline ever since.
Yeah, I experienced a similar timeline. That's when the Maps API stopped working for the Java app on my feature phone, roughly. Then the cascade or rot hit the PC / tablet experience, piece by piece, until it was just completely terrible. Which brings us to today. =)
I've been bitching and moaning about the new g-maps for so long! And this thread makes me feel...vindicated? I guess? Too bad I'm still stuck with it.
The funny thing is that it's possible the UI could have been screwed while keeping the search stable, but as the article points out, the search is killing me. It's Apple Maps-ish in a way. I mean, if I'm zoomed in to a particular level and I do a search, there's a good bet that I'm only interested in results within those bounds, right? I'm not crazy to want that am I?
Click on the ? at the bottom right, then select Return to old Google maps lastly click on the classic yellow ribbon which appears at the top asking to remember your preference.
6 more months of classic maps then they will probably phase it out, sadly.
They do this with every service/option they don't want you to use.
For example, if you enable delay e-mail send in gMail, you get a tiny pop-up to undo your message... I guess you just have to learn to always look at the top middle for Google's hidden/minimally displayed functions.
As crazy as it sounds, I did some back-and-forth tests to find things nearby and I got the same or more relavent results from Apple Maps. I switched over and the service has gotten a lot better from where they were at launch. Google Maps has gotten significantly worse.
I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious.
That one's easy. It turns out that roles like management and marketing and customer support are actually important for developing good products, but the culture at "engineer"-led organisations doesn't always acknowledge or respect that.
I agree with your argument, but there's no need to go in with the "hipsters" or "looking trendy" thing. I immediately get turned off when someone uses "hipster" pejoratively. You might as well have just used "millenials" or "kids these day." It ruins a perfectly cogent argument.
Like I said in an earlier comment, age has very little to do with this. "Hipsters" can pretty much be any age.
It's more the "hipster" mindset and attitude that's the problem. This attitude involves fashion and trends trumping all other considerations. Maybe that's okay when it comes to something like clothing. It isn't acceptable, however, when it comes to tools that are supposed to be productive, including software.
If you've got a better term than "hipster", I'm willing to consider using it. I'm just not aware of any other term that better describes the particular attitude that puts vanity, arrogance, ego, smugness and focus on appearance over everything else.
How about instead of using a crappy word that attempts to tar a nebulous ill-defined group of people, you just point out the issues you have with it. No need for the "hipster" straw-man, as far as I'm concerned, and I agree with your points. "Hipster" is over-done, and from where I'm sitting those who use it pejoratively come across as elitist.
Like I said in the comment you replied to, if you have a better term, please mention it here.
I don't think that these people, or more specifically their attitude and their approach toward software UI design, are "nebulous" nor "ill-defined". It's extremely easy to identify incidents involving them: Windows 8, GNOME 3, Firefox 4 and later, this new version of Google Maps, and the Slashdot beta website, among others.
There are some common traits we see with these cases:
1. They hijack an existing, well-established software product.
2. They throw out years, if not decades, of accumulated knowledge and experience.
3. They usually come in with little to no relevant experience themselves.
4. They consider appearance far more important than usability, efficiency or productivity.
5. They create a design that's obviously flawed in many different ways.
6. They refuse to accept or even acknowledge these many flaws in their designs, no matter how loudly long-time users point them out.
7. They release their changes into the wild, often forcing them upon users who absolutely abhor the changes.
8. Their design efforts drive away more users than they could ever hope to bring in.
The fourth and sixth points are the key ones here. They are the very essence of the "hipster" attitude, regardless of whether we're talking about clothing, food, software UI design, or pretty much anything else they're involved with.
> This attitude involves fashion and trends trumping all other considerations.
90% of the complaints I see about things being bad now because of "fashion and trends trumping all other considerations" seem to just be people applying who are themselves putting fashions and trends above all other considerations -- its just that they found a fashion or trend that they favored several years ago and are upset that the rest of the world doesn't still favor that fashion/trend.
And that's not entirely unreasonable -- or necessarily detached from personal productivity. Something that is a common trend in a field where productivity is relevant is almost certainly also useful to some subset of the market. Likewise, compatibility with expectations driven by trends external to the field can make new fashions also more productive to the mass market, even if they aren't more productive to the subset that the prior fashion "clicked" with well on a deeper level.
In this case, I think that I would define "hipster" as "thinks they are the second coming of Steve Jobs." They're basically cargo culting, they saw Steve Jobs stir shit up, so they think that if they stir shit up as well, the world will hail them as geniuses and shower them with riches. The problem is that they give little thought to exactly what they are stirring up, or how they are doing it. Inevitably they just make a hash of everything.
That and they're positively obsessed with JavaScript, Node.js, and a coding style that favors ample and unnecessary usage of anonymous JavaScript functions as nested parameters.
It depends on who you are, and how you use the browser. Maybe the Chrome UI is good for somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability.
But for people with large monitors and the need to push a web browser hard, they've merely managed to strip out or hide a lot of very useful functionality, with essentially no benefit. What's left over is non-standard and awkward to use (like Chrome's menu).
I have a large monitor, but I have no idea what you mean by "push a web browser hard". Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome. I have no concept of what you could possibly be doing with the menu so often that it bugs you.
A little more on topic: one person's "crappy hipster redesign" is another person's "wow this is so much better" and it's really difficult to guess ahead of time which will be the dominant reaction. Having said that, most of the frustrations about Maps here seem to be more on the implementation side than the design side.
My issue with Chrome's UI is that it is inflexible. I agree that the content area is important; as such, my firefox displays much more content (while also displaying more useful icons IMO).
In Chrome, you take what Google gives you and you better like it. I'll admit, it's not a bad default.
Firefox, however, allows addons to fundamentally alter the appearance of the webbrowser. I can add stylish themes that do all sorts of awesome things. I can use vimperator with "set gui=nonavigation" and reclaim even more space for content.
This fundamental difference is the reason I think Chrome's UI is bad. Firefox, you can customize the gui to be good for any definition of good. Chrome's only works if your definition of good aligns with Google's.
Also, for an example of when Chrome's UI fails, simply try and half-screen it on a 1080p screen with 30+ tabs open. All the tab favicons vanish. There's no way to search for an existing open tab (akin to firefox's % Location Bar Search character[0]).
If you'd like, I could show you my firefox and chrome running side by side with firefox having dozen's of more pixels of content-viewing area. Even if you don't like my setup, the fact that I can change it at all makes it an obvious win for me.
Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome.
Sure it is, as long as you only want to look at one page above the fold.
But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Sometimes I want to use developer tools, and that that point I do want concepts like whitespace and fonts larger than 5px and coloured icons that are easily recognisable to exist, instead of prioritising cramming so much information into the available space that all of it becomes almost illegible.
> But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
'Always show bookmark bar' is the top item on my View menu. Is it there for you?
> at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling. Just compared Chrome with Safari and the scrollbars seem identical to me.
> Sometimes I want to use developer tool
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded? I often need it to share space with content whilst I'm debugging. If you have dual monitors then I can understand you might prefer a less compact display. I work entirely on my laptop so I'm grateful for it's compactness.
'Always show bookmark bar' is the top item on my View menu.
Sure, you can change the default easily enough. I'm just giving an example where I do find it useful to have more Chrome displayed at the expense of a small amount of content area.
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling.
I'm usually working on a desktop PC, so I don't have a trackpad. I use a mouse scroll wheel all the time, but for long documents that's tedious (as is using a trackpad) and with most mice it's a one-dimensional scroll anyway.
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded?
Yes, and many things in it are far too small for comfortable use. The developer tools in both Chrome and Firefox are riddled with basic usability and design blunders, such as using tiny fonts and icons; using a flat design that blurs everything together and often gives no clues to what interactions are available; offering many different sets of tabs, icons and other controls; numerous inconsistencies in presentation, not just in the different behaviours from tab to tab but even from one set of tabs or icons to another that is visible at the same time; and forever moving things around, particularly making unnecessary minor changes every few weeks.
I've nothing against providing for developers who are using smaller screens, but I have a powerful computer on a real desk with nice big screens to make me as productive as possible, and the idea that everything must be crammed in to maximise the content area at all costs just isn't helpful in that context. Rather like the perversion of the original "mobile first" design idea to become "over-simplified least common denominator behaviour is good enough", it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and actually making the software worse for some users. Of course the developers of these browsers are perfectly entitled to do that, but it's equally fair to point out the problems they are creating.
> But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
Ctrl+Shift+B.
> Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE. Windows looks custom, but only wrt textures, sizes still seem to match.
Sure, or it's an option on the menu. I'm just trying to show that sometimes removing all possible chrome to maximise the content area isn't necessarily the most helpful thing to do.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE.
On Windows, they are just thin grey rectangles that don't even look like scrollbars (or anything else you might interact with) and don't even look the same between the main content window and supporting windows like the developer tools.
Completely agree. Hide as much as possible that isn't annoying on a regular basis then learn the keyboard shortcuts for everything else if you're such a power user.
I use chromium with a 5760*1080 resolution, and I frequently have > 150 tabs open across 3 browser windows, and I really have no complaints. I also occasionally peruse or develop WebGL/ASM.js/emscripten applications, so I suppose I fit into your description as someone who is "pushing the web browser hard".
All functionality I need to access quickly is accessible through shortcuts, so I don't typically need to access the "hamburger-menu" very often. The only thing I really use it for is to open the settings tab.
And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. But unfortunately, dumber is always easier to sell. I fear that, as the world depends more and more on technology (and people actually thinking straight), this feedback loop of progressing idiocy might one day undo us.
> And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead.
Changing humanity on the kind of broad scale that requires is a much broader and longer term project than any commercial entity could survive in the short term if its commercial success relied on it.
Its certainly the kind of thing I can see Google being interested in, but not the kind of thing they would be around long enough to do if they didn't have a business strategy that did better at reaching the masses of people that actually exist now as they are than that could ever do.
That does not make sense. Newspapers are a primitive medium, that does not offer a lot of customization, yet in many ways they are superior in content to news websites. In any case it does not really matter how "dumb" the presentation of content is, if the content itself isn't "dumb".
It was until it starting generating errors on the backend when they break compatibility with auto updates. Or the fact that it doesn't render Java correctly in some cases. Or the fact that it auto places the cursor in certain places for you despite you attempting to click in a specific textbox. Or the fact that it no longer allows you to set the target page of new tabs.
I was once in love with Chrome, but over the past few months I've started looking back at FireFox.
Can't help but think is is an engineers mindset here (remember forms UIs with 50 gray buttons?). UIs were usable but not appealing. Older linux window managers. Designers making things look appealing brings computing to more people (not just pros) than otherwise.
Except... what they had was appealing enough to people to use. It's unappealing enough now that people don't want to use it (even jumping to bing). Many people will continue to use it because of system defaults and such, but many will look for more usable alternatives.
Usability is 'appealing' just as much as visual button styling, maybe moreso.
You remember that horrible WM everybody seemed to be running 10-15 years ago, 'enlightenment'? Completely unusable but it looked cool with all the shapes and transparencies and etc.
+1 for Bing maps [shudders]. I tried yahoo maps and it is nearly as crappy as the new google maps...hell, Apple maps is superior to the new google maps...and I didn't see that coming.
I think you're right about trendiness and hubris associated with UI redesigns, but I think it might be a mistake to imagine this is some sort of one-time sea-change.
I think it's more of a constant churn; those who would "modernize" or "update" all sorts of designs - from software UI to software architecture to real architecture to interior decorating to graphic design and brand identity work - always have (arguably need to have) an unjustified level of self-confidence, a high opinion of their ability relative to the task they've got before them. They're always blind to the tweaking and tuning that was required to produce the thing they've set out to replace.
Most of the time, if they had an accurate idea of how monumental a task they were facing, they'd look for something else to do.
@Pacabel Absolutely true. The "design" folks are usually pressured to follow fashions. Current fashion in designs in the valley are unfortunately driven by people (ie "hipsters") with "minimal", "negative space", "beautiful" as their main values with usability, discoverability etc. being very low on the list of priorities.
Also, I can assert with some confidence, that the number of people choosing the Classic view (from the small question mark at the bottom), is being tracked as a metric of success or failure of the new UI high up on the chain of decision-making inside google.
I don't think it's 'hipsters' or young designers in general. I think situations like this happen when a bunch of people sit down in a room, and draw something up on a whiteboard. They draw all kinds of flow charts, sales funnels, color emotions, menu mockups, how X study showed 3% more users preferred the search bar 10px from the top, instead of 7px from the top, and how renaming the button from Search, to Go with a silly icon makes the company more human and will improve their image.
They get caught up in all these little details and studies, and on paper they can rationalize everything as being perfect. Then, it's a turd in reality, and everyone is left wondering what went wrong, the studies showed B was greater than A, and C was even better than B, and D surpassed C. So, how in the world can the original A be better than D? I don't know, but anyone in the design or development world can verify that it happens.
The car is perfect, big windows and lots of sunlight, a giant cupholder, a horn that plays a catchy tune. Everything is great, until you look at things as a whole.
Now, my least favorite aspects of the new Google maps. I use it on almost a daily basis because I travel often, but I'll be trying to experiment with OpenStreetMaps, or Bing.
1. The search input box hides itself. Why in the world is the search hidden, forcing me to X out of directions to see it again?
2. The blue lines for directions make it nearly impossible to tell if the road offers street view. Mousing down on the little man produces blue availability lines, but you can't see them under the directions.
3. I don't believe it's possible to split directions and street view on the screen. This was the view I used most often. Splitting them side by side would make the most sense with widescreen monitors. Now, you just get a little map in the lower left, and it does a weird expanding animation when you hover over. Previously you could drag the little man to pan around the map, but now you have to keep clicking locations to move.
4. Images at the bottom. I'm here for maps, not images, so this makes absolutely no sense. The three little images at the bottom look like buttons for terrain, map, satellite view, bit instead they open these thumbnails. Now, you have to click the earth button to get satellite images, and the weird part, the image thumbnails at the bottom have separate visible/hidden settings depending on the view. If you close the thumbnail bar when viewing a map, then switch to satellite view, you would think it would stay closed. Nope, it'll open itself, because it's enabled on satellite view. You have to toggle it off on each view.
5. The top left dropdown. Way too many boxes expanding, collapsing, etc as I try to navigate.
My wishlist...
I'm just going to mention one thing, because this has bothered me for ages. Why the heck can't I customize the level of detail? There have been countless times where I just want to see countries and their names, or countries and capital cities. I'm looking at Europe right now, and it's not displaying half of the countries, but displaying city names all over the place. If I zoom in to see all the country names, the map is crowded with hundreds of cities and roads. I always end up doing an image search online for maps, because they achieve this most basic goal. Look at the below image. Google maps on the left. It still doesn't label the Czech Republic in that image. If I zoom out one level, it'll show the Czech Republic, but hide other country names, like Montenegro. Right is just a random map I pulled off an image search. The right map is 100x easier to see the borders and countries. Google maps is an absolute disaster in these situations. If I ask someone that isn't familiar with European geography to find the Czech Republic in the below images, they'll be scratching their heads with Google maps, unless they start zooming in and out hoping the name of the desired country pops into view.
You can show me street view from a coral reef, or roads in some obscure village on a small island, but you can't show me a simple world map with country names? Where are the priorities here?
Edit: Switched my homepage to DuckDuckGo instead of Google search, and updated by bookmarks to OpenStreetMap. I'm honestly getting tired of supporting Google, since the list of things they do right gets smaller on a weekly basis. It's time I give someone else a turn.
No, not at all. It isn't really about age. I've dealt with "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s who've come up with very bad UI designs. Likewise, many of the managers or executives advocating for these redesigns are in their 30s, 40s or even 50s.
While it may be more of an issue with younger people due to a greater lack of experience and intuition, it's a phenomenon that's quite independent of age.
It's usually about a class of people who have helped to design the systems we have at present and who are therefore heavily invested in those systems in a variety of ways reacting negatively to a class of people attempting to help design new systems that they will one day defend due to their investment in them.
The idea that UX was better in the 1980s kind of gives you away here.
Are you really suggesting that people can't have second or even third careers?
A 40-year-old who got into web design after a lengthy career in print media design, if not some totally unrelated field, is often no more experienced than a 20-year-old who got directly into web design. I know this can be true, because I've worked with both types of people in the past.
Have been using it for a long while now and really don't have any major complaints. Granted, I don't use many desktop programs (browsers, terminal, chat programs and nuvola player).
Completely agree. On my workstation (6 cores + 32 GB RAM), Google Maps is unbearably slow using the Chrome browser. I can not even imagine the performance on an average computer.
My second biggest pet peeve: In old Maps, clicking on the marker will bring out a popup providing you various choices (http://imgur.com/qeLhJSd). In new Maps, clicking on the marker centers it on the screen. What the F? What's the value add in bringing the marker to center when I click it?
Just like GMail, Maps has gone from being great software to mediocre. I don't know who is making these horrible design choices at Googleplex.
Google somehow manages to make UI's worse and worse as the time progresses. Gtalk was nice, was turned into unusable mess which is Hangouts. Youtube got worse with comments and annoying force feeding of real name policy. Maps got way worse after the recent upgrade for reasons you described. GMail as well made some anti-user changes (like for example being unable to log-in from different account if there is a cookie from previous login but also some choices in inbox itself).
I wonder if there is some evil UI design department within Google because they are very consistent at messing up once good and user friendly services.
Google has ruined maps on my Android. So much so that I have reverted it back to original factory version since thats the version which had the single most useful feature of the app - the ability to add what you searched for to your contacts in one press. The number of times they have changed the UI around is ridiculous. I know Im not supposed to be fiddling with my phone while Im driving but if I ever crash its probably because once again Google changed the fucking UI again and I have to figure it out whilst en route.
What's unusable about Hangouts? I think it's a better experience on both mobile and web. And Adium still works just fine with it for person-to-person IM.
It loses messages all the time. It also sometimes pastes fragments of old messages in the middle of the conversatation
Two things GTalk never got wrong which are pretty crucial for messaging service.
The UI.. it was a total mess when they introduced it (lack of statutes, difficult to see who is available etc.) but those I have to admit improved recently.
For me it's the fact that my android phone notifies me about a new chat 5-10 minutes after I finished(!) the conversation on my desktop (gmail, webclient).
It's really annoying. My phone beeps, I think: "Oh a new chat", look at the phone, "oh, it's just that thing from 10 minutes ago".
I get that the phone can't check for new messages all the time because battery and stuff but wouldn't it be possible to have timestamps for first/last message in a converstation or something so the phone could detect that if the conversation was going on for some time already on different device then it shouldn't notify about it?
I mean it doesn't sound like rocket science, are there any deep architecture problems with that ?
Let me be contrarian here. I really like Google Map's redesign.
I have an iPhone 4, still running iOS 6. The Google Maps app has one of the best user experience I have on my phone, hands down. Turn-by-turn navigation works flawlessly. Traffic information is almost real-time, no doubt thanks to their acquisition of Waze. The app gets the little things right as well - like displaying alternate routes, along with a time estimation, directly on the map itself during navigation.
As for the desktop website, I really have no idea what you're talking about. Maps still feels pretty smooth - and I use a MacBook Air. I like the fact that they removed a lot of cruft so that you can see more of the, well, map.
Ditto, I've never had issue with it, driven all around the UK directed by Google maps in navigation mode and apart from the odd postcode fail it's been incredibly reliable in getting me from A to B.
The iOS Google maps navigation is unreliable for me. Several times, it's shown me an icon indicating a left turn while the audio tells me to turn right. Plus the app doesn't really cope well with roundabouts, which in my country is a big problem!
I'm hoping that they improve maps using their acquisition of Waze, rather than abandoning that app...
> Secondly, the desktop (and basically the tablet experience too is the same) has gotten terrible. It takes a really long time before my mouse event matters. By this time, the screen, since it's still resolving and moving things around the canvas or whatever the hell it's doing, well by the time my mouse event registers, the object I wanted has moved away. I'm now doing something else!
Even though it does more, I've noticed maps is faster on desktop for me than it used to be, and I'm not using particularly high-powered machines. But the older one has a fairly decent (if by no means current) ATI graphics card and the one with integrated Intel graphics is a fairly new laptop, so if GPU rendering is involved (WebGL or otherwise) even relative old-new performance could be very system dependent.
> Directions. Just so retarded. The accordion shit on the left. Just show me the effing directions, like you used to.
It is one more click to do that, OTOH the reason is that it provides several alternate routes (with on-map preview), to start with, plus makes the route options + multiple destination routing UIs available. Personally, I find the new UI much more useful than the old one.
> Also, just simple double-clicking to zoom. Extremely less useful than it used to be: just this one simple thing.
Is your complaint that you don't have drag to zoom any more? That's true, but then, if you are a keyboard user (which your complaint about tabbing around the directions UI suggests), you can use +/- to zoom, in addition to double-clicking.
The other day I was comparing which cities had which fast food restaurants, and how many. I zoomed in to Philadelphia and searched for "Wendies" (yes, misspelled). I suddenly found myself looking at the address of an unrelated store in Trenton, NJ. I tried it again, and it worked as expected.
I don't know what they have done to the search in maps, but that sort of thing has been happening to me frequently these days with that product. It is almost never consistent, perhaps relying on the exact zoom and position, or perhaps correcting itself when correct results hit the cache.. I don't really know. It's inconsistency makes me think that I am losing my mind sometimes. What I am sure of is that something is rotten in the state of Google Maps.
No, my complaint is not about drag to zoom. It's about double-click to zoom (the words I used, but I know sometimes things can be looked as maybe just an expression or sloppy language). Double-click. Literally. Click, click. Zoom. This no longer works correctly.
Much of the time, instead of zooming, well... it does something else, I honestly can't remember what. Maybe opens a little dialog about a business it thinks you clicked on or something. Anyway. Seriously bad. There is a way to have our cake and eat, too, to address the general tone of your comment (where you highlight the explanations and the intended benefits), but Google Maps, today, is NOT the way forward. It sucks.
> No, my complaint is not about drag to zoom. It's about double-click to zoom (the words I used, but I know sometimes things can be looked as maybe just an expression or
It was clear you were complaining about double-click to zoom, but it was far less clear what about double-click to zoom your complaint was about. I guessed you might have been complaining that double-click to zoom was the only method, as Maps used (IIRC) to also support drag to zoom, but you have no clarified your complaint.
> This no longer works correctly.
IME, it always works correctly. Like most situations where you have both a double click and click functionality, variations in the speed of a double click sometimes result in accidentally getting the functionality of single clicking twice rather than the desired double click functionality, but that's nothing special to Google Maps.
Yeah. I mean. Thank you for your reply and interest. Unusual at this thread depth... But what I'm saying, very simply, is that it used to do what I want. I used to double click, in my usual manner, nothing unusual, and Google Maps did what I wanted. It zoomed in. This now doesn't happen anymore, and it sucks, because I liked it. I hope that's super clear.
My behavior has remained exactly same, this behavior used to be linked to a positive outcome, and this behavior--unchanged--no longer can be reliably linked to a positive outcome.
In the context of this complaint, it simply does not matter if there's another way (which I do know about, by the way). That's mixing concerns. Right now, it's just purely about double click.
Just yesterday I realized that they removed the estimate of fuel costs. Why? That doesn't make sense, it's one of the things you expect to see when you search for directions. It's backwards, but they managed to "update" a product and render it less useful.
I have a four letter word B I N G. Bing maps is surprisingly good and i switched after being fed up with the disaster UI. Pulling my hair out no more !
I switched to Bing Maps a month or so ago. It's not as good as the old Google Maps -- there's less detailed information -- but at least the basic functionality works. Can't say that for the new Google Maps.
The quality of their directions has gone downhill as well. I keep getting routes that take me needlessly onto a frontage road and back to the main road; that say there's a hard right when there's a slight jog in the road; that have me take take a right and three lefts instead of just going straight and turning left, when there is an abundantly clear left-turn lane; the list goes on and on. When it first started it wasn't so great at directions, and they improved it dramatically over the next few years. Now it's back to sucking pretty badly.
Google Maps has forsaken even Android users, so switching to Android is probably not your solution, unless you also downgrade the maps app to the last 6.x release after going Android.
They did a total graphic and UX redesign of the Android app between 6.x and 7.x that made the app pretty horrible to use -- essentially they made it prettier but a LOT less useful as a gps navigation app. You now have to click like 5-7 times to do things that would require 2 or so clicks to accomplish before, which is a huge deal for a GPS app that you just want to dial in and go with, the overhead view is all fucked up now, they also introduced a ton of bugs in the initial 7.x versions -- some of them are now fixed, but it still isn't as rock solid as 6.x was, and they removed a ton of useful features.
bleh, don't get me started on the downfall of Google Maps... whatever change happened over there in their focus as of about 1.5 years ago has been an ongoing travesty, which I think is a huge problem for Android going forward since IMO Google Maps in the 6.x era was the absolute killer app for Android and what kept me not even looking at alternate phones. My next phone may very well be a Windows Phone, which is especially funny since I make a living writing Android apps.
This is exactly why I started to use basic html version of Gmail on my desktop computer. It provides almost anything I need (well, that is to write emails and reply to them), it's fast and responsive (no, not that responsive, just that it actually responds to my mouse events ;).
From time to time when I need someting more than basic email stuff, I use the standard javascript interface...
I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longer the center of the discussion. Or should not be. What we have is a single back end that's difficult to work on, and which can only target one platform. It's compiled C. Naturally, that's not so bad, as we see Perl is everywhere that Linux is. Which is ... basically everywhere.
But how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM? How about a Perl 5 to Javascript compiler (sort of like Clojurescript)? Or just any other target you can imagine. I really feel like the difficulty of working on the Perl 5 internals limits the language--and ultimately, will kill it.
"Kill it," of course, is a relative term. Perl 5 will most likely never truly die. Indeed, I'm writing (what I think is pretty cool) Perl 5 code right at this moment, and putting it on Github and CPAN.
But in terms of attracting new blood, new developers, young teams of vocal and enthusiastic programmers... I just don't see that happening. To me, it's a great sadness. I have yet to find another language that I love as much as Perl (and I wouldn't mind doing so, at this point).