How much time do we waste on car problems? Neighbor problems? Political problems? Grocery problems?
Not much.
How much time do we waste on first-past-the-post problems?
Right and how much time do we save by having computers? Fixing the problems is just the cost of doing business
Yeah, this seems like a pretty dumb conclusion. I expect that as far back as you look, people always took advantage of tools that save them time. But then they always also spent a fair amount of that time (that they could have been working), just maintaining/fixing/making their tools. I think the truth is that computers are very useful tools, but the maintenance and troubleshooting can be quite time consuming.
I will continue using computers though.
Using computers and also having to deal with their problems is still far more betterer than not using computers at all.
Also in the context of working, this isn’t just computers. It’s tools in general, and a computer is a type of tool. Problems with your saw? Problems with your batteries? Problems with access to electricity and your extension cords not being long enough? Problem with losing your 10mm sockets? If you’re a trucker or driver the problem could be your vehicle. Etc etc etc.
This article is stupid. Tools break, they always have and always will. The tools we have now are better than they have ever been. They will probably keep getting more and more efficient, but they will still break. Because tools break.
Computers would be far less interesting if there weren‘t any problems to solve. Fiddling around really is half the fun for me, even when it can get frustrating.
Please don’t get a job where you have windows, cloud, sharepoint , dynamics and one drive forced on you (plus a load of oracle). it makes you fucking hate computers.
We use Teams and what frustrates me about it is that any „fix“ to a problem the program introduced itself (because teams just tends to be quirky like that for some reason) is just a workaround to use teams as little as possible. That sure is frustrating.
Yes agreed. It also seems to change very often. so as soon as you do figure out how to do something, it changes.
I also wish it didn’t allow shared documents at all, it’s actually worse than sharepoint at that. The number of people who think it works though, then you have talk them through how to find the shared ducument (as if i can remember) and actually share it effectively. Waste of time because its pretendng to do something that it is quite bad at.
It was so much more usable when it was just skype/lync and it just did calls, screenshare and chat.
I agree for my personal usage, but I do think there’s value in trying to make software easier to use for less technically minded users, while ideally still allowing the configurabilty and complexity for power users.
if something broke on Windows or I tried to fix an issue that was bugging me on that OS it felt like a chore and was frustrating. If something breaks or I have an issue I want to fix on Arch I actually have fun and enjoy doing it.
The only problem with that is that it can really lead you down a rabbit hole. you fix or improve one thing and then you start wondering what else you can fix and improve on your install and all of sudden the day is gone becaue you’ve decided you want cmus to display album covers.
Jokes on you! My whole life is a waste of time
I think we’re all just chasing our tails sometimes
Most of my time is lost on cloud services that got shittier over time.
My personal computer just works on Linux.
I certainly don’t. If I can’t fix it in 5 minutes, I just ignore the problem. And I wish everyone else would too and stop complaining about the smoke coming out of the machine. It’s fine.
It’s not a waste if I’m getting paid to do it full time
I wish I could do that
Using the word “we” loosely.
Developers: Those are rookie numbers
I’m going for the high score!
I’m an IT engineer, 100% of my time is spent on computer problems.
You don’t eat, sleep or go to the bathroom?
Someone call Harrison Ford, we have a replikant!
I’m a home server hobbyist. I like to think of them as computer solutions.
Am I too millennial to have all these problems with computers? They’ve been in our homes for about forty years now. There’s no excuse not to sit down and learn the basics of how it operates.
That number was more like 30% with a windows laptop and all the security crap Microsoft convinced my company to install. It was so painfully slow and glitchy. So I went rogue and put Linux on my company laptop 8 months ago and I’m not looking back.
Yep. Over here running Fedora KDE 40 on my desktop, dealing with zero issues. My use case is pretty simple, but everything I use just works, no issues.
If your use case is “pretty simple,” you’re unlikely to have problems with any operating system.
In my case I’m a manager so I don’t do any real work. Linux is great for an Edge browser, ms365 paper pushing wana be engineer.
Yeah, I know. What of it?
Whatever. I waste probably 20 hours a week on “work”.
Them’s rookie numbers.
Yeah bruh, I probably work like 22, 24 hours a week. I’m paid for 40, but let’s be real.
We are wasting up to 20% of our time with bronze problems.
– Some grumpy dude circa 3300 BCThis. We used to waste time repairing the mechanical things when we could have been planting, or wasting time dealing with plant blights and livestock woes when we could have been hunting for wild game.
Some people still do. Fuck Jhon Deere.
Must be the crappy copper from Ea-nāṣir
Do they include “fighting with anti patterns and dark patterns” as broken? It’s pretty insane how much misalignment there is between what most people want their computers to do and what the companies want people to do, which seems to largely be “look at ads literally everywhere”.
Personal computing is badly sick today.
Even for Linux users.
Why for Linux? Its always painted as Zion for matrix-dwellers?
Well, because it’s still enormously complex and growing, and because, in user applications, comparing today’s XFCE to 2010’s XFCE is sad, and because comparing today’s Gnome to Gnome 2 in its prime is sad, and because comparing today’s KDE, eh, even to KDE4 - the same.
Because it’s becoming less and less logical, wave after wave people suffering NIH syndrome and\or thinking that mimicking MacOS or Windows is very smart erode it, and because the Web is ugly and becoming uglier.
And because CWM initial configuration takes 15 minutes to write and forget, and there’s no Wayland compositor which would take the same amount of time to set up for me, with the same easiness of use.
Anyway, what I wrote in that comment was a subjective feeling and I’m trying to rationalize it retroactively now, which is the same as lying.
Of course it’s what you said for Windows and MacOS users.
It’s painted like that because it is. It’s the biggest bastion of freedom.
