The deterioration of IT

Ray Palmer

I have been dealing with computers for 40 years and it is my profession. As a result I have seen a lot of different operating systems, GUI, hardware etc...

Initially computers were certainly not user friendly but with time you could figure it out using books. Many kids my age at the time just used the computers to play games but I was programing including creating programs for the maths homework in school and selling it. Back then it actually meant I had to get a lend of certain computers to reprogram it for them. Even basic wasn't uniform on home computers (not PCs).

Anyway going through all the various different changes to IT computers became more uniform making life a lot easier. There was still variation with Apple being an obvious example of radically different interface. Time moved on as Windows became more like Apple and vice versa. Overall lots less variation and web interfaces being more popular and now the basic way to do most things

The weird thing is standards were way higher before. Now I go to a website, app or program and they don't follow design standards or even consistent with itself. I remember the manuals explaining the rules for using drop down, toggle button, prompts etc... This is the language of the design. Now you can see that different programmers did different parts and don't know or agree a standard.

Went to a website and it asked for my number with a prefilled drop down showing "+353" and you enter your number without the zero is what that means. Enter my number as it prompts but it throws up an error saying "this is not a valid UK number" I enter the leading zero and it then accept it. How this was programmed and tested to have this just shows how the standards were not considered or known?

I worked in a company that needed to upgrade the GUI to make it easier to use their main software. The whole point was to make it so it was consistent and the "highest" standard. They proceeded to remove all keyboard shortcuts, change table selections with drop downs, prompt buttons were used for multiple functions but not actual prompts etc... It made anybody with experience as slow as a person who just arrived in the door, screens were unusable as result of drop downs etc... The showed it to the users and they were horrified but they put it in anyway as it was "new" and "better", mild improvements to response times was all it did. Spoke to GUI developer and he didn't even know the names of GUI items or what they were for.

The young IT staff I meet now find anything that isn't GUI like a website they get really confused. There is an old software that works like old Apple with drag and drop functions that actually do things. Fill in a form and then you drag it onto a application item and it processes it. Very simple but the new guys can't grasp it. Am I the only one seeing this?

victor8600

Them youn wans don't know nothing!

Soon they will be voice programming like: "Computer, build me a nice website"

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583432#Comment_119583432

Don't get me wrong older people are making these decision and don't know what the standards are either so not directing the projects correctly and many will never use the software themselves. They have a budget and a project so they do by budget and timelines regardless of the outcome. When you see €1million spent on downgrading a user interface it is very disheartening. They could have improved the existing GUI for €100k instead.

EmmetSpiceland

I try to avoid dealing with the IT grunts as much as, humanly, possible.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583476#Comment_119583476

You do use websites, apps and programs though?

Donald Trump

I used to be with IT, but then they changed what IT was. Now what I'm with isn't IT, and what's IT seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too

Lewis_Benson

We IT folk try to avoid users as much as humanly possible.

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583476#Comment_119583476

The feeling is mutual believe me

Nate--IRL--

GUI design has definitely followed form over function with the rise of touch interfaces.

More whitespace, and less information on screen at one time, has become the fashion for non touch interfaces now too.

Try using a modern interface on that 14" monitor you have stashed in your datacenter rack, it's impossible to navigate.

Nate

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583514#Comment_119583514

Except there are IT people like me who are there to deal with users and the less social IT workers.

Ubbquittious

It is gas the amount of people who don't know how a filesystem works. They are able to wing it to a certain extent because the programs they use always save in the same place and there is the "recently used files" list but if you tell them a file is in a certain folder no way will they be able to find it.

BrianD3

The +353 zero issue - I would have thought that assuming the user will input the leading zero (and programming the system to remove it if they do) is preferable than assuming that the user will not input it. Everyone knows their phone number and how to dial number from within their own country. But far fewer people dial international numbers and many wouldn't know about removing the leading zero.

Flinty997

They are either written to look flashy without considering how they function.

Or they are written by programmers, who have no eye for design, or usability.

But look at boards. The replaced it with new forum software that was in almost every way far worse than the old version. They completely lost perspective of what was important.

Ten of Swords

But Moore's law still applies, right?

RIGHT????

😱😱😱

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583584#Comment_119583584

No its stopped around 2010. Tech plateaued.

SuperBowserWorld

So, the OSs have native support for consistent UIs across applications.

The problem is cross platform apps and web apps which are lowest common denominator and much more malleable. E.g. the MS Teams desktop app is broken and less functional than native MS apps for example ...

It's incredible that these UIs keep changing and software gets rewritten across the board. New hardware required and very little actual productivity added in the apps. Apple, MS, Google all reinventing their own wheels.

It's a trillion dollar snake oil salesman trick.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583584#Comment_119583584

Moore's law is dead

We now live in the era of the 'chiplet'.

No not THAT type of chiplet, the computer one:

https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/amd-intel-chiplets-moores-law

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583626#Comment_119583626

MS OFfice365 and associated apps have so much bad UI/UX design. its consistent with the horror of the ribbon though from earlier disasters.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583560#Comment_119583560

Thing is it did nothing right. It should see if there was a zero and accept when there or not there but the error message was wrong too as it was an Irish number not a UK.

If they wanted it with the zero they should state it rather than use the international standard which specifically does not require it

erlichbachman

Web 2.0, the dummy proof of the Internet has killed IT. Information Technology should be complicated, we IT people should be able to walk into a company and see bemusement, bewilderment and panic on the faces of management as they gaze at a screen. We were the heroes as we Ctrl Alt Deleted and killed a rogue process, rebooted and rescued, seen as mensa compatible when we simply tightened a VGA, or plugged an RJ45 back in.

Nowadays we have to mention Web 3.0 to garnish the same accolades, we don't need to be smart, we just need to know something that someone else hasn't yet learned - don't give up people, stay ahead.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583698#Comment_119583698

This reminds me where I complained about the lack of meaningful error messages, and explained why an error message with technobabble was "error 7" or such was entirely pointless to an end user. But the Program manager said it was a valid error message. I gave up at that point. You get a lot of that pedantic BS in IT these days.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583761#Comment_119583761

Used to be you could do magic with a computer, save people hours of tedious task, do amazing things.

These days its all confusing people so badly they give up and return to using pencil and paper.

Fallout2022

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583560#Comment_119583560

You know that some people will include the zero and some won't. You branch the code to deal with either. You can trim the zero and send

the number on to the same function or you can send a message box back to the user to clarify or change their input.

The thing shouldn't just present an error code and come to a stop.

SuperBowserWorld

I'm not sure what that ribbon ever added. It's so confusing.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583768#Comment_119583768

Common practice to give error messages the user doesn't understand so they don't do anything more damaging. When errors appear and you want the user to contact support desks using such an error message can be put in. The amount of panicked call you can get from an innocent error message that has a line like "possible data breach" in it means it is best to hide the information. We had one error message that was very intentionally misleading to catch people gaming the system after repeated warnings.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583557#Comment_119583557

It amazes me when I am in large companies dealing with UAT and finding how poor their computer skills are and these people are the business experts. From simple file management to people claiming they are excel experts because they enter data on a sheet.

Was working in a place on their reporting with one very vocal manager claiming everything is working very well with excel and their reports always match. The very reason I was there was massive reporting differences between the systems. After about 4 hours I found the issue. The original excel sheets sent out to the different areas would have worked fine and detected discrepancies at an early stage. There were formulas that checked one lot of figure entered with another set of figures entered onto the sheet. When it didn't match you were to investigate. THe people filling in the sheets just removed the formula and made it always self balance.

They had been doing this for 10 years and after everything was added up they could not account for €4million. Nobody fired or any actions because people didn't know the full purpose of the report and nobody knew who started the practice (we did really but they were just a lowly grunt who didn't know what difference it made). The fact that all the various managers and accountants didn't notice the mistake was the real issue.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583833#Comment_119583833

Sorry but thats a half assed way of dealing with it.

Its variation of security through obscurity.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583927#Comment_119583927

Very common.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583828#Comment_119583828

Exactly.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583557#Comment_119583557

Reminds me of this (Not safe for work)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE&ab_channel=JoshWeinberg

There always that sinking feeing when you see their eye glaze over when you mention basic computer tasks.

Ger Roe

It is the lack of attention to detail that causes problems.

A recent example.

Having changed gas energy supplier for an elderly relative , I was asked on the new supplier website to input the GPRN. I went to the previous paper bill issued and there was a four digit GPRN number listed. The number was not accepted on the website - not enough digits (needed to be eight). After faffing around for a while, I then realised that the website input required four zero's to be placed before the four actual digits proclaimed to be the GPRN on paper.

My elderly relative would never have able to handle that confusion - did no one test the web input system,before it went live? I haven't yet seen an eight digit GPRN number anyway.