nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

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?

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

Ger Roe

I am talking about a GPRN (gas), I haven't seen one with 8 digits before (in dealing with several relatives accounts).

Alun has confirmed a seven digit GPRN with one leading zero. Still not eight. It all highlights a lack of standardisation causing unnecessary confusion for the consumer. It is probably more in the remit of the CRU to clarify and specify technical and billing requirements (god help us)🙄

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584212#Comment_119584212

no idea what you are on about.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584193#Comment_119584193

The bill amount

10,000,000

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584189#Comment_119584189

where else would you get it from?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584172#Comment_119584172

That might be the bill

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584090#Comment_119584090

Exactly. Many places scrimp on BA and just have the programmers do it.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584075#Comment_119584075

What it does is great a complete unnecessary support process loop, and you treat users like mushrooms.

Its creating work (especially for IT) when the objective should be to eliminate it.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584001#Comment_119584001

I have an 8 digit mprn.

jmayo

Software design has gone to shyte over the years, a lot of it thanks to the likes of Microsoft.

Yeah I know I sing this tune regularly, but they were one of the prime movers in the way software was developed being the leading player in the industry.

There is no other industry where you sell a customer something and it is up to them to continously find the issues and try fix them.

And where it is expected it is going to have to be fixed the minute you start using it.

Imagine you buy a new car and it needs an engine change the minute you buy it.

Actually scrub that, the software on cars often has to be upgraded nowadays.

This development lifecycle has come across into other areas like vehicles, medical systems and of course the most glaringly biggest fookup of all, the 737 Max.

You can get away with poorly designed software in things like a PC or phone, but not in something that flies through the sky at 35,000 feet.

Fookups there don't end well.

Showing my age, but back in the early days software had to be well designed, well built when processing power, especially memory and disk space was a premium with sever limitations.

Now you can cobble together anything and who cares if it comes in a 4GB downloadable file (disk and DVD now long gone), needs to run 10 services, a dozen processes, takes 2GB memory to run and is riddled with memory leaks eating up even more memory once you do anything.

And don't get me started on modern fooking websites.

You go onto likes of Vodafone to be greeted with big pictures of a someone holding a phone up to their ear, or right now a kid and parent looking at a computer screen.

We all fooking know what a phone looks like and how to use the fooking thing without being shown a fooking picture.

We almost all fooking know what a laptop looks like and how you view one.

To get to relevant links you have to scroll for pages full of large images offering nothing, of course except pictures that pander to the obligatory box ticking inclusivity mullarkey where almost every pic has to have equal makeup of men/women, black/white/yellow/red, disabled, etc, etc.

Funnily enough they never have fat, old, balding types.

EDIT: three.ie is even worse now.

It is even more of a joke when you view things like equipment for service or engineering industry to be greeted with images of gorgeous spotlessly clean clothed women using the equipment in a work environment.

And yes I know a lot of that may be down to morons who call themselves marketing executives.

Yeah I know websites are built to be cross platform, but they often stink and end up looking like Fisher Price built them.

Ok rant over, now back to trying to get yet another piece of god forsaken software to run again.

SuperBowserWorld

Bank of Ireland app was not even displaying the euro symbol until recently IIRC.

Ush1

That's more down to business analysts. Programmers will release any old shite if you let them.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583969#Comment_119583969

These decisions are made all the time due to other restrictions in work environments. You don't make something idiot proof because they will make a better idiot. It stops unnecessary time wasting and gets the desired outcome of somebody contacting the service desk when they should without panic. It works better than giving them the full information and support know what the errors mean and they are the ones that need the information not the user.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584029#Comment_119584029

If the GPRN is the only number you are worried about on a gas bill then you're doing ok

Alun

On my gas bill from Energia the GPRN is 7 digits with 1 leading zero.

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.

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.

Flinty997

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

Exactly.

Flinty997

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

Very common.

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.

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.

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.

SuperBowserWorld

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

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.

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.

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.

[Deleted User]

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.

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

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.

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

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.