Quality user experience in things that are core functions of use, and specifically them not getting bogged down (or potentially “bricked” by) the need for luxury, or ads, or ease of use.

In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.

But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didn’t have a seat cooler.

Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I don’t have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.

Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.

You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.

I hear you and in a city with daily stop and go traffic, a manual transmission becomes a bother.

I’ve seen people in Ferraris in LA traffic and it looks like agony.

So I guess context often determines an additional threshold of complexity.

I know nothing about the fundamentals of “old computing” like what Mr. Atkinson worked on as I am only 27 and have much more contemporary experience. That being said, I still very greatly mourn the loss of these old head techs because the world of tech I use today would not have been possible if not for these incredibly smart and talented individuals. To learn to code without YouTube is truly a feat I could not imagine, and the world will be a lesser place without this kind of ingenuity. Hopefully he’s making some computers in the sky a bit better!

It's amazing to remember that there was an entire generation of computers and users for whom a command line was a new and modern invention!

In the modern sense, this is very much a “I don’t want to do labor” issue. If all of the WFH jobs get sent overseas, the only thing left to do here is stuff that cannot be done on a computer from home, like construction, fabrication, forestry, food service, etc to name a few. A lot of us coder/designer/techy types are somewhat privileged in the idea that we can get paid a reasonable to high wage for doing something that is physically non-demanding and essentially only commands its price tag because of schooling and brainpower.

I can imagine a lot of us are going to get very angry if we suddenly have to haul Sheetrock for a living.

My boss recently sent me from 5 days in office to 3, and on those two days WFH I get basically nothing done. Not because I don’t try, but my position in a small company is structured in such a way that I essentially work with my boss as her right hand, so if she isn’t there to guide me or give me tasks I essentially don’t work.

I am not sure if that is a failing of her management, the job we are doing, or the industry we are in, but the lack of being able to bug her about things is essentially cutting into my bottom line.

Typically WFH would expect you (or your boss) to have availability similar to being in person, though?

I love work from home, but I can’t help but feel like its only real benefit is removing a lot of the overhead from jobs that are already considered overhead. Agree with this next part or not, it isn’t really debatable: to the average person (which we aren’t), basically anything that can be done on a computer from home is overhead.

Coding in the office? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Finance department? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically anything HR related? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Middle managers? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Graphics designers and the like? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically every job that has been moved to WFH should have been that way since computers became widespread, and it is essentially a problem that they weren’t WFH already. If it can be done entirely on a computer, it should be done from home. Leave the office space for housing and jobs that can’t be done from the comfort of one’s underwear.

I'm an engineer in the process industries (oil/gas) and we are constantly collaborating and running stuff by other engineering disciplines with different knowledge to us, and coordinating with management, logistics, maintenance, operations, commercial and contractors. Isn't there a similarly high level of interdisciplinary communication involved in coding? How do you keep up the quality of communication?

(in my industry in Western Australia we essentially never did work from home because we were Covid-free)

IME software engineering is a mix of coding, which can sometimes be fairly independent of others and require focus, and a range of collaborative activities. Face to face meetings help building the relations that help the collaborative part go smoothly. But once the high level requirements are understood and the humam relations are in place, a team can complete projects online quite effectively, even as the requirements evolve.

Others have mentioned how tooling can make the collaboration smooth. A good Internet connection, a good microphone, tooling like Jira (work backlog, prioritization and status updates), Google Drive (documentation), Zoom (VC with screen share), Slack (instant messaging for informal async comms or quickly scheduling ad hoc meetings) and whatever tool people use for scheduling meetings ahead of time.

I'm curious what part of your work wouldn't go smoothly given such a setup? Are there any physical artifacts that are difficult to share, like blueprints or models? Or is it a human aspect like gathering people for an ad hoc meeting?

There is, but remote-first companies have learnt the skills to communicate this effectively without requiring members to be face-to-face or require hours of meetings.

That's what I see causes the biggest push-back against WFH: upper management who don't know how to communicate without being in-person, so they assume WFH is bad.

Funny enough, those of us who had to deal with international teams or offshoring had to develop those skills even before remote-first companies were a thing.

I remember some of my colleagues were working in an office doing WebEx or whatever it was calls all day already back in the early 2010s.

It's funny how the internet became widespread which enabled what you say in theory but it wasn't enough, we needed a global pandemic to push us to use it as intended and get over the stone age type of culture we had before (remember doing your taxes on a frickin paper? Working only from the office? Having to sign papers with a pen?)

It makes me think about the other tech that's just waiting for the next catastrophe to become 10x more helpful.

If anyone else wants to do this, coin silver is nominally cheaper and is significantly more durable, and about as easy to melt.

I view things like a furnace or nice blowtorch as an investment into future projects that may otherwise not even be viable (in my mind) without the knowledge that I have said tool, so a small furnace for melting, while being more expensive, might expedite the process or increase quality, while also opening doors to future potential endeavors.

The only thing that kind of bothers me about libraries is that, as a tech focused individual, basically every book I read or whatever is either an ebook or a audiobook, and I don't want to have to go to the library to pick it out. I understand if I were getting physical books the need to go to a physical location to grab them, but if I'm getting something digital I don't want to have to go to the library. My library doesn't really offer an online catalog that you can just download from, only look at to see what you want to get in the library, and the free library services that they offer like the big ebook repositories don't have any books that I feel like I want to read, so it is just far easier to torrent things or have an audible subscription. Most libraries don't have really cool extra stuff like maker spaces or aquariums or anything remotely interesting other than books and maybe some computers for homeless people to use or whatever, so unless you're physically going there for a book, they're kind of pointless.

I'm not saying I don't appreciate and respect libraries, but they really just didn't change with the times around where I am, and it makes them far more inconvenient to use for someone in my particular position than it does to make them convenient. I will still support them as a public access, and I think it would be tragic if they went away, but I wish they would spend a little bit more of whatever budget they get investing on making it. Not a terrible experience to get shit online.

I really liked The Windows 7 theme and kept it on on every computer that wasn't a gaming PC, because I'm gaming computers. I want to squeez every last frame. But my dad always turned off the theme on all of his computers because it reminded him of Windows 98, and frankly, I am very sad that you cannot just get the old windows 98 theme in Windows today as a default feature. I know they're a third party apps that do that, but I wish it was still just a feature that they had because it really wouldn't add that much development time. I kind of am just over it with all of the extra bullshit in Windows, like I want an operating system with a file browser and a built-in web browser that I probably will never use, I don't want telemetry, I don't want recommended files, I don't want widgets, I don't want a news center on the side of my computer, I don't want any baked in AI bullshit.

I wish I could literally just get Windows 7 with all of the security and performance and compatibility improvements of Windows 11. Also a functioning search bar, which would be really nice.

For me, the part that is most wild is that I have never heard a Japanese onomatopoeia that sounds remotely close to what I would actually assume the sound to sound like. when I was a little kid and I was studying Japanese, it always made me think that Japanese people had different ears than I did, because if they're hearing all of these sounds the way they are and I'm hearing them all the way I am, there's no possible universe where we are describing them the same way, which would mean that we have to hear them differently. I now realize it's likely more of a societal thing, but it's still interesting nonetheless

It is really interesting!

I find it very similar to english though. Cows don't actually make a sound anything like "moo", and birds don't "chirp".

I think you're right on when you say it's cultural.

Another important thing that shapes these things in Japanese is just how old the culture is. So much is inherited from ancient times...