Breaking backwards compatiblity

[Nick Sabalausky]

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message 
news:mailman.478.1331478431.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 04:12:12AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "so" <so at so.so> wrote in message
>> news:pzghdzojddybajuguxwa at forum.dlang.org...
> [...]
>> > No matter how much hardware you throw at it, somehow it gets slower
>> > and slower.  New hardware can't keep up with (ever increasing)
>> > writing bad software.
>> >
>> > http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=9
>> >
>>
>> That is a *FANTASTIC* article. Completely agree, and it's very 
>> well-written.
>
> I really liked the point about GUIs. Many resources are used for
> graphical elements that only have aesthetic value AND tends to distract
> the user from actual work. IOW, you're wasting CPU, RAM, and disk time
> (which comes from spending lots of hard-earned cash for that expensive
> hardware upgrade) just for some silly eye-candy that has no value
> whatsoever except to distract from the task at hand, that is, to
> accomplish what you set out to do in the first place.
>
> That's why I use ratpoison as my WM. Who needs title bars with fancy
> colored icons, gradient shading, and *shadows*?! I mean, c'mon.

Actually, I rather like my black windows with "dark-blue to light-purple" 
gradient title bars. I've been using that scheme for years and I don't think 
I'll ever change it:

http://www.semitwist.com/download/img/shots/myColorScheme.png

> You're
> trying to get work done, not admire how clever the UI designers were and
> how cool a color gradient is. If I wanted to admire eye-candy, I'd be
> playing computer games, not working. (That said, though, I did at one
> point have a Compiz installation for the sole purpose of showing off
> Linux to clueless people. :-P)
>

Before I upgraded my Linux box to Kubuntu 10.04, it was 
Ubuntu...umm...something before 10.04, and although I'm not normally a 
UI-eye-candy guy, I fell in love with the window physics effect whle draggng 
windows. And it was properly hardware accellerated, so it worked very fast 
even being on an old 32-bit single-core. My brother, who had recently gotten 
a Mac laptop (although he's now become the third member of my family who's 
gotten fed up with Apple) saw it and exclaimed "I want jelly windows!"

But then in Kubuntu 10.04, the effect no longer works (or maybe it just 
doesn't work with hardware accelleration, I don't remember now), so I had to 
give it up :(

'Course, I'm more than ready to give up KDE itself now. Move to something 
like Trinity or LXDE or XFCE. And Debian 6. Canonincal just keeps getting 
crazier and crazier. I don't want their new Linux-based iOS of an operating 
system. OTOH, Debian's "versioning" system is irritationly moroninc. 
Squeeze, wheeze, wtf? They don't even have any natural ordering for god's 
sake! At least Ubuntu's moronic names have *that* much going for them! I 
don't care what Pixar character my OS is pretending to be, and I don't 
*want* to care.

> Then the points about background processes, auto-updates, and boot-up
> times. These are things about Windows that consistently drive me up the
> wall. Background processes are all nice and good as long as they are (1)
> necessary, and (2) don't do stupid things like hog your CPU or thrash
> your disk every 12 seconds. But the way Windows works, every time you
> install something, it insists on starting up at boot-time, incessantly
> checking for auto-updates every 12 seconds, downloading crap from online
> without your knowledge, and THEN pop up those intrusive, distracting,
> and utterly annoying "Plz Update Meeee!" dialogs. Ugh. Everytime I see
> one of those dialogs I have this urge to delete the app and expunge all
> traces of it from the system with extreme prejudice.
>
> At least on Linux you can turn off this crap and/or otherwise prevent it
> from doing stupid things. But on Windows you have no choice. Attempting
> to disable stuff usually breaks said apps, or affects system usability
> in some way.
>

I just avoid those programs (and immediately disable the upgrade nag 
screens). For example, I will *not* allow Safari or Chrome to even *touch* 
my computer. (When I want to test a page in Chrome, I use SRWare Iron 
instead. If SRWare Iron ever goes away, then Chrome users will be on their 
own when viewing my pages.)

>
> -- 
> Ignorance is bliss... but only until you suffer the consequences!

So very true :)