General > General Technical Chat
A Companion to the X-Y Problem - The IKEA Effect
nctnico:
--- Quote from: tooki on May 30, 2020, 10:34:11 am ---That all sounds nice and dandy, but it’s not just about the look of the controls. As you mention, they differ in operation, too. But more importantly, not all controls exist in every OS. MacOS in particular has a number of native controls with no Windows equivalent.
I understand the appeal, to a developer, of a cross-platform GUI toolkit. But in practice they entail a LOT of sacrifices and compromises.
--- End quote ---
Not with wxWidgets. wxWidgets is not made to just offer where OSses happen to have an overlap because the creators understand that that would lead to poor results. There is plenty of support for OS specific features.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: tooki on May 30, 2020, 10:34:11 am ---That all sounds nice and dandy, but it’s not just about the look of the controls. As you mention, they differ in operation, too. But more importantly, not all controls exist in every OS. MacOS in particular has a number of native controls with no Windows equivalent.
I understand the appeal, to a developer, of a cross-platform GUI toolkit. But in practice they entail a LOT of sacrifices and compromises.
--- End quote ---
I remember an article about that, which I found interesting. It basically concluded that cross-platform GUIs were often not a good idea, and that it was in the end often better to factor your code so that most of it can be made portable (and thus cross-platform), but that GUIs were often better dealt with with OS-specific code. Of course it all depends on the project, on the team, etc. Just keep in mind that (unless you're very familiar with one) using a cross-platform GUI toolkit often involves a relatively steep learning curve, then sometimes wasting days or weeks to figure out how to work around some limitations. Sometimes that time is better used writing dedicated GUI code for each targeted OS (not saying this is true in general either.)
For a detailed (but certainly opiniated) summary: https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/sad-state-of-cross-platform-gui-frameworks/
Mr. Scram:
Much of it seems to boil down to that essential first step when dealing with questions: figure out what people are asking. Not just what they're asking, but what they're really asking. Reading between the lines is essential. I've learnt to deny perfectly valid requests because they feel off, until I'm either satisfied that the request makes sense or the requesting party does indeed understand the nature of their request. The false negative rate seems to be much lower than the false positive.
Unfortunately people are often so helpful that they'll just dive in and start answering the wrong question, confusing the asking party and themselves.
madires:
It's also something you have to learn when you are providing pre-sales support as an engineer. It's crucial to understand what the customer actually wants to achieve, i.e. the whole story and not just some small task inside a larger project. You'll encounter the X-Y problem regularly. In those cases we've often found a more elegant and/or less expensive solution, or even overturned a concept completely, and the customer was extremely happy to get what he really wanted and not what he thought he would need.
NiHaoMike:
See this thread for a nice example:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/calculating-heat-dissipation-requirements-for-high-pressure-compressor/?all
Original statement of problem:
--- Quote ---I'm trying to figure out the actual cost and complexity of setting up a high pressure air compressor (3000-4500psi), small high pressure holding tank, plus a couple pressure regulators downstream to step down to normal shop air 40-90psi. I have occasional use for high ~3000psi pressure
--- End quote ---
Detail that suggested a more workable solution:
--- Quote ---I have an outdoor steel enclosure with steel grating over vents that is suitable for failure testing parts with very thin plastic walls, but even that basic testing will require a little more pressure than a typical consumer air compressor can produce. Doing failure testing of parts with thicker walls will require a trip to an outdoor gun range or similar location for obvious safety reasons. There is no practical way to test the reliability and safety of a design without destructive testing in a safe and controlled manner, like placing the DUT in a vented steel enclosure and then over-pressurizing the thing until it fails. I'm sure I'll come up with more uses for HP as time goes on.
--- End quote ---
I suggested a cheap pressure washer would allow a safer way to destructive test using water.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version