General > General Technical Chat
So very much this, for tech projects as well...
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tooki:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on October 19, 2021, 08:11:23 pm ---Well, it’s impossible to predict every unintended consequence. The important thing, the duty abrogated by so many people, organizations, etc, is to recognize when something is no longer good, and to change it.
--- End quote ---
True.  My point is, do "sufficient" checking on the idea before promoting it.  What "sufficient" is, depends on the situation, and is not the point.  I'm not asking for perfect, because perfect is impossible.

I'm only asking that the checking that is done is done before the idea is being promoted, and not after.  Step 2, not step 3.

--- End quote ---
In other words, perform due diligence.



--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on October 19, 2021, 08:11:23 pm ---USA never approved it
--- End quote ---
Oh, they actually did, in 1998, to combat multiple myeloma (in combination with dexamethasone)

--- End quote ---
Well I was referring to approval as the sedative and antiemetic wonder drug that it was initially marketed as. (But yeah, as worded, it is technically incorrect.)

But you are correct that it was later approved, under extraordinarily strict restrictions, for various cancers and a few other things. It never got "normal" approval.


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm --- ...by inhibiting angiogenesis –– suppressing new blood vessel growth so the tumours cannot grow.  This effect of thalidomide wasn't discovered until 1994, though.  (The thalidomide tragedy occurred in 1957-1961, causing miscarriages and birth defects.)
[…]

--- End quote ---
I'm well aware, obviously.


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm ---My own experience and main reason for personally objecting to promoting first and then checking/testing, is that it is ubiquitous in software, including in commercial software.  Any real testing nowadays is done by the end users, with the vendor indemnity capped at the price of the product.  Checking done by paying customers who get no recourse –– except, at best, in rare occasions, their money back.

--- End quote ---
Though I am thoroughly disgusted by the insufficient testing most software undergoes before release, that's really unrelated to the original post.

The problems in software are generally bugs — that is, errors, that is, faulty implementation. That says nothing about whether the idea (i.e. the overall approach to the software design and architecture) is sound.
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: tooki on October 20, 2021, 02:10:42 am ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm ---My own experience and main reason for personally objecting to promoting first and then checking/testing, is that it is ubiquitous in software, including in commercial software.  Any real testing nowadays is done by the end users, with the vendor indemnity capped at the price of the product.  Checking done by paying customers who get no recourse –– except, at best, in rare occasions, their money back.

--- End quote ---
Though I am thoroughly disgusted by the insufficient testing most software undergoes before release, that's really unrelated to the original post.

The problems in software are generally bugs — that is, errors, that is, faulty implementation. That says nothing about whether the idea (i.e. the overall approach to the software design and architecture) is sound.

--- End quote ---
I absolutely disagree.  Most software seems to be aggregated together rather than designed.  As if the developers had an idea, stuck something together, and started promoting it.  "It is up to users to decide if they find it useful."

Perhaps more fitting to the original comic is on the user side.  A PHB (usually CTO) reads a business article, and has a great idea: we need to get into the cloud to save/make (more) money!  And so tells his underlings to do it.  They point out it is a solution in search of a problem, and are labeled as "not go-getters".  So usually they just do as they're told, documenting their quiet objections, so that when it fails, they hopefully won't be picked as the scapegoat.  In the end, it's the customers who wonder why they now need an internet connection to use the tool that used to work just fine standalone, without any benefits.  This would have been avoided if the PHB had checked the idea before promoting it.  See?
tooki:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 20, 2021, 05:01:35 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on October 20, 2021, 02:10:42 am ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 19, 2021, 08:48:36 pm ---My own experience and main reason for personally objecting to promoting first and then checking/testing, is that it is ubiquitous in software, including in commercial software.  Any real testing nowadays is done by the end users, with the vendor indemnity capped at the price of the product.  Checking done by paying customers who get no recourse –– except, at best, in rare occasions, their money back.

--- End quote ---
Though I am thoroughly disgusted by the insufficient testing most software undergoes before release, that's really unrelated to the original post.

The problems in software are generally bugs — that is, errors, that is, faulty implementation. That says nothing about whether the idea (i.e. the overall approach to the software design and architecture) is sound.

--- End quote ---
I absolutely disagree.  Most software seems to be aggregated together rather than designed.  As if the developers had an idea, stuck something together, and started promoting it.  "It is up to users to decide if they find it useful."

--- End quote ---
I think it’s more that the MBAs decided that they “need” a function, and then throw it to the developers to do in 6 months when it actually needs a year or two. Then the sales department starts selling it, pushing it to customers as a magic bullet, and oh, they promised it to the customers at month 4 — surely you can just pull a few weekends to get it done in 4 months instead of 6! Of course, neither the MBAs nor sales folks actually consulted the developers, and even if they did, they’d ignore what the devs said!

My point, though, worded poorly in the middle of the night, was that even software with a fundamentally sound design and architecture can be awful to use because of bugs and missing (or hastily implemented) features that are actually essential, but weren’t ready in time.

And yeah, lots of poorly designed software is out there too, stable or not.
*cough* so many Linux GUI apps *cough*.



--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 20, 2021, 05:01:35 am ---Perhaps more fitting to the original comic is on the user side.  A PHB (usually CTO) reads a business article, and has a great idea: we need to get into the cloud to save/make (more) money!  And so tells his underlings to do it.  They point out it is a solution in search of a problem, and are labeled as "not go-getters".  So usually they just do as they're told, documenting their quiet objections, so that when it fails, they hopefully won't be picked as the scapegoat.  In the end, it's the customers who wonder why they now need an internet connection to use the tool that used to work just fine standalone, without any benefits.  This would have been avoided if the PHB had checked the idea before promoting it.  See?

--- End quote ---
Absolutely. Juicero comes to mind…

And remember how in the mid 90s, VR was supposed to become the next big thing, so everyone started working on “interactive” virtual rooms and crap, giving us “Where’s Waldo?”-like interfaces on CD-ROMs that used an insufferably long animation to “walk” you from the lobby to the Products room when you clicked on that door. Your CD-ROM drive would frantically seek for a few seconds before letting you inside, where you could click illegibly tiny thumbnails of their product boxes, which would fly off the shelf in another insufferably long animation to show you the front box art in dithered 256-color, 640x480 pixel glory. Then you could flip it over and read the back…

Oh wait, no, after you just force-quit the Macromind Director player in frustration, you just grabbed the catalog the damned CD-ROM came with to begin with…  ;D
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: tooki on October 20, 2021, 12:49:02 pm ---My point, though, worded poorly in the middle of the night, was that even software with a fundamentally sound design and architecture can be awful to use because of bugs and missing (or hastily implemented) features that are actually essential, but weren’t ready in time.

And yeah, lots of poorly designed software is out there too, stable or not.
*cough* so many Linux GUI apps *cough*.
--- End quote ---
I am in full agreement!

To me, checking if an idea is any good –– say, a GUI layout ––, involves at least a quick-and-dirty check.  Back of the envelope stuff; maybe a quick form-y test in Glade or QDesigner, or even a quick HTML form page; then an unit-test-like back-end test program to see if the UI provides sufficient data in usable form to do the job, while still being intuitive and easy for users.

When I implemented web pages a couple of decades ago, a common problem was that people had ideas on what they'd like to see on the web, but were very reluctant to provide the content itself, especially in universities (at least in Finland).  They had an idea they felt was good, and pushed really hard for their implementation, before even making sure the content needed is available.  But, it turns out the (preliminary/un-proofread) content itself is the test if the idea is good, and the visual layout (that most people would instead dabble with) is just a final touch.  When the design idea is "sold" before the content even exists, you get web sites with poor content and unintuitive navigation and structure... but when the idea of the site is based on existing content, and about that content, you can get damn good design and implementation surprisingly quick.  In my experience, the text content is the hardest to obtain on any website project.


--- Quote from: tooki on October 20, 2021, 12:49:02 pm ---And remember how in the mid 90s, VR was supposed to become the next big thing, so everyone started working on “interactive” virtual rooms and crap, giving us “Where’s Waldo?”-like interfaces on CD-ROMs that used an insufferably long animation to “walk” you from the lobby to the Products room when you clicked on that door. Your CD-ROM drive would frantically seek for a few seconds before letting you inside, where you could click illegibly tiny thumbnails of their product boxes, which would fly off the shelf in another insufferably long animation to show you the front box art in dithered 256-color, 640x480 pixel glory. Then you could flip it over and read the back…

Oh wait, no, after you just force-quit the Macromind Director player in frustration, you just grabbed the catalog the damned CD-ROM came with to begin with…  ;D

--- End quote ---
Ha!  I managed to avoid the VR craze myself!  (I did a few Macromedia Director multimedia projects 1996-2005 or so (last version I used was 7.0); mostly for Macs, but also online for use with the Shockwave plug-in.)
We did use "room" and "wall" analogs in a couple of projects, but limited to 2D, because the environment just couldn't do 3D properly.  (Well, I did do a couple of small (very limited pixel size) 3D examples for web use and such, even a couple of online games, so you could do 3D, just not VR or anything like that near full-screen in Director.  Even "sprite" size had to be carefully restricted, to make animations 'smooth' (not horribly steppy).)

When somebody had a design idea, I did tiny "unit tests"/"demos" on a not-top-of-the-line PowerMac with placeholder visuals, to see if the idea works in practice or not, before allowing it to be accepted into the overall design: checking the idea is feasible in practice before letting anyone get excited about it.  Worked really well, too: it's easy to avoid intra-team friction when everybody (including the artists!) can see and experience the issues in real life.  It did mean I had to spend quite a lot of extra effort, but I was young and excited...  Besides, those quick and dirty tests sometimes caused even better ideas to come up (when everyone got a better intuitive grip on the real-world capabilities of the environment), so I still consider it was definitely worthwhile.
RJSV:
Went thru the TECH side, not as much the MARKET grasp (important!).
My ideas, generally, produce un-recognizable 'Tech Lookin' wierdos, but...(Apple Comp.s we're 'weird', in the day).
That one, involving mechanical elements, in computing. FIRST SERIES OF THOUGHT:
  #1. come up with new idea (mechanical logic demo)
  #2. WHAT THE HELL: would THAT look like ?
  #3. Try build the new-lookin thing.
  #4.  Explain that contraption, as novel, to Patent Attorney.
  And, #5. (TRY) Spend, the estimated money profit windfall, BEFORE proceeding w any testing...
  (#6.) (never got to 'test' phase).
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