WE INTERRUPT THIS EPISODE, FOR A BRIEF PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY
I'm taking a brief detour from the Workbench enhancement series to write an open letter to any OS or OS enhancement developers out there. Recently, I wrote a review of a programming language from Carl Sassenrath, a man well known for his contributions to the Amiga OS. One of the guiding principles of Rebol is simplicity. In fact one of the design goals was stated as:
"SIMPLE THINGS SHOULD BE SIMPLE"
Now this sounds pretty obvious, but it's been preying on my mind lately. Because frankly, when it comes to computers, it seems a general rule of thumb that nothing is simple. In fact sometimes it seems a deliberate (but not often stated) goal to make things tricky to use. I've heard programmers say (only half in jest) that if it was hard to code, it should be hard to use. Which brings us to...
LINUX, THE AMIGA OS OF THE NEXT MILLENIUM?
Linux has gotten a lot of attention lately, even being promoted by many as the next Amiga OS. Now, before the Linux crowd hangs me in effigy, I like Linux. It's a powerful, flexible, stable OS. It has capabilities exceeding the Amiga's OS, networking, multi-user, security etc. And it's open source, which is a refreshing change from being under the thumb of Microsoft.
But Linux is not simple. It's not easy to install, it's not easy for a non tech to maintain, it can be real pain to upgrade, and adding components to a system is often an art form, with a compiler, and the knowledge to use it, being de riguer. Linux is the ultimate toy/tool for people who are into operating systems for their own sake. But as much as I like tweaking things, and I wouldn't be writing this column if I didn't like tweaking things a lot, sometimes I just need the OS to stay out of my face long enough to actually do something, render some pictures, play a game, whatever. I don't really care about the OS, in fact I mostly want it to be invisible.
BETTER THAN WINDOWS IS FAINT PRAISE
Of course, many Linux users boast how much better Linux is than Windows. I'll go along with that, and having an alternative to Windows is a good thing, but using Windows as a yardstick for OS greatness seems a less than ideal approach. I want more. Or maybe I want less, depending on how you look at it.
CAN LESS BE MORE? DOES MORE HAVE TO MEAN LESS?
There is a trend lately, of simplifying computer systems. This has sprouted mostly as a marketing incentive, to capture the average man, woman and child on the street who have resisted, to this point, getting computers. Intel, Apple, Microsoft and others have all presented demonstrations based on this idea. How does one simplify a computer system? Well, so far the main thrust seems to be, take away all options from the user. No troublesome expansion to worry about, no complicated icky choices to make, it's an appliance, just plug it in.
Are these the only choices we have? Powerful, but unwieldy, or simple but constricting? I hate this choice, and I think there is a better way. Power shouldn't have to be a tradeoff with usability, at least not completely. I think some concrete examples to illustrate what I mean are in order. These are just a few ideas. Not exactly exhaustive, but just some "known issues" I've been thinking about.
INSTALLED...OR JUST STALLED?
Installing computer stuff, whether software or hardware, is difficult, time consuming, error prone and all too often something that should take a few minutes ends up taking hours or even days before success, assuming success ever comes at all.
Install the latest whiz bang program, and suddenly, you find some of your older apps no longer work correctly. Why? Whiz Bang version 2 helpfully overwrote some system DLLs (for those unfamiliar, a DLL is like Amiga's shared libraries) which the older program required. Did Whiz Bang ask permission? Did Whiz Bang even inform you it was going to? Probably not. Reinstall the older apps, and now Whiz Bang complains. Even if your apps still work, it's likely the program installed bits and pieces scattered in a number of places on your hard drive. Files get scattered all over, like a squirrel burying acorns for the winter. And the squirrel remembers where he buried those acorns, a feat the uninstaller can't seem to duplicate. So you end up filling your hard drive with old useless bits and bobs, which take up space, and slow your computer down. This happens on the Amiga as well, and there is no good reason for it.
KEEPING ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET
Here are a few installation procedures I'd like to see developers adopt. First off, never, ever, ever, overwrite files in the system directories without asking for permission. In fact, why not install all the files a program needs in it's own directory. When we were all using floppies, or very small hard drives, it made sense to keep shared libraries and such in one central directory. But with big hard drives relatively cheap, and with ever increasing complexity of programs, this policy is just insane. Scattering files, libraries, drivers, fonts, etc., all though your system directories makes installing, upgrading, backing up, and uninstalling programs a nightmare. I'd much rather use up the extra hard drive space for multiple copies of a shared library, than use up precious time tracking down and replacing a missing library, or trying to figure out which files I need to backup or uninstall. You can always buy more storage space, but those minutes or hours spent unscrewing your system after a bad install are not replaceable at any price. Besides, look in your system directories, if you're like me you've got files in there you may not need or want, but are afraid to take out, since you don't know where they came from. How much space does that save? And I don't even want to think about all the garbage in my Windows directory.
Another point, installing needed files in the programs directory allows programs that, say, need an older version of a library to coexist peacefully with newer apps.
TIME TRAVEL
Secondly, there should be a time travel button on every install. This would let you reverse the install if you made a mistake, undoing any changes to your system, but also let you peer ahead and see what the install would change on your system, before it was too late. You could see how much space the install would take up, what files would be installed, and what if any was going to be overwritten. Also, I wish more developers would actually provide meaningful help with their install. And make an uninstaller that works. This would be easy if you put all your files in one directory. Delete the directory, and poof!
THE REGISTRY...ARGH!
Windows registry is nasty piece of work. Granted, a centralized database is useful and even necessary for some things, but for the love of God, don't use the Windows Registry as a role model. The Registry in Windows is just badly implemented; a weird proprietary format, couple with the penchant of developers to fill it up with up with useless (to the user anyway) gunk. The Registry makes Windows almost impossible to backup correctly, it can consume megabytes of disk space, it slows the whole system down when Windows scans it, and the slightest defect can bring your whole system down.
CONFIGURING, OVER AND OVER AND OVER...
Why must developers force me to become a detective when I want to backup my program settings? Installing and reinstalling programs themselves are bad enough, but think how much time you spend configuring a program to work the way you like. Now guess the name of the preferences, and where it's stored. If you're lucky, the program will keep all the preferences in one place, preferably in the program's directory, and will tell you what and where they are. Other wise, good hunting.
WE'RE SORRY, WE CAN'T TELL YOU THAT
Figure 1: Cryptic Error Messages
One final rant for now. Whilst doing the Shapeshifter portion of the Amiga Forever review recently, I tried to run a Mac program and got the following message, "cannot start program, error -192" My friend looked this error number up: "Resource Manager, Resource not found" Gee, that's helpful. And this is on a Mac! I've gotten SOOOOOO many errors like that, on every computer platform. And I have just one question, "What is this, some big state secret?!?"
Sure, early computers had to use cryptic error messages and numbers. O.K., fine, but we're talking about 1999 here. Remember, big resources. When I first bought my Gateway, the hard drive had megs of demos, useless programs, and pictures of cows (it's true!) Why not use some of those megabytes for something genuinely helpful?
THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE
O.K., I'm almost done for. The point of this rant being that Gateway has a real opportunity here to make something great here. All of the suggestions I've made require no great investment in technology, no Star Trek or HAL needed. These are just a few simple ideas, and focused not on fancy technological gimmicks, but on users.
Well, that's it for this episode. Next episode, Back to the business at hand. As always, you can contact me via email at [email protected].
