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Comment by skydhash | Hacker News Reader

Do you expect to go inside a plane and fly it with no training? Or pick up a violin and play a sonata? The terminal have its flaws, but all other interactions models have their own. But when people don't try to learn the basic tenet and just ask why it can't be like $other_system_they've_learned_first, you bet that they're going to point you to the manual.

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I expect a light switch button on a plane act like any other light switch button everywhere else - switching the light when pressed. The fact that the you can point to the terminal manual that states that you must use --- triple tap for that is irrelevant - that's still very bad design, and you've just dismissed a real issue with an bad analogy.

> why it can't be like

Here is another mistake: in many cases it be.

> I expect a light switch button on a plane act like any other light switch button everywhere else

Me too, which was why I was very surprised when I discovered light switches in the USA worked backwards[0]. :D

(When I initially read your comment I didn't notice the use of "button" by which I guess you're referring to a push-button toggle style switch? But either way I still think light switches are an interesting example of non-obvious things that don't work the same way in all environments. (Even ignoring the "one light controlled by multiple switches" situation.))

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_switch#Orientation

Yes, I was aware of the toggle switch ambiguity when describing a button... (not a perfect analogy anyway)

I expect that pilots are allowed to have opinions about systems in the plane as being user unfriendly, like MCAS of 737 Max fame. I expect violinists to be allowed to complain when their bow is rosined wrong. Sure, we should expect users to at least read parts of the manual, but when billions of dollars have been spent so I can ask the computer to write me an ffmpeg invocation, haven't you got to ask to yourself that there's a chance we're making this unnecessary hard on ourselves for no reason?

> but when billions of dollars have been spent so I can ask the computer to write me an ffmpeg invocation

That was an unnecessary spend then. You should ask yourself why ffmpeg still exists if if it's that hard to use. There's a plethora of simpler tools that exists for simple uses (handbrake, XLD,...). The truth is that if you want versality, there's no better than ffmpeg and it's core usage is relatively simple. It's an input | filter | output pipeline, with various options to fine tune each one. If you don't have the domain knowledge, it will be hard, just like a layman inside a plane cockpit. But if you do, everything makes sense.

Same with a lot of other software. There are bad design out there, but if something persists with no other incentive than its users, you should probably ask why first.

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