Let’s keep it civil. Operating systems don’t have feelings or honor to be defended.
Yeah, well, I was just about to jump in, ontaiwolf: it’s been 11 posts now, and all of them have been confrontational. Please know that it doesn’t matter whether you are right. You’re dealing with people, so if you want to convince them of your opinion, it helps to play nice.
Any more of this and I’m gonna paywall this thread! :persecutioncomplex:
OS/2 demands satisfaction!
[quote=""]
Encouraged for “sophisticated users” which I assumed you were; as opposed to a novice user who’s never used a computer. 
I’d agree that accessibility (i.e. for the blind, disabled, etc) on the Mac is lacking compared to Windows.
Don’t know about that frame or two of lag – your eyes must be really, really good. Never experienced that on any of the Macs I’ve tried, although I have experienced “hanging” and unresponsive UI on pretty much every Windows machine I’ve tried.
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A couple advantages:
[]You don’t need to “search” or “scan” for the menu bar; on Mac it’s always exactly where you expect it to be (i.e. it takes advantage of spatial memory).
[]You have to move your mouse further, but because of Fitt’s Law it can often be faster to slam your mouse to the top of the screen than it is to locate an arbitrarily placed, fixed-height menu button.
[*]It reduces visual clutter and repetition. Not a big deal since menu bars tend to be small, but this may change with the introduction of Ribbon.
Mac’s menu bar has its downsides: multiple monitor support, can only handle one window at a time, etc. I personally don’t use it very much for common tasks, and rely on hotkeys instead. I can’t remember the last time I navigated to File > Save or Edit > Copy instead of using Command + S and Command + C.
IMO navigating through and clicking drop-down menus for common/repetitive tasks is a pretty dated concept to begin with. Windows seems to realize this, and their new Ribbon UI does away with cumbersome drop-down menus.
Unfortunately, this is a step back in efficiency since (a) it introduces a lot of clutter and (b) removes information about hotkeys. It looks like they tried to target advanced users with a UI designed for novices, and failed horribly.
The whole thing brings up an interesting point of discussion: designing for experts vs designing for novices. A snippet from a good article on the subject:
[i]"For expert users, the motor load is what limits the efficiency of using the application, while with novice users the cognitive load serves as the choking point. After working on the same screen for the hundredth time, the expert user no longer has to fully cognitively process the UI to learn how to work with it. … But the information still has to be mechanically input from user to computer and here is where the motor load can strangle the usage efficiency of the application.
…
[On the other hand,] when a user first begins to use an application, each screen must be visually scanned, read, and understood. This cognitive process is time consuming. Not until the user has understood each screen can the user decide how to interact with the UI.
To help with the cognitive understanding of the screen, the UI needs to be rich in explanatory elements. This goes back to the original dilemma in design for both novice and expert users. As the information density of a screen increases, even expert users may have to re-think each screen to wade through the ensuing clutter. The explanatory value of additional information required by the novice users comes at the expense of the expert users."[/i]
Source: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ui/
Compared to Ribbon, I’d say Mac’s menu bar is better suited to the “expert” or power user.
While we’re on the subject, one of the greatest features of Mac’s menu bar I’d like to see on Windows is the Search functionality. If I can’t find the menu item I want, on Mac I can use Help > Search in virtually any program to look for it. This is especially helpful for learning complex software with many menu items like Maya, Photoshop, etc. And, as with everything else, I can access it with the keyboard (Command + ?), so typing out a few characters often ends up being faster than navigating with the mouse.
http://i.imgur.com/xU7F1.png
Jeez, just like scientists who enjoy bleeding edge research don’t fully grasp what makes Nascar racing or Tyler Perry movies so popular.
“unzip file.zip” != “arcane wizardry”. You are killing me on this one. I am completely sympathetic to people who want basic WiFi/video/audio to work effortlessly and don’t want to drown in pointless esoterica. But if you can’t unzip a file with the most basic of syntax, I am just stumped. This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the science guy says, “ok, this is a square (and draws a square)”, and the police chief says, “woah, woah! slow it down egg head!”
If you just want to earn a living without too much pain, you’re in the wrong field. There are dozens of middle manager wage slave type professions that cater to a comfy cozy salary better than video game development. Game development is more about satisfying an idealistic passion for creating software.
I did purely C++ programming ten hours a day for ten years and was a master. IMO, the mainstream game devs are all using C++ or maybe C# or something else so it’s simplest to conform to that crowd. I love the Java ecosystem because it is rich with such elegant, exciting ideas. Where else will you find things like Scala or Gradle or Akka or such an interesting decentralized ecosystem of indie languages and libraries and frameworks and tools? The JVM is the best platform to elevate the programming end of game development and that’s why it’s exciting. Not because it’s a more idiot-proof C++.
OS/2
Kill it with fire.
[quote=“Riven,post:163,topic:39083”]
No robots here? We have 2012, damn it! 
I know, the truth doesn’t sound nice sometimes… ;D Just joking. I’ve been a reader here but I couldn’t leave some of the posts unresponded. I will probably go to the reader state again.
[quote=“ontaiwolf,post:168,topic:39083”]
Operating systems are a lot like religions; you’re never going to convince someone that yours is better if they’ve already made up their mind.
Imagine trying to sell Linux for a fiver to me instead and then formulate your pitch
[quote=“gene9,post:166,topic:39083”]
Nah, see, fundamentally I’m in the right line of work because I’ve stumbled across a toolchain and way of working that makes my life really easy. I’ve been professionally coding for a shade under 20 years now and it is a total waste of my life, which would otherwise be spent riding motorbikes and having fun. I use Windows because everything works, and I can configure the few things that need configuring with idiot-proof GUIs, and I put up with the shite that it brings to the table simply because there’s nothing else out there that fixes it.
The mere mention of a commandline makes me groan. GUIs guide me in every step and provide me with context at every twitch of the mouse. The commandline provides me with absolutely nothing. I don’t want to learn any more than is absolutely necessary because my tiny brain is, well, full. Never mind me, though. Think about the other 2 billion computer users and try to sell the concept of iptables and ufw to them versus Windows Firewall. Arrgh. Actually come up with a sales pitch for my mum, not me. She’s the one you really need to convince.
Cas
Listen to your elders.
This is pure poetry.
-Nathan
I have to agree with Princec and Riven here.
The menubar might be good in Linux, but I’ve got the latest Google Chrome on Linux and it doesn’t use the menubar. With such inconsistency, it doesn’t help. This is Chrome, the most used browser, not some random software. If you can’t expect and get everyone to adopt it, then it doesn’t work. The menubar is also very fiddly - it sometimes works because 1/2 the time it’s used for something else - only when you hover you get the options you need.
unzip file.zip is arcane wizardry. I downloaded a file then I just want to unzip it. In Windows, you download from your browser, open in the folder and press unzip. I don’t want to work out how to do it. This applies to every action not just unzip. Sure unzip might be simple, but there are lot of complicated ones.
I tried to install amsn on Linux Mint and it says libgstfarsight0.10.0-0 >=0 or something is not satisfiable. I double clicked to install. I got the latest version. What in the world is that? The messages in Linux just don’t make sense to humans. How about something like a Windows version of “You’re missing “component x” please download from “here” or whatever”. Up to now everyone would be bashing me about being not technical I typed in apt-get install lib… guess what? It says this lib is an older version and has been released by libgstream… but I still can’t install amsn. Linux’ whole crap on this depends on this lib and this depends on this lib is annoying to the max. Just bundle it as part of the application. Install should install amen. Has that ever happened in Windows? Maybe directx or .net framework, but the messages are meaningful and there are a few components at max, no 999999999.
This is personal maybe, but the UI in Linux is ugly. I think KDE is better, but GNOME and variants, including Unity, MATE, Cinnamon are. Like Riven says, you can tell which ‘tab’ has context because it looks distinctly pressed etc, but the whole Linux UI is almost 1 color that you can’t tell what’s what.
Why am I using Linux? Like Cas, I’m writing Java Applications too - I’m just using Linux to test to make sure my application works. Until they can do something right I don’t want to switch over to Linux. I downloaded AMD’s driver from AMD’s site. Windows = double click install. What do you do in Linux? Double click opens it up in a text editor. Buhahaha. I try to run it with ./ - still fails. I had to look it up. No, I know how to code, but I don’t want to have to remember it. If I stop using Windows for years and come back to it, at most I’ll be looking for where the button is. In the world of Linux, you have to try to look for a command, but you have no idea where to look for it. No, don’t talk about MAN, man pages are the most unreadable things in history man. Most of the time after I did a man on a command, I had to man the man explanation.
So I just created a VirtualBox vm.
Installed latest ubuntu, installed gnome because unity sucks.
All themes have close, maximize and minimize buttons on the left.
Cant get them to go to the right.
Cant install new themes via console packages arent found.
I shouldnt have to install themes by console anyway - there should be a button with “browse more themes here” which shows a gallery, which applies the selected theme WITH ONE CLICK.
This is exactly what the Opera Theme/Skin gallery does.
Giving up.
Try KDE. Theme support is a little chaotic (there’s three different control panels for themes) but they do have “browse more themes here” features with one-click installs. And you can rearrange titlebar widgets at will, but they default to being on the right anyway. Gnome at this point just rearranges shit for the hell of it, I’ve long given up on it.
This is the kiss of death. If you lost your love for programming, you need to discover a work activity that does interest you.
If you’re burned out on the whole field, then it makes sense that you aren’t interested in considering different techniques. Why even hang out on this forum?
For me, programming is absolutely as magical as it ever was when I’m using it to explore ideas that I’m interested in. I definitely do that in my spare time for fun. Unfortunately, most programming jobs generally involve glueing/integrating/supporting software written by others that performs some uninteresting function, and personally, I’ve been working on a transition to a career that suits me better.
I’m not trying to convince people, I wanted to share ideas from my new perspective on Linux, and I wanted to hear some feedback from passionate Java game programmers.
We talked about this before and found I out Cas feels like me.
Nobody says that programming is completely unenjoyable for people like us.
But we are Game Developers, we have a vision and want to see it come to life. Programming is just a means and Java just a tool.
Programming is wrestling with a dumb machine, trying to explain every little detail to it - its a hassle, but you gotta do it.
If you had programmers that just turn your ideas into (good) code - that would be better for instance.
I would agree with you on this. That sounds unnecessarily cryptic. Linux does have some of this, and that’s a negative.
If you can’t handle the most basic command line activity, well, then we probably have different mindsets on how we like to work, and it would follow that our OS preferences are quite different.
TL;DR the last 20-30 or so posts…all I can say is:
YOU GUYS ARE FREAKING OLD! I’m the new generation so listen to me: Windows 7 FTW. Thank you very much.
Real man creates his own OS! Now go learn some Assembly or C!
OK, generation David Spade is a Windows fan
Anecdotally, on college campus, both Apple products and Linux seem unusually popular…