Why I hate haxies

Let's start with a casting call of other opinions in this, in something vaguely resembling order:

Rich Siegel of Bare Bones didst reply...

DrunkenBatman didst fire back, quite pithily...

Finally, some others chimed in, like Erik J. Barzeski of "NSLog();" and Cory Redlien, of "business on the mac".

For the most part, the whole DB/Rich Siegel thing can be distilled thusly:

DB likes Haxies and dislikes Bare Bones' haxie warning dialog. (The former is a legitimate opinion, the latter is right. Rich, the dialog blows monkey turds as written)

Rich dislikes haxies, and disagrees with DB's comments on how Bare Bones deals with them. (Both opinions, and legitimate, regardless of if you agree)

The problem I have with haxies cannot be truly appreciated unless you've ever had to ask someone over the phone, Have you done anything to your system recently, like installing new software or utilities? (For more fun, make sure you're in Massachusetts, and they're in a dialup-only hotel in Malaysia)

You always know what the answer will be: NO. Even if they're registering WindowShade while they're talking to you. So you've got to go through remote troubleshooting hell. Now, remote troubleshooting sucks anyway. As anyone in IT knows, two identical computers...aren't, not really. One will work fine, the other won't. There's always minor variations that cause issues. Hardware, OS, other software, it's always something. So IT people are fanatical about configuration control. If we're talking about desktops, or an environment like a lot of .edu institutions, where you just re-image everything daily, this is simple. But when you start talking about things like laptops, or corner office denizens, well, your ability to control slips away. Especially if it's a corner office denizen with a laptop. In that case, I recommend Jack Daniel's, or frozen vodka. (anyone who says alcohol can't make problems go away never worked in IS).

For IT, it's a struggle of hardware vs. software vs. environment vs. entropy, aka, "stuff just breaks". So when we realize that Glorious Leader has every haxie known to humans on their system, we get annoyed. We can't do anything about it, (Glorious Leader, remember?), but now we have a near - infinite number of possible variables to deal with. You can't troubleshoot infinite numbers variables. It's impossible, and that's what things like APE are: Infinite numbers of variables to every bug. So every time there's a problem with an APE - infected machine, (yeah, that is how I think of APE...an infection. It's bright and shiny and pretty, so it's like Catherine Zeta-Jones naked and willing with a video camera for proof, but telling you she's got the herp. You want to play, but do you want the risk?), we have to go through the "Okay, now let's temporarily uninstall all vestiges of <haxie/addon/whathaveyou>, reboot, and see if the problem repeats".

It sucks no matter what happens. If the problem repeats, it sucks because the presence of the haxie, (I'm using "haxie" as a generic term here, ala "aspirin", not as a sole, specific reference to Unsanity software. When you see "haxie", assume I mean all this crap), added extra steps to the call...removing the haxie, and the eventual reinstall of the haxie. (They NEVER let you close the call until the haxie has been reinstalled, as if your presence killed all haxie - installing brain cells) If the problem does go away, it sucks, because rarely will "don't run that haxie" work as a solution. They want to stick the fork in your eye, they just don't want it to ever hurt. So now you have to figure out which magical combination of applications and haxie settings will allow things to function "correctly".

When you work in support, no matter what, haxies suck. What is even worse is the "Well, we help find hidden bugs" line that so many haxie developers and defenders use. Here's the human side of that...If the bug never happens, the bug doesn't exist. It may be there, but it's not real to the HU-MON. A non-computer related example of what I mean. In 1978, my dad was run over by a car. I mean, literally. The wheels broke his lower right leg in four places, compound fracture mind you, the muffler hanger peeled back his right biceps neat as you please, skull fracture, cracked ribs etc. He was a mess. Spent many, many months in the hospital. After he came home, he was looking at the accident report and hospital write-ups, and saw that he had also fractured his pelvis. Since no one had TOLD him this, he was a bit miffed. When he called his doctor about it, the doc said, Tom, you were confined to a bed for three months, and in the hospital for what, six? You know what we do for a busted pelvis? We confine you to a bed until it heals. That was happening, and in the grand scheme of things, what would you knowing have meant with your other injuries? Nothing. It was meaningless for your treatment, and honestly, with all your other real problems, we just forgot to tell you.

I understand to programmers that a bug is a bug is a bug, and even if it's never seen by users, it's still a bug. But to most everyone else, unless it causes problems, it's not a bug. I don't care if it's there for the entire life-span of the programs use, if the user doesn't see it, there's no bug, aka, what the eye don't see, the chef gets away with. So telling me that a haxie is doing me a favor by helping to find bugs is sophistry from the human POV. From that POV, the haxie is a bug - causing pain in the keister is what it is, and I'm not alone in this opinion. Unsanity in particular had a bad habit of refusing to tell its users where things were installed, because "That would only confuse them, and we're not doing anything wrong anyway", even though they were (with good reason), installing things in /System/Library/. (Yes, that's a quote, no I'm not naming names within Unsanity, and I still have the email exchange, it was fascinating, and a reason why I don't use Unsanity software. I hope they don't still do that, because it was as arrogant as anything they accuse anyone else of.)

So yes, Bare Bones really needs to rewrite that dialog, because aside from how the message it's sending could be taken, it's just too damned wordy. I don't like to read dialogs that long, and I read faster than everyone. But the idea of "We need you to uninstall the software that's diddling with our application so that we can narrow down the possible causes of the problem better" is neither unreasonable or arrogant. It's just good triage. What the haxie developers need to do is realize that they are always going to be viewed as the first cause of a problem, and instead of telling the world "It's not our fault!", accept the consequences of the use of their tool, and stop perennially trying to prove it's not their fault, because from the human side, if it doesn't work with the haxie, and it does work without the haxie, it's the haxie's fault, and I can tell you how any sane support person will fix the problem. (They should in fact, take some extra steps to further troubleshoot once the user's machine is happy again, but the first priority is to make the problem go away. If yanking the haxie does that, and makes it stay away, then that's the smart fix.)

But yeah, I really, really hate haxies, because in the end, they make work suck, and if they do that, they're bad.

Disclaimer...I've used exactly one in OS X for any amount of time: TypeIt4Me, and I had stopped using it for a long time because it was a buggy pain in the ass. Lately it's not, so I use it, and I do have a need for it, because not using it would make getting work done a lot harder. However, the second I don't need it, it's gone. But I don't expect application developers to ensure that they have no problems with TypeIt4Me. TypeIt4Me bears first response duties in the "Do no harm" line of thought.

Categories: Main

Posted by John C. Welch at 10:40 | Permalink

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Let's get this out of the way first, I hate them all. I understand why people use them, I understand why people may even, (in extremely small numbers) truly need them. But as a support person, I hate them. It's not just Unsanity's APE - enabled spawn. I pretty much hate all of them. Because they make my life suck, and always have, regardless of OS.\n\nLet's start with a casting call of other opinions in this, in something vaguely resembling order:\n\nDrunkenBatman spaketh...\n\nRich Siegel of Bare Bones didst reply...\n\nDrunkenBatman didst fire back, quite pithily...\n\nFinally, some others chimed in, like Erik J. Barzeski of \"NSLog();\" and Cory Redlien, of \"business on the mac\".\n\nFor the most part, the whole DB/Rich Siegel thing can be distilled thusly:\n\nDB likes Haxies and dislikes Bare Bones' haxie warning dialog. (The former is a legitimate opinion, the latter is right. Rich, the dialog blows monkey turds as written)\n\nRich dislikes haxies, and disagrees with DB's comments on how Bare Bones deals with them. (Both opinions, and legitimate, regardless of if you agree)\n\nThe problem I have with haxies cannot be truly appreciated unless you've ever had to ask someone over the phone, Have you done anything to your system recently, like installing new software or utilities? (For more fun, make sure you're in Massachusetts, and they're in a dialup-only hotel in Malaysia)\n\nYou always know what the answer will be: NO. Even if they're registering WindowShade while they're talking to you. So you've got to go through remote troubleshooting hell. Now, remote troubleshooting sucks anyway. As anyone in IT knows, two identical computers...aren't, not really. One will work fine, the other won't. There's always minor variations that cause issues. Hardware, OS, other software, it's always something. So IT people are fanatical about configuration control. If we're talking about desktops, or an environment like a lot of .edu institutions, where you just re-image everything daily, this is simple. But when you start talking about things like laptops, or corner office denizens, well, your ability to control slips away. Especially if it's a corner office denizen with a laptop. In that case, I recommend Jack Daniel's, or frozen vodka. (anyone who says alcohol can't make problems go away never worked in IS).\n\nFor IT, it's a struggle of hardware vs. software vs. environment vs. entropy, aka, \"stuff just breaks\". So when we realize that Glorious Leader has every haxie known to humans on their system, we get annoyed. We can't do anything about it, (Glorious Leader, remember?), but now we have a near - infinite number of possible variables to deal with. You can't troubleshoot infinite numbers variables. It's impossible, and that's what things like APE are: Infinite numbers of variables to every bug. So every time there's a problem with an APE - infected machine, (yeah, that is how I think of APE...an infection. It's bright and shiny and pretty, so it's like Catherine Zeta-Jones naked and willing with a video camera for proof, but telling you she's got the herp. You want to play, but do you want the risk?), we have to go through the \"Okay, now let's temporarily uninstall all vestiges of <haxie/addon/whathaveyou>, reboot, and see if the problem repeats\". \n\nIt sucks no matter what happens. If the problem repeats, it sucks because the presence of the haxie, (I'm using \"haxie\" as a generic term here, ala \"aspirin\", not as a sole, specific reference to Unsanity software. When you see \"haxie\", assume I mean all this crap), added extra steps to the call...removing the haxie, and the eventual reinstall of the haxie. (They NEVER let you close the call until the haxie has been reinstalled, as if your presence killed all haxie - installing brain cells) If the problem does go away, it sucks, because rarely will \"don't run that haxie\" work as a solution. They want to stick the fork in your eye, they just don't want it to ever hurt. So now you have to figure out which magical combination of applications and haxie settings will allow things to function \"correctly\". \n\nWhen you work in support, no matter what, haxies suck. What is even worse is the \"Well, we help find hidden bugs\" line that so many haxie developers and defenders use. Here's the human side of that...If the bug never happens, the bug doesn't exist. It may be there, but it's not real to the HU-MON. A non-computer related example of what I mean. In 1978, my dad was run over by a car. I mean, literally. The wheels broke his lower right leg in four places, compound fracture mind you, the muffler hanger peeled back his right biceps neat as you please, skull fracture, cracked ribs etc. He was a mess. Spent many, many months in the hospital. After he came home, he was looking at the accident report and hospital write-ups, and saw that he had also fractured his pelvis. Since no one had TOLD him this, he was a bit miffed. When he called his doctor about it, the doc said, Tom, you were confined to a bed for three months, and in the hospital for what, six? You know what we do for a busted pelvis? We confine you to a bed until it heals. That was happening, and in the grand scheme of things, what would you knowing have meant with your other injuries? Nothing. It was meaningless for your treatment, and honestly, with all your other real problems, we just forgot to tell you. \n\nI understand to programmers that a bug is a bug is a bug, and even if it's never seen by users, it's still a bug. But to most everyone else, unless it causes problems, it's not a bug. I don't care if it's there for the entire life-span of the programs use, if the user doesn't see it, there's no bug, aka, what the eye don't see, the chef gets away with. So telling me that a haxie is doing me a favor by helping to find bugs is sophistry from the human POV. From that POV, the haxie is a bug - causing pain in the keister is what it is, and I'm not alone in this opinion. Unsanity in particular had a bad habit of refusing to tell its users where things were installed, because \"That would only confuse them, and we're not doing anything wrong anyway\", even though they were (with good reason), installing things in /System/Library/. (Yes, that's a quote, no I'm not naming names within Unsanity, and I still have the email exchange, it was fascinating, and a reason why I don't use Unsanity software. I hope they don't still do that, because it was as arrogant as anything they accuse anyone else of.)\n\nSo yes, Bare Bones really needs to rewrite that dialog, because aside from how the message it's sending could be taken, it's just too damned wordy. I don't like to read dialogs that long, and I read faster than everyone. But the idea of \"We need you to uninstall the software that's diddling with our application so that we can narrow down the possible causes of the problem better\" is neither unreasonable or arrogant. It's just good triage. What the haxie developers need to do is realize that they are always going to be viewed as the first cause of a problem, and instead of telling the world \"It's not our fault!\", accept the consequences of the use of their tool, and stop perennially trying to prove it's not their fault, because from the human side, if it doesn't work with the haxie, and it does work without the haxie, it's the haxie's fault, and I can tell you how any sane support person will fix the problem. (They should in fact, take some extra steps to further troubleshoot once the user's machine is happy again, but the first priority is to make the problem go away. If yanking the haxie does that, and makes it stay away, then that's the smart fix.)\n\nBut yeah, I really, really hate haxies, because in the end, they make work suck, and if they do that, they're bad. \n\nDisclaimer...I've used exactly one in OS X for any amount of time: TypeIt4Me, and I had stopped using it for a long time because it was a buggy pain in the ass. Lately it's not, so I use it, and I do have a need for it, because not using it would make getting work done a lot harder. However, the second I don't need it, it's gone. But I don't expect application developers to ensure that they have no problems with TypeIt4Me. TypeIt4Me bears first response duties in the \"Do no harm\" line of thought.