HN Explorer

Ask YC: What software makes you happy?

12 points by kulkarnic ↗ HN
Do you feel extremely happy when you use some particular software?

I'm trying to see if there's a pattern in software which makes users happier (not more efficient, etc.).

If there's an application/webapp that is particularly enjoyable to use, comment! Maybe there's a pattern we could uncover, replicate and make life better for everyone around! :)

65 comments

[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread
xirium
The responsiveness of contemporary applications has vastly improved. Two examples would be Photoshop and Firefox.

Photoshop3 didn't have many features but it was the best application in its field. However, after using Photoshop4 for short period, you looked upon the previous version as clunky, even though you never noticed the shortfalls when using it. This cycle of improvement continued for the next two versions.

For web browsing, Mosiac1.0 was a fantastic program. When it was written, it was the best in its field. However, if you've used a modern web browser then it would only take about 10 minutes to make you entirely frustrated with Mosiac. Let's run through some of the features. A single, non-presistent connection to web server. Caching of previous pages in history only. No incremental rendering. Awful responsiveness, especially when using multiple windows. No scripting. No tables. No background images. No font styling. No text alignment. And on very early versions: no forms. It also crashed frequently. Regardless, it was an absolutely fantastic program which made impossible tasks trivial and saved lifetimes of effort.

Important aspects that make me happy in decreasing priority: make it open source; make one task trivial; make it crash less; make it more responsive; make the repetitive parts of interaction take decreasing amounts of subjective time.

kulkarnic
Echo the last part. Dependability and responsiveness are absolutely top-importance! In fact, I feel that what's more important than responsiveness is a uniform response time. Nothing puts me off more than a file-copy among the same teo disks taking 10s one day and 2 min on the next (for the same filesize).

Of course that could be just me! :)

rms
In games, I always found the design of the Diablo series interesting. Every action and click is designed to have some kind of reward. So clicking on a jewel or sword in your inventory makes a pleasant sound. Killing enemies is even better.
kulkarnic
Hey, now as I think about it, games are the sort of thing that have taken UI expertise seriously, while ignoring all the UI experts (and their arbitrary heuristic rules!). And it's led to some very enjoyable applications!
jcromartie
That principle is what game designers call a "juicy" experience. It is, more precisely, when every action results in an large amount of feedback (animation, sound, particle explosion, etc.).
Hexstream
Diablo gets repetitive and pointless real fast...
rms
I used news.yc to make someone happy the other day. There was a new user that didn't understand why he was getting downmodded so I told him the reason. It seemed like karma really meant a lot to him so I upvoted all of his stories and current comments, giving him an extra 20 karma points. In an economy with infinite karma, I didn't think it was a big deal to arbitrarily give him more. I think he was joking a little when he said it "made his month" but hopefully I made him smile.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125233

Paul Graham told me via email that up and downarrows aren't for arbitrary karma operations and then a couple days later he took away my ability to vote on any comment or story. I upvoted this story to 4 but it didn't count because I can't vote anymore. I find the whole scenario somewhat bizarre.

xirium
The foo is strong in user NSX2 but that grasshopper has a long path to travel.
rms
I hope he sticks around. In communities like this some contrarians are a good thing.

(I upvoted you but it didn't count)

xirium
I hope that he sticks around too. He could easily get frustrated with us but he may learn less elsewhere. However, I don't see him as a contrarian; just lacking some old hacker lore.

I'm sorry to learn of your temporary lack of moderation weight. The sentiment is greatly appreciated.

yters
Huh, the community here is changing if people are getting downmodded for long posts.
rms
They weren't long posts in the style of nostrademons, they were more stream of consciousness style.
yters
That still doesn't speak well of the moderators that they'd rather vote down than explain how he could make his writing better.
DanielBMarkham
rms -- that's truly ironic. The commenter broke unwritten rules so you helped him out with advice. Then you gave him a bunch of karma, in the process also breaking unwritten rules and getting busted.

And before pg says "it's in writing somewhere" -- the system shouldn't require people poking around the blog to figure out what will work or not.

The whole karma thing gives me a headache. It's supposed to be for good articles, except in the case where you use it to agree or disagree, unless you disagree and you don't have enough karma, unless you use it too much, in which case...

Ugh. It's like by insisting that it's a simple up and down arrow we've made the whole thing much more complicated than it needs to be. But hey! It looks simple on the page! I guess that's something.

rms
Upvoted!
ghiotion
> the system shouldn't require people poking around the blog to figure out what will work or not.

I don't agree with that. The Internet has allowed way to many folk's inner Id (i.e. Id, Ego, Superego) to run a muck. They see some snippet of something or other that offends their delicate sensibilities and they go apeshit in the comments. HN is based on what should be a simple idea: don't say anything in the comments that you wouldn't be willing to say to someone in person. There are variants on this theme: be thoughtful, don't be abrasive, [perhaps] keep your politics to yourself, etc. If someone gets riposted for their comments they ought to ask themselves, what am I doing wrong? Not, what's wrong with the community. If they're incapable of doing that, they probably don't belong here in the first place.

DanielBMarkham
You're making an argument around the virtues of HN. I agree with them. My point is about how software should operate not a bout how the community should operate. Good software should be simple to use and understand. You say you do not agree with what I said, yet it does not look like you have addressed my point. Perhaps I made my point poorly. If so, apologies.
ghiotion
I think I understand where you're coming from and I agree with you that good software should be simple and easy to use/understand. And, I think HN is. At it's heart, it's simple software. My point was that the software doesn't stand in isolation; the community shapes and molds the behavior of the software. In a very real sense, the community is the software. HN lives (and dies) by how interesting the people who use it are.
DanielBMarkham
While I'm onboard with the community + software = experience, let's look at the problems.

Let's say I posted a comment, "I love monkeys" and got down-voted to like -10 or something. Aside from relevance questions, perhaps HN is an anti-monkey society. How, from just the score, am I supposed to know that? In other words, by limiting my choice to simple up or down arrows, it makes the other guy scratch his head trying to figure out exactly how his comment was misconfigured for the group. So then he has to plead for somebody to explain that to him. Hopefully, he will get an explanation from somebody who represents the majority of downvoters, but that doesn't have to be the case. He's just as likely to receive advice from somebody, as in this case, who didn't know other huge parts of the community rules.

I love the social networking aspect of the site. But I'm not a fan of the current software as a communication tool between users or as something that would increase (instead of decrease) that experience. BTW, that's why so many "here's my picture of Dilbert" articles are posted -- there's less risk in offending anyone, and heck, you can't figure out what you did when you get downvoted anyway, so might as well go with easy, fast, and funny content over content that might have more substance (and be riskier from the point of view of the submitter)

matth
> If someone gets riposted for their comments they ought to ask themselves, what am I doing wrong? Not, what's wrong with the community.

Have you ever seen THX 1138? It's a good movie.

In all seriousness... lets try to admit there are problems here. I lurk more than I post for simple fear of bothering someone's sensibilities. In fact, when I do post, I tend to generalize so I don't lose half my karma.

ghiotion
> Have you ever seen THX 1138?

I have. It's shocking to see Robert Duvall so young. I saw [Edit: not One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but To Kill a Mockingbird -- duh] recently and I couldn't believe he was Bo Bradley.

Anyway... I've found the people on here to be a bright group. Even when I post comments that get downvoted, I understand the reasons. Frankly, losing my karma doesn't bother me too much. As long as you can make your case intelligently, you'll be fine. For example, I made a comment defending spanking (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=127794) which I knew wouldn't be a popular stance. However, my approach was measured and, even though the majority disagreed, the comment itself wasn't viciously downvoted. The internet tends to distort one's sense of humanity. The bulk of the people out there are reasonable, the existence of 4chan notwithstanding.

matth
I agree with you!

However, I'll add the caveat that things tend to get a little crazy around YC application deadlines. My feeling is that some people seem to feel the need to 'fall in line' around that time.

aston
Boo Radley
mrtron
I just stared at the 'Bo Radley' for a minute and thought...isn't it 'Boo'? Or maybe just pronounced that way?

You saved me looking it up :)

pg
What you don't mention was (a) this wasn't the first time you'd done this, and (b) that before turning off voting for your account, I tried sending you an email asking you to stop, and you replied basically telling me to fuck off.
rms
a) Yes, there were one or two other users that I have karma upbombed. I did it in compensation for comments they made that had gotten to extremely low negative levels. You've previously emailed me several times to stop responding to dead comments and once telling me you killed a comment that suggested using another comment as an impromptu poll. With that email, you said the only reason you didn't ban me from the site was because it was a borderline case.

b) Your email to me was harsh. My response was "Sometimes I think you take yourself too seriously" which was meant not as "fuck you" but "have a sense of humor about up and downarrows."

ingenium
Paul, the thing is, you ARE too full of yourself. At the YC interview, when we went around the table and shook hands it went "Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm Trevor. I'm Robert." And then you just smiled, because of course you were Paul. We were just supposed to KNOW who you were....

Taking away rms's voting rights isn't about improving the discourse of this site. It's about your own sense of self superiority.

pg
You're making up an elaborate theory out of randomness. We interview startups one after another all day long. We don't all say our names every time. Another iteration and maybe it would be Robert who just smiled and said hello. But then of course the evidence you'd select would be something else.

As for Rms: he abuses the voting system, I send him an email asking him to stop, he won't stop. And when I suspend voting for his account after this, it's out of my own "sense of self superiority?" WTF? Any forum administrator would do the same under the circumstances.

rms
I never said I wouldn't stop. I stopped as soon as you told me too. Sorry for not making that explicitly clear with my email.
curi
Not any forum administrator. That isn't what I would do.
kul
campaign monitor makes me happy
aneesh
I'm a big fan of the 37signals software. Also Jott; Jott makes me feel productive, which makes me happy.
kulkarnic
A lot of the comments here are really eloquent in their brevity! Still, it'd be great if you could say which aspect of the software tool makes you most happy. I know, thoroughly subjective, not statistically projectable, but interesting nonetheless.
jcromartie
Honestly Reddit makes me happy because of one simple fact: you write comments in plain text using Markdown.

If every site did this the world would be a better place.

vixen99
How about something not seen until fairly recently? The reply button. In the UK for instance, there is hardly a single newspaper or online magazine that provides this in their 'respond to article' facility. You can post a comment but without a reply button no one can specifically challenge that non-sequitur or unsupported abuse you've churned out. They can do it indirectly by naming you but who's going to take the trouble to refer back? Where implemented, I'm sure this facility has had a positive effect on the way people treat each other on the net.
edw519
hacker news, craigslist, and google maps, especially hacker news

During long and lonely coding sessions, they remind me that I am not alone.

brlewis
Pictures of my wife and kids make me very happy. I like my wifi photo frame, and I also like piclens. In conjunction with ourdoings.com, of course.
gahahaha
There is other software than Emacs? Interesting...
pistoriusp
I don't really think it's possible for software to make people happier without making us more efficient. When a previously complicated task has been simplified or improved it generally makes people happier to use it than an alternative.

I tried but couldn't think of any software that I use which made me happier and was less efficient than something else.

kulkarnic
Sorry. My bad. I should have said not necessarily more efficient!

@pistoiusp: Any that makes you more efficient + happier (not just more efficient)?

niels
Gmail. There are many great features that combined with ease of use, makes this a killer app for me.
tjr
Infocom.

Most especially, the ambassador from Blow'k-bibben-gordo in Planetfall.

mixmax
3d studio max

I relax by building stuff in 3ds max. Much cheaper than building stuff in the real world, and almost as fun. Currently I'm building a yacht. I am even thinking of actually building it for real when I finish.

german
It's an interesting question, I could say Gmail or Twitter but it only makes me happy when I receive an interesting Email or IM, so in that case is not a bout the software but the people.

The only software that makes me happier are music players (Exaile, Amarok, etc) because they let me hear the music that I love in my PC.

Flemlord
Microsoft Word 2007. I love the tab strips and the new formatting options. My documents look beautiful.
brent
latex, gvim, firefox, matlab, R.
musiciangames
At the moment Squeak Smalltalk is making me pretty happy. I've worked on a project on and off that was in Java, and decided that development in Java was never going to be fast enough to keep up with what I need to do.

So I invested some time in learning Squeak, and now I'm starting to get it the productivity is rising sharply. And as it's relatively such a joy to program, I find I'm putting in much more solid hours as well.

abstractbill
Happy isn't quite the right word... I feel comfortable when I'm using Emacs. And very uncomfortable editing text with anything else.
LogicHoleFlaw
vim makes me happy when it becomes an extension of my fingers, and allows me to manipulate text like a musical instrument lets me manipulate notes.

The macro programming software for my PC gamepad makes me happy because it makes playing certain games effortless. I don't worry about the interface. I just do. The software gets out of my way.

My favorite online computer game, Final Fantasy XI, make me happy, but in a different way. It is the social aspects which keeps me coming back every time. A more cynical person would say it is the Skinner box effect, but I'm not that jaded yet.