Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE »

I Get Angry At My Computer Sometimes

Not usually with the computer, though.

Usually with the application-writers and with their publishers for not writing proper instructions. Especially when they confuse "up-grade" with "up-date" to describe merely tinkering with the screen appearance and controls to make the thing more difficult to use and sometimes much scrappier in appearance. Yes, Mr. Gates and BT Internet, I do mean your lot!

And often with myself for a silly mistake or inability to understand a particular programme.

I though creating an MS 'Access' database bad enough, with very few of its multitude of terms, commands and manoeuvres being even vaguely intuitive. Now though, trying to teach myself CAD I have given up in utter frustration, attempting the 3D-modelling the makers of CAD programmes expect you to use. Luckily, the TurboCAD I use does allows direct orthographic drawing, whereas some, like Fusion and Alibre, expect you to produce a pretty 3D-effect picture first as the source for the derived workshop drawings.
This comment is hidden. Show Comment
samueltyler2 · 80-89, M
Computers and programs are so great when they work correctly and they help you, they can be a disaster otherwise.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@samueltyler2 They rarely fail in normal use, but anything can go wrong.

I think most of the difficulty though, stems from very poor, or non-existent, instructions and operating manuals.
samueltyler2 · 80-89, M
@ArishMell When I worked, we really pushed the envelop on our equipment and programs. I still tend to be that way. I may use programs in ways not thought of my the programmers.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@samueltyler2 I'm sure you often can when you really understand the software in detail.

We had (at work) often to produce polar graphs, which Microsoft calls "Radar Charts" - it calls all graphs "charts" anyway but the "radar" bit might have been a copyright place-holder. They were not designed for such uses, and I have no idea what MS intended them for. (Does MS?) Not only were they an absolute pig to edit so they were tidy, presentable and above all readable, but whoever had written that function clearly thought there are [360 + a bit]º in a circle, because it treated 360º and 0º as two separate places!

Yet their column and line Cartesian graphs could all be edited properly, and I found it fairly easy to produce two peculiar-looking versions of the column graph. One is all negative-going like a row of coloured icicles, the other has the coloured parts "floating" to compare amplitudes and height maxima and minima in one go.

 
Post Comment