Alan Kay on the misunderstanding of OOP - <AUTHOR> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-October/017019.html <comment><USER2> Yes! This is something it took me a long time to internalize but is something I absolutely love about Objective-C. Regardless of any technical differences between message passing and method calling, there was a real shift in how I thought about the process. When I started thinking about object interaction as message passing, it made me write better encapsulated code. I'm not sure exactly what it is, I think that part of it is that to me a "message" sounds more lightweight than a method call, or that it more strongly stresses the concept that objects are communicating, but it a different way of seeing the problem.

<comment><USER3> It's funny you should say that. I have the exact opposite intuition: message passing is substantially slower than method calls, especially statically bound method calls in a statically typed, compiled language.

You're right that message passing is a different way of looking at things; but obviously it's something different to method calls. Delegation, for one thing, is much easier with message passing, as are other strategies, like default implementations, remoting (never mind how poorly RPC scales), etc. On the other hand, getting two objects to communicate over a private channel can be more awkward, as they need to share pre-arranged references, rather than simply being friends / package / internal visibility, or similar visibility override.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, to me "message" makes me think of very heavy duty systems like MQ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An interesting aside to this thread is that it was started as a debate over class vs prototype based inheritance by Steve Dekorte. Steve went on to create Io four years later. A great example of putting your money where your mouth is.

<comment><USER6> More info:

<http://www.iolanguage.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ugh. This reminds me of a week or so go when I referred to a hypothetical object "responding to a message" and my coworkers looked at me like I was insane.

They thought I meant an MQ type message, and were completely unfamiliar with the concept of message passing.

<comment><USER8> I gave an Intro to Ruby class the other day, and made a point of emphasizing the idea of message passing. I also gave a quick intro to `method_missing`.

It pains me when people spend a fair amount of time coding Ruby, and then encounter metaprogamming and dynamic method invocation, and because of their wrong preconceptions they think it's deep, dark, super-genius hackery.

Unfortunately it gets clumsy to always say, "passes the message 'foo'" instead of "calls 'foo'", but if you can make the point early and toss in some reminders along the way the idea may stick.

<comment><USER7> We live in a world where programmers think of Java's Object model when they think of OOP.

Which is a crippled version of C++'s Object Model.

About which Alan Kay said: 'Actually I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.'

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521>

<comment><AUTHOR> That is actually the very conference Kay is talking about in the mailing list post, where he "took some pains … to remind everyone … it is not even about classes."

<comment><USER7> And those of us who understand OOP are forced to suffer because nobody else does...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very timely, thanks! I'm still in the middle of reading <http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html> and this already answers one question that was floating around in the back of my mind in the first paragraphs.

I'll read the whole thing when I'm done with the other link (which is a really long and very interesting piece).

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, it's messaging that really forces clean encapsulation. Otherwise, you can end up in getter/setter hell, where everybody still knows everything about everything, even though all data is private.

<comment><USER11> Verbs!

Getter and setter methods on objects are like OK and Cancel buttons in dialogs. Just because it's uniform industry "best practice" doesn't make it not completely retarded and obscurantist.

<comment><USER12> Usually people think "best practice" is "everybody does it this way".

<comment><USER10> Sad, but true. And this explains the state of the Linux desktop today: copied from Microsoft instead of inspired by Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From this point of view, Clojure, a functional language which explicitly rejects OOP as most people have come to know it could be considered OO. State changes in Clojure are done by sending a function and optionally some values to a reference type. The main goal is to support concurrency, but the more principled approach to state inherently discourages the use of complex mutable data structures.

<comment><USER14> This is exactly right. Clojure does not abandon what is good about OOP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anybody who is interested in Alan's point of view and want to know more or want to work on the systems we design based on "messaging all the way down" like our startup Morphle (see <http://siliconsqueak.org> ) should email us at email@example.com (minus the '5'). The current work Alan is doing can be found at vpri.org

</comment><comment><USER16> What is the essential aspect that distinguishes a message from a call? According to Wikipedia, it's that the arguments are deep-copied, but that is not what happens in Smalltalk, AFAIK. It's also contradicted in another section where it says the arguments are "usually" copied. I would have thought the important part was late binding, which is indeed a requirement but apparently not divisive.

Edit: If this is any indication then I'm prepared to declare "message passing" a heisenterm, with no formal definition across all contexts:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43777/method-vs- message-v...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43777/method-vs-message-vs- function-vs)

<comment><USER17> One of the major differences, from a programming point of view (as opposed to implementation) is that with message passing, you can pass any message to an object, even if that object doesn't know how to handle it.

Cocoa makes extensive use of delegates (not sure if these are similar to .net delegates) for handling unrecognised messages, which makes adding custom behaviour to classes possible without subclassing.

Rails is (in)famous for making use of Ruby's method_missing to implement all sorts of funky stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thinking in terms of messages passing makes you think of the objects in a proper way.

Objects just aren't structs with methods on top: you can create lots of those without them ever being objects in the proper sense. Objects are a separate concept.

<comment><USER19> > Objects just aren't structs with methods on top

This view is probably prevalent because C++ more or less _does_ (and did even more in its early days) promote objects as structs with methods and some other fanciness on top, and C++ was probably the first really widespread OO language.

<comment><USER19> Replying to myself: an interesting aspect, I think, is that this isn't solely a failing of C++ (though C++ has plenty wrong with it). This model of structs- with-methods had already started appearing in C, in the form of APIs built around sets of functions that all operated on the same struct, which was passed as a void* as the first parameter of all the functions (void* for encapsulation purposes); see the pthreads API, for example. So in some ways it's also a consistent, and even sort of naturally arising, model of OO, sort of an organic development out of structured programming, where structs and associated functions serve a main role in the structuring. It's of course a quite different notion of OO from Kay's message-passing, so maybe should have a different name, if it were an ideal world?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple is Finally Evil - <AUTHOR> http://eptiger.blogspot.com/2008/09/apple-is-finally-evil.html

<comment><USER2> When was Apple ever not "evil"?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Apple has always been as evil as Microsoft, but with better PR.

<comment><USER4> Evil but cooler?

BTW, Apple's complaints about Microsoft have always been 'tasteless' not 'evil.'

<comment><USER5> Slashdot's complaints about "M$" have always been "evil" though..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why Apple gets a free ride for manufacturing weapons components (via their acquisition of PA Semi) and having a CEO that owns a large chunk of Disney, which is barely more than a swear word among the same people who appreciate their products on a technical level.

The iPhone SDK issues are merely disappointing in comparison. You don't see two year old blog posts from the same group of people flaming Apple for not providing a wireless device of any kind for them to develop on, which is surely a bigger injustice by their logic. Where were these people when I wanted some apps for my RAZR?

I think the Venn diagram of people who are affected by Apple's iPhone development policies, and the group of people who complain about them on the internet has a very small intersection, and if you add the group of people who can actually code, you could probably buy the lot of them a round of drinks for twenty bucks.

Personally, as a veteran of the war of mendacity against common sense that is SOAP, I support anything that gets Dave Winer upset.

<comment><USER7> How is Disney a swear word? It churns out a lot of popular crap and it has Pixar making probably the best movies out there now. Steve Jobs made it company policy not to release "direct-to-DVD sequels". Remember that? Without that, Disney quality jumped a LOT (which, I know, just says how awful they HAD been). Meanwhile, they've reinstated their 2D animation department, which is BIG fun news and which might bring back the good old Disney.

Why should we criticize them for making weapons components or for owning Disney? That has nothing to do with their products.

<comment><USER6> Disney is typically cited as a major force behind the never-ending extension of copyright (the famous 'keep mickey out of the public domain' strategy). Disney has also put considerable resources into lobbying for ever-more- oppressive legal measures such as mandatory DRM hardware in computers. They are no friend of the typical hacker. Steve Jobs, as a major shareholder and board member, could influence this if he so chose. Apple also chose to continue its weapons-grade product lines when it purchased PA Semi. Maybe they have a contract they can't get out of, but they may well have had the choice to shut down or spin off those products.

You can agree or not with those arguments, I'm not advocating for or against them. They don't affect my purchasing decisions (the best tool for the job in my current circumstances is a MacBook Pro so that's what I have). I make my living working for banks that no doubt finance far worse things. If Disney returns to form animation-wise I'll reward them with movie ticket purchases. It just seems to me that all the people posting "Apple is finally evil" linkbait nonsense could choose meatier targets than mistakes in developer relations, and the fact they choose not to means they're not even any good at being wrong.

It's crappy linkbait blog post pollution that irritates me, not anything that Apple's doing.

<comment><USER8> "Maybe they have a contract they can't get out of"

It really does pay to inform yourself before ranting. Worst case, you spent some time but your argument becomes more clear. Best case, you prevent yourself saying something uninformed and untrue.

In this case, yes, Apple tried to close the military product line, and the US military strongly insisted that PA Semi continue producing their existing military products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a bit sceptical about the googlephone being the good guy. I wish he hadn't started on that. It's very tempting to pit the google phone against the iphone, but to be fair the only good guy in town is openmoko. The problem with openmoko though is that the interface is utter crap, but it's the best bet for a "free" platform for developers.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious how the openmoko is more open than the android platform?

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing because the hardware itself is open and fully hackable whereas with android all you get is a Java SDK?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is just IMHO: The whole "rant on Apple's app store policies" meme has run out of mileage. Its kinda getting like Rickrolls, except not as funny. I know several developers that have successfully gotten apps into the store. One of them is doing _VERY_ well. His opinion when I asked him about this was basically, "Apple states it all pretty clearly in the documentation when you sign up. Some types of apps (podcaster for example) are obviously going to run up against functionality Apple already has implemented, if in a different form. You just don't develop for those areas." It seems like mostly the only people who have been yelling, complaining, bellyaching, and blogging about Apple's policies are the ones that can't read the frakking docs. The developers who are all doing quite well don't have a big problem with the restrictions.

Bottom line, the iPhone SDK wasn't developed by an organization like W3C. It was built by a company that wants to make a profit. They own the incredibly popular platform. If you want to play, you play by their rules.

Otherwise, you can write apps for Android. You can sell your apps to the 1/10 of a percent of people that will buy the clunky HTC Dream and similar devices that do or will run the Android platform. I'd love to see Android running on the iPhone. That would give the great hardware plus the open OS. I would stick with the iPhone OS, but the option should be out there.

<comment><USER12> Totally agree. The iPhone is to developers as the iPod is to music owners. Sure, music owners could hawk their wares on any number of music stores, but only a deal with Apple would give them access to the huge iPod base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This comes across as a bit rant-ish, but I can absolutely see his point. Apple has a fine line to walk in terms of continuing to present it's users with the level of quality applications they are used to however the lack of clarity from Apple about the approval process coupled with the NDA means that nobody can even learn from other developer's experiences.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, it was a bit rant-ish and I openly admitted to it :) I almost never do that, but I was so tired of reading about all the junk Apple was doing to make developers' lives harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google "Power Computing."</comment>


Should I Use a Carousel? - <AUTHOR> http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ <comment><USER2> Clever move to make the slide transition timeout juuust a tad too fast to read, further driving home the point that carousels are a shit way to present information.

<comment><USER3> Every time I do UI stuff, I tell my boss that timers are a code smell.

They're either too long, and the user gets bored or confused, or they're too short and the program bucks the user off and runs on without them.

"Skip" buttons don't work. If you can have a Skip button, just make it a Next button and kill the timer.

<comment><USER4> I mostly agree with this. I've seen one valid and helpful usage of timers though: in Waze. Some things start automatically after some time, like navigation after selecting and address, or dismissing a notification. The time remaining is indicated on the corresponding button itself in a progress bar fashion.

<comment><USER5> i would absolutely HATE if navigation started itself after i selected the address after some time.

I'm forgetful when it comes to short term memory, and it would annoy me deeply.

<comment><USER6> It's surely better than Google's Maps approach. They make Maps crash while you're driving on the freeway, so you say "Okay Google, start directions home" and it says "Would you like me to start directions home? We know you're driving at bone crushing speeds on a road you've never been on in a country you're not entirely familiar with. Just look at your phone screen and find the button and crash into the side of the freeway and don't get home. It's not like you need to keep your attention on the road while driving; we are quite happy if you crash and die. But timers and explicit audio instructions are just such poor usability."

<comment><USER7> If you tell it to _navigate_ home it will actually pull up the directions and the go button will have a autostart timer so you don't touch anything. Ask for directions and you will have to start touching the screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my counter argument to that site. Big eCommerce sites will test and optimize every pixel and if something doesn't work, they'll replace it with something better. Now, go find a list of the top ten eCommerce sites and I'll bet at least 50% have a carousel on the home page.

Google's first search result gave me Amazon, eBay, Walmart Target, Etsy, Best Buy, Macys, The Home Depot,Wish and Craigslist. Only four don't have a carousel: Target,Etsy, Macys and Craigslist.

Lot's of cherry picking. The 1% nd.edu stat ignores the 8% clicks a similar carousel was getting on a different ND web property. For giggles, here's the home page at the time : [https://web.archive.org/web/20121214022552/www.nd.edu/](https://web.archive.org/web/20121214022552/www.nd.edu/)

\- The Neilson Norman Group sample size was ONE.

\- If you read the all of the Weilder Fuller comment, he says "Now, I'll preface the remarks below by saying that there are some excellent uses for a rotating gallery. "

\- [https://www.accessibilityoz.com/](https://www.accessibilityoz.com/) \- accessibility specialists have a carousel on their home page.

The Adam Fellows quote isn't from the page that's linked. It's from [https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/10312/are- carousels-e...](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/10312/are-carousels- effective) where he also says ""Of course in some situations a carousel is exactly the right means to deliver content and so we need to try and importantly test every situation."

<comment><USER9> > Big eCommerce sites will test and optimize every pixel and if something > doesn't work, they'll replace it with something better.

Define "better".

A carousel might cause some users to buy more, but others to get annoyed and frustrated.

<comment><USER8> "better" is whatever will positively impact the goal of the website or page.

A carousel could cause some users to but less and annoy even more users. It comes down to testing, but I've never seen any clear cut data saying that as soon as you put a carousel on a page it will always have a negative impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, but carousels are rarely added because they provide a good UX. They are added because motion draws attention and attention sells. Let's say you have 3 big sales going on on your site: do you put them next to each other so visitors can see all three right away? If so, congratulations, you are a moral person. But marketing people aren't (/s) and they know that if the visitor sees the word SALE just as it slides away in the carousel, they'll want to know more. But now they're already staring at the next slide, so they read that one, then the next, then they're finally back at the first one. Even if they don't go through the whole thing and just click back to see the first one, they have now spent far more time looking at your ad than if they were only idly scanning the site.

AliExpress is notorious for this, with even the "you might also like" items on a deliberately too fast slider, so something can catch your eye, but then you already have to interact with it to get it back before you've even had the chance to think about it. And once you get someone to interact with your ad, the chances of them clicking it and possibly buying it go up by a lot.

<comment><USER11> So really, carousels are most effective as a a dark pattern; you shouldn't be using them unless you are trying to be evil^H^H^H^H manipulative, and know how to use them properly for that purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Carousels are the type of UI pattern that is only okay if you _ask_ for it. Amazon is a good example of a carousel done right. If I want to see the full- sized images which are part of a customer's product review, I click on the thumbnail representing these images, with the expectation that some larger, more obvious version of the images will be made available. Once a carousel appears in an overlay, it's not disturbing or annoying at all. It's there because I asked for it.

<comment><USER13> If you're not familiar with the term, this image viewer pattern is generally called a lightbox rather than a carousel. I generally don't see the two used interchangeably, but there's similarity to the prev/next controls, of course.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't a lightbox make the rest of the page dark? Amazon doesn't do this, the carousel doesn't take up any more space than the original image.

<comment><USER15> The core difference is that a "carousel" as intended here generally contains text, and that's specifically why it's a bad pattern.

"Scroll-through" photo albums are a fair way to display photos, however I still personally prefer a gallery for photos instead, exactly like it works on your phone for example (gallery + "lightbox")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I work at a design agency. Most of my coworkers have seen this site before, and generally agree with it. But we still propose designs with carousels to clients.

A lot of our clients are obsessed with what content is "above the fold". Never mind that "that fold" doesn't really exist on the web given different screen sizes, and never mind that users are more likely to scroll down than click slides. Every executive simply must have their all-important tidbit at the top of the page.

A carousel is a way to solve this perceived problem. As long as no one actually needs to see the content anyway, they at least aren't actively detrimental to the overall user experience.

<comment><USER17> If you click through the website, the 8th slide of the carousel actually states this exact point:

 _Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in Marketing /Senior Management that their latest idea is on the home page. Use them to put content users will ignore on your home page_

<comment><USER18> I've found carousels are a great way to hide bad content that senior stakeholders insist have to be given prominence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love these snarky novelty sites making fun of bad UI trends. As soon as the carousel started going too fast I almost rage quit the tab. Well done.

<comment><USER20> I felt that detracted from the argument since it was really just demonstrating that a badly implemented carousel is bad - which isn't a strong argument against a well designed carousel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've often found Carousels do a good job when there is repetitive information,

E.g. testimonials - you got one big testimonials but you also have a dozen more and you don't want to fill up your page with just that.. so you use a carousel.

<comment><USER22> Repetitive ... useless ... information.

How much does "My daughter loved the gift. Sue K., Topeka" add to your impression of an offer or product?

<comment><USER6> It's non trivial. If you heard someone liked it, you're more likely to buy it.

<comment><USER23> If it's an actual review on a trustworthy 3rd party site, yes. Otherwise no, as most of these testimonials are just completely fake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had a client that said they wanted one because it made them look like they did all kinds of stuff. They didn't care if it was used. It was all an illusion.

It needed to portray:

"We are big enough for you to consider doing business with us and to buy our services"

<comment><USER25> As a developer at an agency, this is far more common than you think. Most of the sites we build are for small businesses that only have one or two products/services. By putting a few carousels with stock images and some meaningless language or testimonials, it makes it look (or at least makes them feel like it looks) like they do a lot more and are a lot more important and bigger than they are actually are. Half of our job is to make the client seem bigger and better than they really are and carousels are one of the ways that designers and clients like to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Facebook and Instagram use carousels for their Stories feature. Google uses carousels for News stories and product results. Are they the exception and if so, why? Or are they not aware of the user data?

<comment><USER27> A few things to note, at least about the Instagram stories:

1\. It's primarily mobile, by far.

2\. The story is the only thing on the screen and the entire experience is focused on it.

3\. You can hold down the story to prevent it from continuing onto the next one for the duration of your hold.

<comment><USER23> Wow, first time I've heard of 3. Not a very discoverable interaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another design issue that I see are landing pages for sites that don't need landing pages. My university's course selection site has a landing page with...yep a carousel. Why? None of the information on said landing page is useful. I want to see my schedule and courses. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER29> A few cherry-picked quotes doesn't really tell me anything, since the value of a carousel depends on a number of factors:

\- how is the carousel being used? To display similar products, to show latest blog posts?

\- are your users primarily on desktop or mobile?

\- have you A/B tested carousels to see if users interact with them more, less or the same?

I see carousels on sites like Ikea and Best Buy and IMO it's a useful way to get a quick glimpse of what categories of products are currently on sale.

</comment><comment><USER30> > "Carousels are this decade's <blink> tag."

The person who wrote that has never heard of <marquee>.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's the classic _false economy_ you're saving vertical space, but nobody wants to scroll your carousels, or wait for it to transition. It's always easier to just scroll down the page, especially on mobile.

Apps like Instagram have a standard carousel for photo albums and people use them and can trust the functionality.

But most websites have varying implementations of carousels, with weird functionality (autoplay, transitions, no-swipe, randomized). Users get confused by each implementation and eventually just ignore them...

<comment> pure-awesome "Apps like Instagram have a standard carousel for photo albums"

Yeah, but that only applies to users who are used to Instagram. It's definitely not an INTUITIVE feature.

I've had friends and family link me to Instagram posts, and though I've learned now, for a long time they'd have to explicitly mention there were additional pictures in the post, or I'd miss them.

(I don't know if it's different in the app, but certainly in the webpage those little dots at the bottom are non-obvious to a first-time user.)

<comment><USER6> I think it's more of a mobile-first design. It would be super weird to see it and do it with a mouse, but it's a common enough ui on mobile apps that I think a lot of people will be accustomed to it. But Instagram also has a feature where the second time you see a post that you haven't scrolled through, you see the second photo. This might server as a discoverability aid.

It is 153% the case that mobile user experience is almost entirely happened during the epoch when helping your user understand how to use the app rates second, and keeping some hidden features for expert users rates highly (the feeling of being a power user since you know some features others don't - making the user feel a little bit loyal to your app).

So if it's not perfectly discoverable, that's probable something the designers are happy with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They should collect stats on how many clicked the previous slide link immediately after the slide changed (slide changes too fast).

</comment><comment><USER33> Carousels are good for things users should be vaguely aware of but are not likely to click on. For example if you have a company that sells a widget, you can have the important menu about buying a widget on the top and below it a carousel of recent news with pictures.

These news can be about your participation in widget related conferences, about you passing obtaining environmental goals, about some R&D project promising some better widget some time in the future, about community involvement of your company etc.

Most customers will not click on those stories and they are not intended to. But they will get a changing site with changing pictures and will peripherally learn that you are a forward thinking socially involved company that is an R&D leader, participates in the community, etc.

<comment><USER34> I agree with what you are saying.

> Carousels are good for things users should be vaguely aware of but are not > likely to click on

Carousels should be used to set the _tone_ of the webpage, and not be meant for content to be clicked on.

For example, all major fashion e-commerce website dedicate large amount of homepage screen-estate to a carousel showing their major brands, current discounts, etc. The user can still use the search or menu functionality to look for what they want (and I think majority do), but now the tone of the business has been set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A moment to call out the laggy, janky carousel on Zillow mobile interface. Ugh. Opening images to scrolly mode is smoother but that left/right flick on their carousel is even bumpy on Pixel/Chrome

</comment><comment><USER36> I expected this to be a flow chart like this:

[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=020605](http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=020605)

</comment><comment><USER37> worked great for me... with javascript turned off. just scrolled down the page and read all the content at my leisure.

the only glitch was the sticky footer that fixed itself in the middle of the page instead of at the bottom of the viewport.

so my takeaway is, use good markup for carousels, in case users have js turned off, and sticky footers should use css (position: sticky), not js on top of position: absolute.

(like others, i think image carousels with galleries are fine)

<comment><USER38> I made an example of a 3D carousel using just CSS a couple of days ago - [https://codepen.io/onion2k/full/xxZYBVj](https://codepen.io/onion2k/full/xxZYBVj)

It's not a serious suggestion for a UI component but it does demonstrate that a proper carousel doesn't require JS to work.

<comment><USER37> that's awesome! i really like these css-only explorations and hope they continue to drive html/css advances. lots of interactions and controls we use js for can, and should, be subsumed by html/css instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > "Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in Marketing/Senior > Management that their latest idea is on the Home Page. Use them to put > content that users will ignore on your Home Page. Or, if you prefer, don't > use them. Ever." > > lee duddell

This tells me I should absolutely use carousels. Just don't expect people to read the text in there.

</comment><comment> arc-in-space And yet: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190913224546/https:/twitter.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190913224546/https:/twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1172610099136716800)

(I'm unsure why Gary removed these tweets, maybe something did change his mind on this.)

<comment><USER40> I can guess why he removed them: it's a _really_ bad example in support of carousels.

The carousel on that page is one of the very few clickable things, and literally _the only thing on the entire page_ that doesn't either take you to obviously-unrelated content (by which I mean a different site, or the blog or privacy links in the footer), or start the program (log in, sign up, get started, start now)—that is, if you want to know more about what this thing actually is, the carousel is your only hope, if you don't want to sign up or start the program yet, and I expect that to be true for most visitors.

The measurement is made even more bad by the fact that the carousel inherently encourages a large number of clicks: there are three slides, but because there's no indication of that (no progress indicator, and no transitions) I honestly expect the typical person that interacts with that carousel to click the arrow at least eight times: maybe once and a half through, then "wait, was that it? Did I waste my interaction time on _that_?" and a bit more fiddling to confirm that yes, that actually is all that's there. So in that heat map, divide the carousel arrow clicks by at least eight to get a more realistic picture of things. (The heat map reveals other problems with the site, too, things that look like they might be links and people click on them, but they're not.)

The carousel on that page is _terrible_ and should be abolished with prejudice. Just flatten the slides, lay them out vertically! It'd be substantially superior, make the concept much easier to grasp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've always hated carousels with a passion. Even if they provide some sort of valuable information, by the time your attention is focused on it, it usually jumps to the next "slide" or whatever they are called. So yes, you should not. And I really don't understand why so many people are obsessed with them.

</comment><comment><USER42> At least if you're going to (or forced to) at least use a good well tested library. I've written more than I want to count myself over the years and they're just such a pain to get right.

[https://swiperjs.com/](https://swiperjs.com/) Is probably one of the best out there.

</comment><comment><USER43> From what I can remember, Apple.com never had a carousel.

Microsoft.com has two on the homepage right now.

<comment><USER44> Apple has always had one until 2017.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170228232206/http://www.apple....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170228232206/http://www.apple.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Any UI, accessibility, or common sense reasons are irrelevant.

It's the UX, managers, marketing people asking for more clicks, ad impressions, user engagement... and you will make a carousel for them each time they'll request.

</comment><comment><USER46> I feel the same way about radar charts.

</comment><comment><USER47> I had a music video app which was a carousel with YouTube embeds

The use cases for a carousel are fairly limited

</comment><comment><USER48> Cannot agree more. Another general tip I want to share to people who are bad at design:

* { transition: 0; }

</comment><comment><USER49> We need one for excessive padding. STOP please. Have a completely separate style sheet for mobile devices where you can use padding for larger touch areas.

Use tables to organize information. Make it dense.

When you think you stick 24px padding and it "looks" right to you? Now cut that by 75% to just 6px.

<comment><USER50> And don't forget hamburger menus, even for desktop sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'd argue this is different on mobile compared to the web.

It's pretty common in mobile onboarding flows to use a carousel like UI. It's much easier to swipe on a carousel-like UI and it's enough of a common design pattern there that people are used to it.

<comment><USER52> I agree in most cases. I think they should be avoided in hero scenarios but a small flickable carousel to show product photos or something below the fold is reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Manila Folder Boeing 777 guy. Please take note.

</comment><comment><USER54> Would love to know these stats adjusted for age. I would expect anyone younger than 35 to know how to interact with a carousel. And some content like a resort's home page with a gallery of images / things to do isn't bad for a carousel. CMV

<comment><USER55> Anecdotal but... I am considerably younger then 35, know how to interact with it, and hated this page with a passion.

I do think that sometimes a carousel can be fine for images, under the condition that it is only for images, and that those images can be found in a gallery that is easy to find.

<comment><USER26> This page was designed to be intentionally frustrating.

<comment><USER55> Indeed. I should probably have made it clear that I find these incredibly frustrating almost any time I find them in the wild as well. Sorry for being unclear.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31925449 <comment><USER2> Just 2 weeks ago, I won a machine learning contest with a $20,000 prize pool where the goal was to predict the IQ of a child at age 7, based on various biological measurements and demographic indicators. The data includes whether a child was breastfed.

After reading the article I did some very quick computations and my finding based on the model I developed is that children who were not breastfed have an IQ impairment in the 1-3 IQ points range, after accounting for confounding factors.

This is very consistent with the results published here.

Compared to this study, I believe the methodology I'm using is more powerful for three reasons:

\- much larger sample size: the dataset I have access to comprises 12015 children, compared to 3493 for the study

\- a larger set of confounding factors is accounted for: notably, the data includes height and weight measurements at up to five points in time

\- confounding factors are fully accounted for, rather than hand-waved away. This is a complex model based on random forests and linear model, and the results are entirely cross-validated.

Stay tuned for more detailed computations. I will also ask the organizers for the exact definition of breastfeeding used.

\---

Edit:

On the other hand, the study is still very appealing because according to the authors, there is little correlation between demographics and breastfeeding in Brazil, whereas the validity of the effect I'm reporting is dependent on whether the demographic model is powerful enough to remove the correlation. Still, I believe most of the correlation is easy to remove, and it isn't clear that there aren't subtle demographic effects even in Brazil. In particular, the proportion of participants with missing IQ data seems to decrease with duration of breastfeeding, and I don't know if they have an explanation for that.

<comment><USER3> > impairment in the 1-3 IQ points range, after accounting for confounding > factors.

But 1-3 IQ points doesn't seem much, right? I mean, what difference would it make in real life activities?

<comment><USER4> It's roughly the same as the change that happened when we stopped using leaded gas, which seems to have had a huge affect on society. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity)

Also it's just one relatively simple thing. Imagine we find several things that can all increase IQ by a couple points...

<comment><USER5> I've never gotten my IQ tested, but when I read about studies like these - they usually demoralize me from fear of competitive behavior. I think this leads to low self esteem, and the imagining that I have a low IQ (high marks through schooling and post graduate education, MSc, possible imposter syndrome) as my default attitude. It can be a self defeating attitude, but what it usually does is make me argue with people about IQ tests, and explain why they are not necessarily indicative of intelligence, individually or globally.

I can imagine that merely the act of measuring IQ has significant effect on the population. I can not imagine a population that exists without it, but I imagine it would also have a huge effect on society, as you similarly hypothesize about the 1-3 point increase across the population globally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm honestly totally in favor of breast-feeding, when it's a reasonable option. I don't want anyone to _avoid_ breast-feeding because they think (as was believed for quite a while, actually) that formula is better.

But this line from the OP slightly freaked me out -- just for acknowledging the possibility:

> But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do > it.

Have they _forgotten_ the abortion debate? There are some relevant points in there, even if formula-feeding actually cost 50 IQ points, reliably.

But it's more than just that.

Parenting is demanding and unavoidably full of compromises, for just about all parents. Most people just think in overly-simplified terms of what's "right" and "wrong" in parenting decisions, which means that the mother who can't breastfeed because she's got mastitis gets to suffer _both_ from the pain and from guilt of imagining her child's IQ points decreasing; nice.

But really -- feeling guilty whenever you see your child is probably quite a bit _worse_ than any harm not breast-feeding them may or may not cause.

I feel like there should be just a list of priorities, for parents to review when they're choosing their individual compromises, and at the top of the list would be "dedicate time when you're feeling _well_ to your child". Then you can spend that time actually being supportive, kind, fair, consistent, and all of those things that go out the window when you're feeling awful.

And you may be feeling awful if you're compromised away too much of your sleep, if you're in pain, if you've faked being happy for too long, because of some article you read about something that was "right" or "wrong" for your child.

All of these other things -- like breast-feeding -- should come below that.

Kids don't want/need more time, full-stop; they want/need more time with parents who are actually doing okay.

<comment><USER7> In some cases, the pressure to breastfeed can do more harm than good. If the parent is feeling stressed, as it can be an extremely intense and also painful experience, the bonding process can suffer. More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk. The father of my adopted son forced my wife to breastfeed. Over a 3 month period, the poor boy lost a dangerous amount of weight and needed a stay in hospital, where he had strict, formula-based feeding schedule. If my wife was asleep, the nurses wouldn't even bother waking her up, they'd just feed him.

The result, and not to say this is a cause but a potential contributing factor, is that this unfortunate boy has major developmental delays, is unable to speak properly and what he can say he often doesn't understand. I personally have had my past investigated by social services to ensure I won't have a negative impact on his development (I suffered from psychosis in my teenage years, likely due to stress from attention deficit disorder and a traumatic event). Teachers and myself have noticed, for example, he regularly speaks well out of context, which is notably worse than his peers. There's a tough road ahead.

With articles like this, we are looking at individual, specific factors when the reality is much more complicated and results from an interplay of thousands of microscopic to large and obvious factors. With children and their development, it is just not simple. We are, whether we like it or not, complex systems.

Parents of healthy body and mind want the best for their children. The pressure of this alone is fantastically great. The results of additional, external, pressure could do more harm than good.

<comment><USER8> "More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk" \- Is there any anecdotal evidence to prove this. One lactation consultant told us that this claim is totally false. According to her, all women who give birth can and will produce enough breast milk and she had the evidence to prove that.

<comment><USER9> She sounds like a real peach.

Honestly that opinion seems more colored by her political views (i.e. breast feeding good, formula evil) than any scientific or medical evidence.

I've met lactation consultants just like that, and they often go into diatribes about how hospitals/doctors are evil and push formula on new mothers (which wasn't true at all, in fact the hospital we used had a nurse specifically to help mothers breastfeed and offered heavily subsidised classes).

While getting started with breastfeeding is hard and mothers should be encouraged to keep at it. Some mothers simply never produce, even after trying that hard, or that long. At a point you're putting your child's life in danger if you keep trying without results (and, no, I do not mean after just a few hours -- that's normal, I mean days).

Honestly I'm pro breastfeeding but I find a lot of other pro breastfeeding people insufferable. No, sorry, but people are in fact good mothers or fathers if they use formula. No, sorry, they aren't automatically ignorant if they use formula. No, sorry, you or your child aren't superior because you breastfeed. No, sorry, it really isn't appropriate to approach random people in the street and lecture them on why they're raising their child wrong.

<comment><USER10> Is "breastfeeding good, formula evil" really a political view?

It is not hard to find cases of formula being promoted over breastfeeding to the detriment of infant health and development. Case in point: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 1-3 point IQ advantage is widely and consistently reported in the literature, and it's probably right as far as it goes. However, studies that additionally adjust for socioenvironmental factors (mothers who breastfeed are more likely to read to kids, have larger vocabularies, etc), show results around 1 IQ point: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786).

The "mothers should have the option" bit in the article was really off- putting. As if taking the option away was even on the table! It bears keeping in mind that the vast majority of the current adult generation was formula- fed. In 1971, only 25% of kids were breastfed in the hospital, and only 8% were still breastfeeding at 3 months.

As a metacomment, recommendations having to do with parenting are myopic. They lack any semblance of cost-benefit analysis, and the attitudes in the medical community about how women should mother date back to a time when womens' opportunity costs for labor-intensive parenting choices were nothing.

Also often ignored is how these choices affect fathers. Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an infant. Because feeding is a bonding experience, this creates a dynamic where the child looks at the mother as the last line in being comforted. This is a choice couples can make, but it is one that involves trade offs, which the medical community ignores. It would be one thing if they just left it to patients, neutrally presenting the data and letting parents evaluate the trade-offs. But they tend to hide the data and aggressively push their interpretation of the proper trade-offs.

<comment><USER12> > Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an > infant. Because feeding is a bonding experience, this creates a dynamic > where the child looks at the mother as the last line in being comforted. > This is a choice couples can make, but it is one that involves trade offs, > which the medical community ignores.

What about a breast pump? As long as some lactating female provides milk, the milk can be frozen for months and is nearly as convenient as formula for a father.

Also FWIW men can lactate if appropriate hormone injections are given.

<comment><USER13> > _What about a breast pump? As long as some lactating female provides milk, > the milk can be frozen for months and is nearly as convenient as formula for > a father._

There have been few (if any?) studies that look closely at breastfeeding vs bottlefeeding pumped milk. Our society has jumped on the "pump and bottle" wagon because it's seen as a viable way to allow women to go back to work sooner while still "breastfeeding", but it's not known if this actually has the same effect.

Does the increase in IQ/whatever come from the nutritional content of the breastmilk? Does it come from antibodies or other contents that might be impacted by refrigeration/freezing followed by reheating? Does it come purely from the emotional bonding that breastfeeding promotes? We don't know, because we don't even know why breastfeeding is better than formula, and we're basically giving medical advice blindly when it comes to pumping.

But for what it's worth, the difference is so small as to be pretty meaningless. The "gap" is going to be dwarfed by other factors, both genetic and environmental.

<comment><USER12> True, but I think there has been research into the immunity benefits of breast feeding at least for the first few months...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the article does acknowledge that the study only shows correlation and not causation, it doesn't suggest what seems to me the most intuitively obvious alternative hypothesis.

We know that increased rates of mental stimuli and social interaction are beneficial to a growing brain. Perhaps breastfeeding correlates with parents that have more free time to interact with their child.

<comment><USER15> Researchers have considered your hypothesis. There have been many attempts to eliminate confounding variables in these studies (this doesn't mean that they were necessarily successful in doing so, but they did think about it). Often they attempt to control for differences in parenting styles, which should cover how much time they spend interacting with their child.

Also until 6-10 months, babies can't hold their own bottles, so someone is probably still interacting with them (unless you prop up the bottle and leave the baby alone, which is possible but not recommended).

<comment><USER14> Bottles can be held by disinterested third parties.

Boobs rarely can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The estimates were not adjusted for parental IQ: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ- PD.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ-PD.jpg)

Also, the correlation was just 0.42: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large)

</comment><comment><USER17> It interests me that the conclusion of these studies is almost always presented as breastfeeding increasing IQ (or conveying health benefits or whatever). Surely, breastfeeding is the _norm_ , and this headline should be "Bottle feeding linked to lower IQ"?

<comment><USER18> Reframing it like that makes it seem like parents who formula-feed (because you can pump breast milk into a bottle) are harming their children.

There's already enough pressure on women to breast feed and I'm not sure it's useful to put more on. It'd be better to make sure women can get rapid access to breast feeding consultants.

<comment><USER17> >makes it seem like parents who formula-feed are harming their children

Well, if the studies are to be believed, then that's exactly what _is_ happening. I completely understand the "pressure on mothers" argument, but I'm not sure that really flies, especially given the (albeit more subtle these days due to legislation) opposite pressure put on mothers by Nestlé and the rest.

I also find the fact that initial breastfeeding rates vary so wildly by country (from 98% in Sweden though to 57% in the US) interesting, and again more likely to do with commercial and social pressures of the same kind than to do with physical differences between mothers worldwide. While-ever the argument is presented as "Breast is Best" rather than "Artificial is Worst", I suspect this will continue.

<comment><USER18> I suspect that socially progressive Sweden makes it easy to breastfeed while repressive US (Facebook bizarely banned photographs of breastfeeding mothers) doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt, though I do find them interesting. This one does appear to be from a sufficiently large sample size.

Besides this, though, I find it interesting that humans feel they can sufficiently reverse engineer breast milk to replicate the health benefits. Not saying at all that eventually this won't be possible or probable.

But the "original formula" has gone through at least tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of years of evolution. From this respect I'm in complete awe that we have this nature-given tool, and astonished that more humans don't do this for their children.

<comment><USER19> > I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt

as everybody should, the problem is the media publishing these stories know that the only thing people read are the headlines.

> Experts say the results, while not conclusive ...

The article says one thing and its opposite. The goal here isn't to inform but to distract. Absolutely no conclusion can be made out of reading this article.

<comment><USER20> What exactly is wrong with this study?

<comment><USER19> Because you read the study ? there isn't even a link to the study in the article. The article is garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe but it certainly _is_ linked to epic levels of smugness and superiority complexes on the part of the parents and healthcare system. At least here in the UK.

My oldest is quite intelligent. We've had "I bet she was breast fed" more times than I can count. The reply is "no, it's a combination of genetics and nurture"...

<comment><USER15> Even the most generous estimates are that breastfeeding adds a few IQ points. Definitely not noticeable for an individual.

However, at the population level, which is what the healthcare system is dealing with, that's a huge deal. Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points.

<comment><USER22> _Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points._

I guess it depends on the starting point. I imagine that shifting the average from 85->90 would have a much bigger effect than shifting from 105->110\. Most studies seem to show a pretty sharp diminishing returns when correlating IQ points to just about any measure of 'success'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should've done this last night, now that I see that this ended up on front page for a while.

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X\(15\)70002-1/fulltext)

[http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/...](http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/langlo/2015/langlo_150317.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is something people have been going back and forth about for decades. There's even been a study that used more people and was randomized and controlled. You can read actual literature surveys of all the ways parents can affect their kids' IQs here: [http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html](http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's already known since a while that breastfeeding is a reason for a higher IQ. There was a study in 2007 that the correlation between breastfeeding and the IQ is moderated by genetic variant in FADS2.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066)

</comment><comment><USER25> There is also a negative link between breastfeeding and ADHD, [1].

[1] [http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin- resear...](http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin-researchers- investigate-its-effects-adhd-245873)

</comment><comment><USER26> How long before breast milk becomes so valuable women start selling it for huge profit?

I'm going to set up Boober, an app for breast milk delivery and make millions!

<comment><USER22> It's already happening. You're late to this party.

<comment><USER26> ... as with every idea I have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wrong title... Should say "giving formula reduces IQ"</comment>


Sales Lessons from a 6 year old: It's all about the cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.quotacrush.com/index.php/2009/10/09/sales-lessons-from-a-6-year-old-its-all-about-the-cash/ <comment><USER2> Ooh, that's a dangerous, dangerous path. It's well known that adding financial incentives can have all sorts of negative side-effects.

Beyond the obvious "gaming the system" problems, there is the well-known fact that paying people to do what they should want to do by themselves can have strong negative effects on motivation. Once the payments stop, his son will probably feel like he's being wronged because his dad's not paying him to play football anymore, and turn his back on it. Net result is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. He's conditioning his son to whine about all kinds of stuff so he'll get money in order to perform.

School grades and so on. I'm really not sure if this is smart. Such tricks work both ways.

I've sent my son to karate, I never had to 'push' him there (or bribe him) and if he didn't want to do it any more then that would be fine with me, even though it is beneficial to him.

There are plenty of choices, and if you can only get your child to do what should come natural because of a monetary incentive then that will come back in some way in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't necessarily disagree, but the point was about salespeople - who ARE motivated by financial incentives and SHOULD be motivated by financial incentives.

You can criticize my parenting for sure - but I claim to be an expert sales guy - not an expert parent!

In this talk, Dan says that when you put certain incentives on - you narrow the focus of thinking. EXACTLY!! You WANT to focus the salespersons thinking and have them focused on MONEY. Both for themselves and the company.

Salespeople are not like the rest of you. If you want to motivate a salesteam, you need to re-do all of these tests with only salespeople.

If I was presented with the candle problem, I'd sell the candle and use the money to buy a dripless candle!

Sales people are NOT NORMAL!! We operate on a different frequency. Sometimes 100% of what we do is based on financial rewards. True - may not work for most people - and maybe I'm screwing up my son (although I think he is a future salesguy), but I stand by my position that the right financial rewards drive sales.

</comment><comment><USER5> He is not your employee, he is your son. If he doesn't want to play football, he shouldn't play football. It is not the obligation of our children to make us proud. Frankly, this is just fraked up.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's plenty of time later in life to work hard. Having time to truly _play_ is what's at a premium. If a 6 year old's performance on in a sport can make you _angry_ then maybe it is time to re-evaluate. Sure, I can see the point about applying yourself 100% to something, but maybe that's not the right question. The kid isn't really demonstrating that he is unwilling to take things completely seriously, only that he's not willing to take this _sport_ completely seriously. Kids _don't_ always take things seriously, it's part of being a child, don't take that away from him.

</comment><comment><USER7> So I wonder what your opinions would be if we replaced "$20" with "1 hr of video games per night" - do you have the same reactions?

Or, alternatively, what if the kid had a $20 allowance / week, and if he did something "bad" he would lose some amount of it per occurrence? Would you feel better about that situation?

<comment><USER8> Psychologically, there is a big, big difference between offering cash and offering almost anything else.

In "Predictably Irrational", Dan Ariely ran an experiment where people were asked to perform a certain task, where each person was offered one of three payments for the task: $5, $0.50, or nothing. The people who were offered more money worked harder at the task... But the people who were asked to work for free worked harder than either of the groups that were offered cash.

Then he performed a similar experiment, except he offered candy equivalents: cheap candy, expensive candy, or nothing. All three groups worked with approximately the same amount of effort.

Then he performed the same experiment -- offering candy -- except that he told each participant how much the candy was worth. People worked as hard as if they had been offered the candy's equivalent in cash.

<http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/Predictably-Irrational>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good business lesson? Maybe.

Good parenting lesson? Hell no.</comment>


MobiTrade: Trading Content in Disruption Tolerant Networks - <AUTHOR> http://planete.inria.fr/MobiTrade/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the related publication <http://www- sop.inria.fr/members/Chadi.Barakat/CHANTS2011.pdf></comment>


Sex Ed That Turns Boys into Men - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bright/sex-ed-that-turns-boys-into-men-ede65ca6e263?section=%5Bobject%20Object%5D

<comment><USER2> I think the general concept is good, very good. This could be a huge factor in solving the problem of bullying. But I fear that this is also a program that goes to the extreme to 'fix boys'. For instance: notice that one of the arguments is about solving sexual health problems for women, while we started with solving sexual health problems for guys. It also appears the boys have a more 'positive' perception of sexual health, masculinity and homosexuality? Tell me who is anybody to judge what a positive perception of masculinity is? And if we're going that far: why is femininity not on that list as well? What, boys can't have perceptions of femininity while girls are free to define what parts of masculinity are toxic, even? Finally, that last paragraph is a bit cringe-worthy. They've successfully managed to make that boy believe that the end of his relationship is all his fault instead of, you know, teaching him 'relationships' just don't last when you're that young, regardless of how you behave.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds sort of like Our Whole Lives: [http://www.uua.org/re/owl](http://www.uua.org/re/owl)</comment>


The Future of Android/iOS Doesn't Matter. The Present Does. - <AUTHOR> http://ashfurrow.com/index.php/2011/09/the-future-of-androidios-doesnt-matter-the-present-does/

<comment><USER2> Let me add this (possibly unpopular on HN?) opinion: I have never, ever seen an open-source project that begins to compare, purely in user experience, to a closed-source/commercial project.

Not saying it can't happen, but the forces that push commercial dev and open source dev don't seem to be the same at all.

<comment><USER3> The simple question came up between myself and a friend of mine who is a designer: "Why don't designers seem to dedicate the same time to OSS projects that engineers do?"

Neither of us really had a good answer to that, but also neither of us expected OSS engineers to out-design designers in the general case. Basically, lack of designer input to OSS projects for whatever reason was problematic.

Perhaps it's because engineers don't solicit designer input. Perhaps it's because by the time the engineer-only project arrives on a designer's desk, it's too ugly to consider. Perhaps it's because designers don't have the same OSS ethos. Perhaps it's an illusion, and designers do give a lot of input to OSS projects, but the input is bad. Or a combination of a variety of factors.

<comment><USER2> There's actually a really good thread here about this exact topic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267861>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _yawn_ The same arguments haven been repeated for years.

But let's talk briefly about "The Present". Considering the bulk of major new iOS features that Android had long before, (multitasking, drop-down notifications, cloud sync etc), the Android "Present" is always a few steps ahead and some of us like it that way. This isn't something iOS fans seemingly have a very hard time understanding.

I can't wait until iOS gets voice actions/input and navigation. We won't hear the end of how incredibly new and innovative iOS is.

<comment><USER5> the voice actions/input you mention will likely go well beyond what Android currently offers.

This is one of the things that most Android users seem to neglect understanding.

Sure, iOS didn't get Copy and Paste first, nor did it get Multi-tasking first. But, what it did do (arguably) is take those two things and make them a lot more useful than the equivalent on Android. By arguably I am mostly discussing Multi-tasking, as the differences in opinion here vary person to person. Some people like the fact that Android can multi-task to the end of the earth, but dislike the fact battery issues become a real problem. Meanwhile other users are content giving up some of their multi-tasking freedom for better battery life.

The same is going to be true of voice input on iOS. From the sounds of it, it will go well above and beyond what Android offers. The simple fact that the rumors (again, these could be wrong as we all know, so I'm speculating) indicate the iPhone 4S/5 are required for processing and ram reasons seem to tell us that the voice input part COULD be done entirely within iOS, not requiring the internet unless looking up internet enabled services (table reservation, weather, etc).

The same is true of the "drop-down notifications" you mention. Sure, Android had it first. I don't think anyone has said otherwise. But the way they implemented it is a lot better. One, the notifications (if you want) pop up on the main lock screen. Swipe the app icon from left to right and it takes you to that notification. No need to unlock, swipe the menu at the top, click the notification. The ability to remove a single apps notifications from the tray as opposed to clearing all is another nice addition. The ability to determine which applications show up in the notification tray. If you choose, some apps can be pop-up dialog boxes like they are in iOS4, some can be just numbers near the app icon, while some can be in the notification tray. I don't see that in Android.

Again, maybe some "skin" on top of Android can do these things, but that is half the problem not all Android devices will have these features. Sure, most of the people that argue Android is so awesome have no problem rooting and fiddling with their devices, but that will prevent mass market adoption if one of these features becomes a big deal right?

Generally iOS provides a much better experience for users. There are some ways that Android is better, some ways that iOS is better. I don't think there's really anything wrong with that. But Android users seem to be so damn hell- bent on being better, "oh but Android is activating more devices" blah blah blah.

Why can't everyone just shut the hell up and use what works for them instead of being dicks about it? Civil discussions are great, I think the original article for this story was a pretty civil discussion. Meanwhile, the hacker news discussion gets all pissy with people mindlessly arguing that their preferred OS is better.

This I think is something you have a hard time understanding, sir.

<comment><USER4> So in reply to an article about how only "The Present" matters, you spend half your post extolling the virtues of iOS's superior voice controls, _which don't exist_

Also note, you're telling us Android fans are dicks in response to an article that recycles the same old "Android sucks, haha" crap we've been reading around here for years.

I guess the irony of your post is lost on you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mmmhmm ... I actually wrote what I thought was a fair article describing the current state of Android vs. iOS and ended with a call for Android to become awesome enough for me to switch. That's not "Android sucks, haha."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I brought up the topic of Android vs. iOS

Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I only ever get to discuss the topic in flamewars online and speaking to an actual person was very refreshing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's always the same story. The UI isn't good enough. And then when iOS users actually use an Android device, they find out that the UI has actually been rather decent since Gingerbread as the OS looks fairly svelte and most major app developers have managed to make their apps not suck. The back button, Activities, Intents are all things that non-Android users are nearly always completely ignorant of and how they affect usability of the device.

Besides the title is a bit of flamebait. Who are we talking about when we say "it doesn't matter"? Investors, developers, users? They all have different considerations and different reasons for preferring various platforms with various outlooks.

edit: Just like with navigation concerns, please actually try some apps. I am the first to admit that Android apps have lagged behind iOS apps in terms of beauty, but there are several that are now so good, I prefer them in terms of appearance. The stigma has stuck around for longer than I've found it to be true. As for stuttering issues, JIT, more ram and Gingerbread have made these largely non existent. (If only they didn't ship Launcher2, the community launchers are a much better experience. Go Launcher EX and stock Gingerbread is absolutely as fast as iOS, even while streaming from SubSonic, etc)

<comment><USER8> The UI complaints I recall reading (not an Android user) focused not on the visuals, but on response feel, including complaints about UI "stutter", supposedly from the garbage collector or other background processes.

<comment><USER5> Last time I used Android was 2.2 on a Nexus One. There were some stutter issues as I recall. But the biggest complaint wasn't the "look" really, it was much more so many inconsistencies from app to app. Every app just feels free to do and look and act differently than another. This means there's a lot more of a learning curve than iOS.

One of my single biggest complaints UI-wise, was the menu button. Simple things that should be easy to accomplish were always hidden in that menu.

I worked in a retail store that sold electronics and speaker products. One of those products allowed phones to play their music through it. People love the idea of Pandora. But nearly EVERY Android user couldn't figure out how to create more than one station on the device and told me they had to use their computer to do it.

Now, maybe it isn't so hard to hit the menu button. But it effectively made major features hidden and put in a none-obvious way (by non-obvious I mean a good number of people weren't able to find it easily).

That's the kind of UI issue I think Android has that iOS doesn't. iOS has some hidden things but those are _usually_ power user things and aren't required to make the app function normally.</comment></comment></comment>


The man who studies the spread of ignorance - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance?ocid=fbfut <comment><USER2> I thought the name Dunning sounded familiar in context of ignorance studies. He is the first half of Dunning-Kruger effect. [0]

And the money quote from the article: _" Dunning warns that the internet is helping propagate ignorance – it is a place where everyone has a chance to be their own expert, he says, which makes them prey for powerful interests wishing to deliberately spread ignorance."_

It's a sad thing media literacy is so rare, but then again, there are 5 spin doctors for each journalist. (Can't find the reference right now, but it was an article on HN maybe a year ago.)

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)</comment>


What's an idea worth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/magazine/whats-an-idea-worth.html?ref=magazine&_r=0&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> One way to look at it, is an idea is "worth" whatever you can sell it for.

</comment><comment><USER3> An idea is worth nothing. The execution of that idea is what is valuable.</comment>