March 2012 - Posts

• Software Quality, Then and Now

  Long before I was creator of software products, I was a space geek. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, my parents said their three-year old boy was fascinated. I closely followed every phase of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. In 1981, two friends and I petitioned NASA to allow us to "cover" the first launch of the space shuttle Columbia. It was right around 1980 that my interest in computers and software blossomed. Later at Microsoft, I came to realize how important quality and engineering discipline is to successful products. For the past few weeks, I have been reading Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight (MIT Press) by David A. Mindell. This excellent book details the development of the computer that flew on each Apollo mission. I highly recommend it. Of particular interest is how the test pilot community that was flying the spacecraft perceived the role of computers and automation. The human factors aspect of the story is fascinating to me. Towards the beginning of Chapter 6, Mindell writes (emphasis added by me): It has become fashionable to denigrate the computers of the past with phrases like "we flew to the moon with less computing power than I have on my wristwatch," or "can you believe the entire Apollo program fit into a mere 36k of memory?"  Simply focusing on memory size, or the computer's speed, however, misses the important engineering accomplishments of the Apollo computer.  For who among us would risk our lives on our desktop computers, with all their speed, accuracy, and memory, and rely on their working flawlessly for two straight weeks?  The space shuttle flies with five redundant computers.  Any fully digital airliner has a minimum of three.  Apollo had only one.  It never failed in flight. "It never failed in flight." That is remarkable. Remember, seamstresses wove these programs into magnetic core memory. There were plenty of failures of the various pieces of Apollo hardware. When I think of the complexity of software in general, particularly of the tasks that the Apollo guidance computer was tasked with, the fact that the neither hardware nor software ever failed is astounding. Yes, unexpected things happened, like the infamous 1202 program alarms, but the software did the correct thing and continued working. There are lessons here for everyone who creates softwares. Posted Mar 12 2012, 01:58 PM by ChuckOp with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Programming

• The Great Shutdown Debate on Windows 8

  Since September, I've been reading the many complaints regarding the process used to shut down a computer running Windows 8. The general theme is that's hard to find, with some folks suggesting that this is emblematic of Windows 8 being difficult to use. Therefore, I thought I'd show the process of shutting down for both Windows 7 and Windows 8: Windows 7 Windows 8 Click the Start button Click the Settings charm Click the Log Off button Click the Power icon Click Shutdown Click Shutdown   It is the same number of actions. As I explained in one exchange recently, "it's just different." However, that's may be a little simplistic. After all, the Settings charm and panel is a new thing with Windows 8. People don't realize that the charms appear after a user action: Touch: Wipe in from the right Moue: Move mouse pointer to the upper-right corner Keyboard: Press WIN+C The discoverability of the new charms system is low. So you could say the first step for each would be: Windows 7 Windows 8 Mouse the lower-left Mouse to the upper-right Click the Start button Click the Settings charm Click the Log Off button Click the Power icon Click Shutdown Click Shutdown   Admittedly, you have to move the mouse a little father to get to the Settings charm (upper-right, then about 66% down the right-side). For touch users, it's a swipe-in from the right. For keyboard users, the process is more direct: Windows 7 Windows 8 Press the Start button or the WIN key Press WIN+I to display the Settings panel Press Right Arrow to move to the Log Off button Press Up Arrow to move to the power icon Press Space to display the menu Press Space to display the menu Up or down to select Shut down Press Up Arrow twice Press ENTER Press ENTER   The crux of the confusion is that people have gotten used to going to the Start menu to sleep or shut down their computer. During a recent discussion, someone reminded me that you have to press Start to stop (i.e. shut down). I remember when we shipped Windows 95 and how everyone made jokes about to shut down you had to press Start. Now that is no longer true, people are making jokes again that they can't find what to click to sleep or shut down. If you need to shut down regularly, change the action for the Power button on your computer. By default, the Power button is set to put the computer into Sleep mode, but it can be changed to Sleep, Hibernate (if supported), Shut down, or do nothing. The easiest way to get to that is to press the WIN+W and type "power". Then choose "Change what the power buttons do". Posted Mar 10 2012, 12:32 PM by ChuckOp with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Microsoft, Tip, UI, Windows 7, Keyboard, Windows 8