A print button? Mmkay. Let's explore WHY you need me to add that With all our attention on the Morlocks – down there with the whirring gears of Kubernetes and steaming clouds – it's easy to lose track of the Eloi: those concierges of productivity that smooth out the rough, upper crust of The Stack to make sure your software is actually usable. The trend now is to call this layer "design", …
I hope you guys are kidding. It feels like every project I've worked on which uses CSV as an input format has at least one developer (probably more, but at least the one who writes the CSV code) who writes a CSV "parser" by splitting lines on commas instead of using one of the many freely available libraries. I have just recently fixed *another* attempt to parse CSV data in this way, in spite of warning the dev team at the start of the project that you can't do that reliably. CSV has been around for long enough and is a simple enough format but people are *still* underestimating it!
Sorry, it's a bit of a sore point for me!
"Use Python, the library is built-in."
Somehow that doesn't stop them from reinventing this wheel anyway.
Another fun fact: if you try to import a .csv (which presumably stands for COMMA separated values) into Excel, you can select an arbitrary delimiter, and the default delimiter is not even comma (it's tab).
It's export, you have to change the locale to use a delimiter other than a comma. Then saving it as a ".csv" will correctly delimit it with pipes, semicolons, whatever..
There seems to be some weird hardcoding around the extension name - Excel can't actually process a CSV file with newlines in a text field unless the file is actually called blah.csv, which it will open without invoking the Import Wizard. Using a different extension name and going through the wizard ends up actually breaking the line.
Txs, I remember better now. Thing is, in previous versions of Excel you could actually set those options at import/export time, without putzing with the locale.
Which makes it quite annoying when they've taken that away for some unknown reason. One could always hope that it was to plug a possible security issue and harden Office, but, somehow, that seems unlikely.
CSV stands for Character Separated Values.
As for using a comma as decimal separator, I know Brexit and all but please take a peek over the parapet.
@Whitter: "comma [...] doesn't play nicely with CSV at all"
Yes it does! You just have to understand the format! Have a look at https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180, it's not that long. TL;DR is that you can quite easily embed commas, double quotes and line breaks inside CSV fields but you can't read them back just by splitting on line breaks and commas, you have to parse the data character by character.
As you are writing ‘guys’ in plural it looks like you do not know that python has an included csv module. Additionally there exists ‘pandas’ library for python which also supports reading and writing CSV files.
In this day and age python can be expected to be either present or available on python.org .
Or are you referring to ‘cut’ / ‘awk’ only? In this case I have missed the joke.
@Prst. V.Jeltz
"So what do these modules do? how do they allow the data to have commas in it that dont end up getting used as a delimiter?"
They allow the data to contain commas (and line breaks, and double quotes) by using the escaping logic built into the CSV format. I gave a reference to it earlier.
The point is that the CSV format is not the simple delimited format which it first appears to be (and which is suggested by the name, which doesn't help). The delimiters (commas and line breaks) can be escaped, so you have to know the context in which they're being used.
A classic example being the Apollo 13 explosion.
Why? LOX tank exploded
Why? Because Kapton insulation was used on some of the wiring, which can explode.
Why? Because the voltage on that wiring changed from 15-->65v and no one altered the insulation thickness.
Why? Because the change control management system (paper based IIRC) failed to track the change.
Which tells you a) Bad things happen if change management control fails b) Checking the CMC system might find other errors, starting with any other areas that change was not made.
I requested a small UI change in some in house software once. In theory, simpler than a print button.
Four hours later still not fully done.
"Why would you want to do that?"
So the programmer is now responsible for designing the work flow procesess of the whole company? Is this what a "business anaylst" does? great work if you can get it - id love to be tasked with something like that ,and have the authjority of high up people to make changes. bliss.
We just get crazy requests from users which , unless they are monumentally stupid must be done.
we dont get to suggest the sensible efficint paper free methodology.
We cant even stop people buying printers and scanners in order to print stuff out so they can scan it in again.
And fax machines! will we ever be rid of them? Again anything people put through a fax these days was already digital 5 minutes ago but they printed it out so that they could fax it.
...and dont get me started on our "new user" process.(it involves handwritten biro)
"Biro? Six months ago I started using my italic fountain pen for the first time since my 20's."
Wow! You can write? manually with a pen? That'll make it easy to send secret messages that no one else can intercept. The security services must be wondering what to do if that ever catches on. How will they monitor everyone?
(Asimov dropped this into a short story, many, many years ago. Two school kids who learn the ancient art of reading and writing to send each other "secret" messages)
So the programmer is now responsible for ...
... for pointing out when a request appears to make no sense.
When some PHB asks you for a print button in a webpage, do you
(a) add a "print" button because you know no better
(b) add a button labelled "print", and surreptitiously check PHB's browser settings for what will work for him?
(c) point out that print is a browser function, and that to do it from a web page is at best re-inventing a wheel, and at worst a security hole (when someone compromises their own security so it'll "work" for them).
OK, the webpage is one scenario among many. In another case, the arguments might be different, and a sensible outcome might include the button. But I suspect that's not the kind of scenario where your programmer is pushing back against a request.
To give one example, if for example, the web page displays an invoice, then the print button would link to a page that displays just the details of the invoice, without any of the navigation links and other stuff that is currently displayed, or maybe to a nicely formatted pdf copy of the invoice.
Faxes: my paranoid little self wont let me email anything truly confidential like a social security#. But I'll fax it, after confirming the recipient is expecting it. Unprotected sitting around lifetime here is ideally minutes, not forever in email systems.
Because, as noted in the article, "people" don't always use software in ways the designer expected.
Fr'instance, I have heard an anecdote where a secretary used to intercept and print out all her boss's emails, and deliver them as a stack of paper on his desk, as that was how he had always worked.
Despite all the many initiatives designed to promote a "paperless" office, it's just not going to happen, untill perhaps tablets or phablets are completely ubiquitous and software is available to allow you to annotate any file as you go.
But for now, if I'm going into a meeting, I usually print out network diagrams, gantt charts, policy documents etc so I can scribble on them as they are discussed, and so do most of my colleagues.
So, why have a print button? Because most people will use it.
> Dinosaur
Thanks. I'm well aware of the myriad ways in which processes could be improved. However, right now, the only way $GovtOffice accepts submissions of this form is by registered mail, on paper, so if you could kindly STFU and add the print button, it'd be appreciated. Thanks!
/S, but only a bit sadly.
Dinosaur
Yes please! In a sesame seed bun, with onions, cheese, mustard, mayo and pickles.
And I'll take a 50 page document to go.
For some things, paper is better. I have 60-odd PDF datasheets on my pooter. The more important ones are in my paper info file, along with hard copies of certain bits of legislation and useful British standards documents. When I'm on the phone, and in a hurry, that file is what I flick through to get the right answers to the right questions without having to stop mid-sentence to make my computer find me the stuff I want.
Oh and it has the price lists too, with hand-written annotations.
I love my tablet, but even if I had a work one, I just don't see it being as fast to search as I can flick through a well-organised folder with dividers for the important sections.
"I love my tablet, but even if I had a work one, I just don't see it being as fast to search as I can flick through a well-organised folder with dividers for the important sections."
Yep, been saying that manuals turned into helpfiles. Not mention ebooks, reference ones in particular. They can be great if you know what you are looking for and the correct word is in the index or search results, but when you have something in the back of your mind or on the tip of your tongue, a manual flick through a paper book can far more quickly reveal the correct information. On a similar note, it's often quicker to flick through a book than to load up the help file or document, click the search function, type in the hopefully correct incantation and maybe get the right result, which is what IAS was saying. In other words, I agree with his pots!
The trouble with this sort of fanaticism is that some impressionable people will take it literally.
While I haven't printed a piece of paper in ages I frequently use various apps' print function to export a PDF file. This has saved me quite a bit of frustration. Yes, "design gurus", you need a print button. No, "design gurus", skimming through the book Design Thinking does not make you the greatest thinker since Aristotle. Understand what your users actually do.
I often print stuff. It's sad about the trees, but if I want to read a document through to see if it really makes sense, and to check for typing errors of the sort that a spell checker won't spot ( most of them) I need to read it off a page, not a screen. This may not be the case for the full time techie, or they may never have to produce such documents. But most ordinary users seem to read documents better from a paper, not a screen copy.
Yep, it is quite often the Dinosaurs in a company that want such features. The reason why they are still at the company is because they are often the owners or board members. So if the software is to be purchased, deployed and retained it better come with a print button.
"Why do you want feature X?" is always a really good start. All to often it's because they actually find it easier to do something by printing or exporting to CSV than doing it in the application where they're supposed to. Sometimes this is because it really is hard in the software, but often as not it's because no one ever showed them how to do it properly. Recent case in point: someone wanted a couple of extra columns in a report. They were in fact already available but no one had explained to this person how to change the displayed columns (and they hadn't thought to try right click on the column headings, perhaps because it's not the obvious design paradigm people used to the idea think it is...)
Agreed. Nothing at all wrong with asking a simple question.
Sometimes, the requestor just needs a bit of training to understand the requested feature is actually already available, perhaps in a slightly different form. Other times, the developer is enlightened to a use method not previously anticipated and the requested feature is worthy of addition. And then, every so often, one must patiently explain why the request cannot be granted because [valid reasons]
"Sometimes this is because it really is hard in the software..."
And sometimes it is because there are so many additional features stuck in the new version (Read Aloud, anyone? How about Resume Assistant?) that you have to drill down through five menus and preference windows to get to what used to be right in front of your face. Try searching for it online and you'll likely end up with correct instructions for the previous three releases, all of which are different and none of which are helpful. "Help" is good sometimes, if you can figure out what they've renamed the functionality you're trying to access. For example, I just typed "adjust kerning" into the "tell me what you want to do" box of Word (don't start) and it brought up the "compress pictures" dialog box.
Pfft, Mandarin doesn't even have gendered pronouns, or verb tenses.
Though probably only because they spent all that time coming up with the tens of thousands of symbols used for writing, so had to skimp on conditional grammar.
“Pfft, Mandarin doesn't even have gendered pronouns”
Not entirely correct; there are different characters for he and she, although they are pronounced identically. My Taiwanese girlfriend (who has lived in the US for >20 years) still occasionally uses the wrong one in speech.
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