Tag: computers

I’ve worked with computers for a long time. I’ve helped support various systems and applications, both desktop and servers. One of the most common tricks that has served me well is to press to oh-en-oh-eff-eff switch twice.

In other words, reboot.

This is advice that many tech support people use. It’s what is often recommended for everything from personal computers to mobile devices to watches to really any sort of microchip device. It’s been recommended for my Tesla and for a few appliances as well.

It’s also incredibly frustrating advice to hear that when we expect a device to run constantly, like a watch. Why should I reboot it? Isn’t your code bad? Isn’t it the manufacturer’s fault? Isn’t this a cop-out to get me off the phone/chat/etc. and close out a call?

This is likely bad code, and it might be a way to get you off the phone, but there is some rationale behind this troubleshooting step. I ran across this article on the unreasonable effectiveness of turning computers off and on again. It provides some reasoning why rebooting makes sense and why it can help. The short answer is this action returns the code and device to a known state. Often when things are broken, we’re in an unknown state.

There’s also an interesting parable about writing a shell that is very strict with its evaluation of input and crashing when things aren’t right. The author wrote another shell that is loose in its evaluation of input. Read the piece to see which shell actually made more sense to the programmer.

I found this interesting and fun to read, and it made me feel better about needing to reboot systems. Less excited about the need to reboot a car or a plane (I’ve been on a 787 when it rebooted), but since I’ve seen the former continue to work, I’m less anxious. Take a look today and let me know if this article makes you feel a little more comfortable with giving out the “reboot” solution to others.

Steve Jones

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I am a fan of Walt Mossberg. I have read his work and seen him interview many famous people in technology across the years. He has been quite an influential reviewer and commenter. If you haven’t ever read anything from him, I might recommend his view on Internet regulation or his thoughts on the Steve Jobs biopic , or even check out his gadget museum. You might even take a few minutes and read about The Taco Bell interview. It’s a pretty neat story.

Mr. Mossberg recently wrote his last column. He’s retiring this year, and penned a look at some of the technology he’s experienced in his lifetime. Reading over the piece brought back some nostalgic moments for me as I think about how the world has changed. He also notes that early in his career he wrote this sentence: “Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it isn’t your fault “.  Now he says “Personal technology is usually pretty easy to use, and, if it’s not, it’s not your fault.”

I agree with that, and one of the complaints I have with our industry. We haven’t done a great job of actually considering users and building software that’s not only intuitive and easy to use, but also gets easier over time. While I learned to appreciate the adaptation of some Office software that keeps the often used menu items displayed and remembers previous options I’ve used for features, I find this is the exception, not the rule. Our software is often in the face of the user, and I constantly bemoan the state of poorly written applications.

As we’ve moved to larger displays, and smaller displays, using touch, speech, and other methods of interacting with computing devices, building newer devices that look nothing like the computer of the past or even the computers of recent years gone by, we haven’t necessarily made the computer fade into the background. The smartphone (and related car displays, tablets, etc.) have perhaps done one of the best jobs of integrating into our analog world, but the interfaces, displays, and certainly rendering of content overall has a long way to go. Plenty of that is our fault, we, the people who build applications.

I wonder if we’ll reach Mr. Mossberg’s vision of having most of our computing infrastructure fading into the background. Certainly reducing the need for cords and remembering to charge things will help. I look forward to the day when I have multiple pads built into my desk, my kitchen, my car, and more to just charge my devices when I set them down, so I don’t need to think about power. I want connectivity to be just available, and I certainly want to be able to enlarge text easily, without zooming in and scrolling side to side as my eyes age.

The world may get better applications and infrastructure, and hopefully much better security. I certainly think it’s possible, though not likely to be ubiquitous among all parts of the Internet. I doubt that for most of us choosing to work with technology as a career that we’ll see computing fade away. We’re too involved in the details, and hopefully excited by systems, to abstract ourselves too far away.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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