I didn't see them say anything about dignity. They said using Windows makes them angry, which is understandable. That speaks to a poor user experience design. Framing it as a privilege issue is blaming the victim.
actually, i did, and i stand by it. working with a system that makes you angry is undignified.
it's a reference to a quote that i can't find the source for which roughly goes like this: *why i use linux and not windows? i could also rob banks and ..., but you have to keep a certain amount of dignity". the original of that quote was in german.
you have no idea. as a software developer the job market is already very bad, so your wish is already reality.
but i don't see any undignified jobs as alternative here either. what should that be?
taxi/bus driver? food delivery? sweeping streets? work as a plumber (apparently they are in demand in western countries)? i can't see anything undignified about that. even cleaning toilets isn't undignified. it has to be done.
maybe it can be argued that working as a prostitute is undignified. at least if it is not done voluntary. and of course bad working conditions are undignified.
but again, all of these jobs can be structured such that they don't cause stress and that they can be done with dignity.
so what really is an undignified job?
there is only one more category of undignified work that just came to mind: jobs where i am contributing to the exploitation of others. i once worked in a software company that had a customer that was running a sportsbetting website. in itself the work was not undignified, we used linux, and all the good software practices, but contributing to a gambling website just felt wrong.
people also consider the exploitation of users done by meta/facebook, google etc, as undignified. but those jobs have the same problem with dignity that using windows has, so i don't think they are what you have in mind.
"The victim" of using a certain operating system? Please.
Being lucky enough to work in a comfortable air-conditioned office, AND having the luxury of declining jobs sorely because the operating system makes you angry, is the height of privilege.
Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and realize how good you have it.
> I didn't see them say anything about dignity.
The word dignity was used twice in the comment I replied to...
I wouldn’t put it in terms of dignity or victimhood, but Windows definitely feels weird and foreign if you are dumped into it after using Macs and Linux and bash for 20 years. I had to help someone do a little maintenance on a Windows system the other day and I realized that I had basically forgotten how to do anything on it. I couldn’t even remember how to delete a directory tree. Online tutorials recommended to do some things in “Powershell” whatever the hell that is, and that was even more bizarre. I’ve never felt more useless in front of a computer than I did just trying to remove and install some software from the Windows command line.
> "The victim" of using a certain operating system? Please.
Perhaps "victim" in the sense of not having much choice/agency? Neither in the choice of operating system (due to sparsely restrained anticompetitive behaviour of incumbents over decades) nor in how they're treated (entrapped) by the operating systems. The OSes are really POS (point of sale) terminals for media and cloud services.
Thus consider most operating system users aren't really users. They're "usees", they're being used. One could surmise that the Microsoft/Apple/Google shareholders are the real users of the operating systems.
If you'd left the commercial OS world in the Win2K/OSX 10.4 era for, say, Gentoo Linux, and would come back now to look over someone's shoulder while they're using (or rather, being used by) their operating systems, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that some kind of authority inversion has taken place in the meantime.
Nobody works by choice so I suppose that makes us all "victims" of the system. I'd put using certain software below many worse kinds of suffering however
not true. anybody working as a volunteer works by choice. i work by choice, because i could instead live in germany on unemployment support and welfare, because i am to old to find a job (germany has a big problem with age discrimination) and the government can't force me to work as a selfemployed freelancer. so i choose to work because i want to. not because i have to.
at least in germany i can't think of anyone being forced to work in a job that would cause them suffering. well, except working with windows, and hence from that perspective a worse kind of suffering is quite unlikely.
that aside, almost all suffering comes from how people are treated at work. the days of people suffering in coalmines or other seriously unhealthy work conditions with out any alternative are over. anyone there still suffering at work today is being actively exploited by abusive business owners. yes, the people working there may not have a choice, but we as a society do have the choice to not tolerate such working conditions, and therefore making such demands is not privileged.
Wow. Well it's a very gracious choice of you to not mooch off the welfare system.
> at least in germany i can't think of anyone being forced to work in a job that would cause them suffering. well, except working with windows
You must be actually trolling. You'd honestly choose stocking shelves in a supermarket over being a windows sysadmin? Have you ever heard of RSI? Or actually ever worked a day of physical labor in your life?
we were talking about suffering and dignity. i see nothing undignified about stocking shelves. they don't make me angry, for one. but also suffering, the moment stocking shelves causes any sort of pain you are no longer able to do the job. noone is forced to suffer at work. at least not in germany.
physical labor? not to the point of suffering. the point is, in germany, jobs that make you suffer through physical labor do not exist, because they are illegal. grey areas exist of course, and cases that are not discovered because the victims (and in that case they are victims) don't speak up.
but this is completely besides the point because what i am talking about is what is more difficult to cover by law, and that is mental suffering.
your argument essentially appears to be that because physical suffering exists, we should ignore mental suffering, and anyone complaining about mental suffering should stop whining because others have it worse. 1st world problems or whatever.
so i should also tolerate my boss yelling at me, my coworkers bullying me, being verbally abused, how about discrimination, sexism, etc? surely any of that is more tolerable than the physical pain i'd get from stocking shelves.
just because something worse is possible that does not dismiss the stress and frustration i have to experience when working with windows, or with LLMs.
actually, i did, and i stand by it. working with a system that makes you angry is undignified.
it's a reference to a quote that i can't find the source for which roughly goes like this: *why i use linux and not windows? i could also rob banks and ..., but you have to keep a certain amount of dignity". the original of that quote was in german.