> Printer driver programmers/designers really make me question if politicians should be the most hated profession in the world.
Trying not to be snarky but really printers are very mechanical I/O devices. I don't think the driver programmers have much fun with their jobs, having to deal with seemingly greedy product requirements and lots of variation in real world use (humidity, paper type, ink quality, yada yada). When I start thinking about this and couple it with my own stupidity, I am amazed anything works at all. How do you even do automated integration tests on a printer?
I'd like to think I am about an average programmer and I am reminded by my own actions everyday that I know nothing. I am constantly learning (and forgetting) new ideas every week.
while it is obvious my comment was hyperbolic, the underlying sentiment still stands regardless. I can be charitable only so far, not complaining that the drivers don't make my color image perfect on a vinyl postcard, not even complaining that I need to realign the heads or whatever every other time I've got to use the printer, those can be mechanical issues and probably not their fault. I just want to print black and white on A4 and a color print every month or so.
But the consistent issues almost every single home printer I've used had with regards to connecting to computers, both wireless and wired is not reasonable. There's a plethora of other issues but that's more on a software in general than driver front so I'll leave them out of it.
All these problems on a windows machine by the way, surprisingly enough I've had less headache with printers on linux than windows. Maybe the lack of software layers to muddle shit helps here, who knows
> I don't think the driver programmers have much fun with their jobs, having to deal with seemingly greedy product requirements, and lots of variation in real world use (humidity, paper type, ink quality, yada yada).
That's a normal job, everyone has greedy product requirements outside of VC money pits. Also don't think their job in the capacities I complained about is very much mechanical at all, yeah it's very much I/O but that doesn't mean much.
>I'd like to think I am about an average programmer and I am reminded by my own actions everyday that I know nothing. I am constantly learning (and forgetting) new ideas every week.
people learn stuff and do their jobs, its not rocket science, nobody know everything nor can hold all the information in the world in their heads. As far as i'm aware printer connectivity isn't some CS open question, it's not a new field that needs exploring, it should've been explored by now. Yes of course drivers are a bit of a moving target regarding support for different architectures, but printers aren't the only things that need drivers and yet seem to be the only ones consistently having this issue ever since I can remember(maybe network cards as well?).
Trying not to be snarky but really printers are very mechanical I/O devices. I don't think the driver programmers have much fun with their jobs, having to deal with seemingly greedy product requirements and lots of variation in real world use (humidity, paper type, ink quality, yada yada). When I start thinking about this and couple it with my own stupidity, I am amazed anything works at all. How do you even do automated integration tests on a printer?
I'd like to think I am about an average programmer and I am reminded by my own actions everyday that I know nothing. I am constantly learning (and forgetting) new ideas every week.