Now you know, why this kolaveri di !

Murderous rage is exactly what I am feeling for all "coders" at the moment. Noticing that a good rant has been somewhat long overdue on this blog and given that I think I have solved the answer to the famous question - why this kolaveri di  , I think this post is justified !

You see, a couple of days ago, Samsung released the new Android OS (cutely named Jelly Bean) for its smartphones in India. Yes I know, Jelly Bean is ancient news, but that's how long it takes for things to come to India. Yours truly's phone duly got updated.  And promptly lost all its screens, settings, etc etc. Having been a veteran of software upgrades from MS DOS (anybody remember) and having been burned a few zillion times, "kolaveri" had long given way to stoic resignation . But this one takes the cake.

Remember the prompt when you are trying to delete and move something - it asks you - are you sure and gives you the option of OK or Cancel ? Notice it next time when that comes - its always the OK button on the left and the Cancel button on the right. Well, the coders of Jelly Bean decided that they should transpose the buttons - we know have Cancel on the left and OK on the right ! Why oh why oh why oh why oh why??? Which brilliant mind thought of this ?? After a zillion times of pressing OK when I wanted to Cancel and vice versa, you can now start to figure out "why this kolaveri" ?

And of course, the grand daddy of them all, the upgrade to Windows 8. Terra bytes of lament have been written about the disappearance of the Start Button. But Windows 8 has millions of such "improvements" that give a new meaning to the word kolaveri. For instance, the place where you key in a website address ? - since browsers had been invented, they are at the top. Now, in Internet Explorer for Windows 8, some "brihaspati" has thought it fit to take it to the bottom. Grrrrrrrrrrr. The most counter intuitive piece of coder output, surely has to be Windows 8. No wonder kolaveri is rampant.

Which brings us to the vital question - are coders just plain dumb ? Don't companies like Microsoft or Google test anything out with actual consumers - people like you and me ? A 5 minute conversation with an 8 year old would have solved all the disasters of Windows 8.  Consumer goods companies test everything out with amazing painstaking care - even the length of the french fry and the angle at which it curls is tested for months (I am not kidding).  And then you have a Google which comes and transposes the OK and Cancel buttons. Ugh !

The pox on all dumb coders.


P.S For those not familiar with Tamil, kolaveri is loosely translated as murderous rage. If you are still wondering about my question, then you may be a fossil and ought to listen to this song !


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