The concept of "closing" a progam is archaic

[elkenrod]

Discuss.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Wat you mean?!

How else would you top using a program?

[Tea1337]

There is no possible way to improve closing a program, unless you want a larger X or preposition it. Although the current way to do so is easy, no point in changing it, that will just make people mad.

[Tea1337]

Wat you mean?!

 

Archaic means old-fashioned.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Archaic means old-fashioned.

I mean: why is closing a program archaic? How else would you stop using it?

[Wiflare]

Gee, I wish there was some sort of shortcut command to shut down a program.
I'd propose alt + f4, since it's not being used for anything 

[elkenrod]

I mean: why is closing a program archaic? How else would you stop using it?

 

Something like Firefox, Chrome, or Steam.  If you have those programs installed, under what scenario would you want/need to close it?

[Tea1337]

I mean: why is closing a program archaic? How else would you stop using it?

It's been around for ages, but I don't see anything wrong with pressing the red button. 

[Tea1337]

Something like Firefox, Chrome, or Steam.  If you have those programs installed, under what scenario would you want/need to close it?

I would only close a program when it's not being used, but I usually minimize things I have open. 

[Praxis727]

There is no point in closing down programs that are meant to sit silently in the backround without using 2 many resources.  I would argue the point in games and high cpu/gpu usage programs but that would be about it.  

[Imabigmac]

I get the question, but at the same time it just doesn't make any sense to me.  We have been able to close computer programs for ever so yes its old, but what's wrong with that? We can't leave stuff always open. 

[Denned]

Like turning off your car, you'll be driving home in 8 hours anyway, and then the engine will be cold and use more fuel. Better just leave it on.

[SirRoderick]

If you can't close programs and purge them from RAM you'd get serious problems with performance. Games, Photoshop, even browsers. I have to routinely shut down firefox if I've been using it all day because it's suddenly taking up close to 2GB's of RAM, which is extremely detrimental to the system as a whole and even worse to the 32-bit program doing it. (seriously I wish there was a "clear RAM" option in browsers just on the top bar)

[TheProfosist]

Something like Firefox, Chrome, or Steam. If you have those programs installed, under what scenario would you want/need to close it?

When your not using them?

[TheProfosist]

If you can't close programs and purge them from RAM you'd get serious problems with performance. Games, Photoshop, even browsers. I have to routinely shut down firefox if I've been using it all day because it's suddenly taking up close to 2GB's of RAM, which is extremely detrimental to the system as a whole and even worse to the 32-bit program doing it. (seriously I wish there was a "clear RAM" option in browsers just on the top bar)

These are extentions for that in FF

[SirRoderick]

These are extentions for that in FF

Yah I know, but it really should be standard

[BrightCandle]

I guess Android already does this automatically to an extent. When you switch away from a program it doesn't automatically terminate the program completely. Instead it suspends it and only removes it at some later point when it needs the RAM, the key is that the OS chooses when a program is finished and tells the application its being terminated fully. But since you can only display one activity on screen at  a time its a different problem to that of the desktop where you can see many applications at once.

 

In order to allow auto shutdown you need to give programs a default way to store their state, so that when the user switches back to the program that it can restore to where the user left off. That is about the only aspect that makes it hard to do on todays systems as all the applications need changing. Its a marginal improvement on the cognitive load of the person using the computer to unload applications automatically. I think you could also argue that Microsoft's preloading of commonly used application files into RAM is a reasonable substitute and potentially a better one. Rather than optimising by keeping all the programs open it optimises by keeping all the programs closed and having them be able to load and open faster. The reasonm why Android keeps the applications alive is performance because its using slow processors it has to hide the very expensive load process from the user as best as possible while living with very limited resources. Auto shutdown is arguably an unnecessary performance optimisation on the desktop due to their performance level they achieve in applications.

[Guest]

Alt+f4

[BadgersAreCool]

My problem with closing programs is windows doesn't go full out to close a program. If It stops responding when I close it, CLOSE IT!!

[TheProfosist]

Damn it, I forgot to list what it was for!Pure Gaming, no editing. Sorry about that all!

So should half the extensions I use...

But hey I have half as many as I once did since they have been integrating the features of some over time. That and devs have been grabbing features from each other or intgrating extensions with each other so a extension you need before in now just a feature of one of the bigger ones.

[ShadowCaptain]

when i go to bed at night i throw my pc out my upstairs window and then rebuild it with new parts, i prefer that to closing windows ><