Users shouldn’t ever need to adapt to computer crashes like this. Software should always auto save or have recovery files or something. As a principle, software should hold anything a user inputs with reverence.

I agree. Maybe as a dev I've become cynical and don't trust anything. Least of all some app holding my document.

Makes me think of the "Voting software" xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030

"I don't quite know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us, everyone will die."

You think that's cynical? I must be some avatar curmudgeonliness then.

I'm pretty sure that what's actually going on is that everything we think of as a 'profession' is that way, and that people are in fact dying because of it.

The difference is that devs are honest about it.

Yes, however you have to be sure every single program across decades is written with those rules in mind. Hard on any OS, but a lost cause on */Linux.

I used to have that instinct but lost it in the age of auto save. The applications (web or native) I use most often all do it for me: Google docs, Dropbox paper, notion, vscode. I don’t think I’m alone in this!

I actually tried using open/libre docs a few years ago just because of it being open source. I was trying to make a point of using locally installed software and avoid google products. Then the thing crashed and I lost an hour of work because it didn't save a temporary version. That's when I gave up on it for good.

Libre office does keep a temporary version that allows you to recover, so you're talking crap.

It might very well keep it, but either that behavior wasn't turned on by default or it crashed in way where it wasn't recoverable. I know I lost work.

Doesn't need to be turned on. However it's always possible you mistakenly pressed Esc/Close, didn't read the dialog, or hit a very obscure bug?

However this has worked well for twenty years, so PEBKAC is a reasonable conclusion.

That may have been true years ago in win 95 or xp days. The modern paradigm starting with google docs is that things are automatically saved and even always sharable through the cloud, making manual saving actually an atavistic leftover of a bygone era.

What if I actually don't want any changes saved because I've only opened a document for reference purposes?

Then you proactively prevent changes. Either "open a copy" or "open in readonly mode".

If you make saving the default you have to manually not save. It's a trade off versus default no saves with manual saves

Have a "Read-only" checkbox. For the love of God, have a "read-only" checkbox.

Modern apps like gdocs have a toggle for switching between read-only, suggest changes, and editing. If you forgot to toggle, you can just open version history and revert. MS Office also had version history for nearly a decade.