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Building software for novices with simple ui is much harder than building software for experts with a gazillion settings. Where there are multiple ways to desig
by Joeri 10y ago
Building software for novices with simple ui is much harder than building software for experts with a gazillion settings. Where there are multiple ways to design something, you can punt the problem to the user and add a setting, or think hard about how the software will be used and figure out a settingless design. The second strategy is definitely the harder path.
- jldugger 10y ago> Building software for novices with simple ui is much harder than building software for experts with a gazillion settings. IME, people advocating for simple UI end up advocating for the removal of features. That's often fine, but it's also why people like Torvalds bounce between desktop environments as things are Simplified with no secret handshake to undo them. Even the research suggests that over 50 percent of Apache config setting points can be removed without affecting more than 1 percent of the customer base. I'm not clear if that means each feature is 1 percent or 1 percent total. It's also not clear how they can feasibly disentangle people who use obscure features and don't need help with it. (Also, I'd love to see concrete suggestions for improvement from that pool to better understand what counts as obscure here.) That said, the Apache config has plenty of room for improvement. Why do we have to write chef scripts to calculate MPM settings and avoid OOM'ing the machine?