6 ms·

I Was Wrong About Offline

78 points by tiago_simoes 10y ago

dfc 10y ago
> Developer Experience Is More Important Than UX — Wrong When would "developer experience" ever be more important than "customer experience"?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- napoleond 10y ago
  I assume the author is referring to the developer experience of their customers (it looks like they sell a developer tool of sorts) rather than their employees. i.e. developer experience is customer experience in this case, and "UX" is referring to the customer's end-users.
  - dfc 10y ago
    But "I wanted to spare developers from suffering...if we don’t allow developers to provide the experience users need, we’re not doing anyone any favors"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- joemi 10y ago
  Reading that made me not want to read the rest of the article. I'm glad that they realized it was wrong and admitted that, but still, how much stock can we really put in their judgement if that's a realization they had to make?
  - blackrose 10y ago
    Seriously. And it goes for pretty much all of these. Has this guy never taken a subway? Flown on an airplane? Left the city?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
firasd 10y ago
Between this article, the recent front page article on contrast[1], and something I've written recently (about missing loading indicators) [2], it seems the common feature is that developers are losing empathy for end users. Our devices and connections are too good to understand real world scenarios. Facebook has (had?) a program to address this called '2G Tuesdays' [3] [1] https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6 https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781dd... [2] https://uxdesign.cc/show-your-work-dont-forget-loading-indicators-9f511af1743d https://uxdesign.cc/show-your-work-dont-forget-loading-indic... [3] https://code.facebook.com/posts/1556407321275493/building-for-emerging-markets-the-story-behind-2g-tuesdays/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/1556407321275493/building-fo...
- dleslie 10y ago
  I insist on using the minimum spec device for every product that I work on; it means that my job is often frustrating, but we build better products as a result.
  - HerraBRE 10y ago
    Absolutely. "Programmers with fast computers write slow code" has been my justification for always buying a cheap shitty laptop, and my excuse for still not having a SSD... Similarly: "Programmers with reliable Internet connections write unreliable code."
    - falcolas 10y ago
      I gave in to the SSD craze because OSX became unusably laggy without one.
      - dleslie 10y ago
        Using a Mac is the first thing to stop doing, if you're at all interested in targeting the median case. Silicon Valley's obsession with high-powered boutique notebooks and the high-frequency replacement cycle of Apple products is in part why so much software that comes from the region is inaccessibly slow.
inthewoods 10y ago
Vaguely related: curious what people here think of OutSystems as a developer platform. More generally, what do people think of ever using a system like this - I would be petrified of the company going out of business and being trapped. OutSystems looks very cool.
- zmoreira 10y ago
  I have been a Outsystems developer for the last 10 years. I feel quite comfortable about my future prospects, but I live in Portugal where Outsystems has 100% penetration in large companies. I think there is no chance of the company going out of business since so many big customers depend on it. The platform is expanding fast and lately it's getting harder to find developers for my teams. Many of the most experienced developers are working on project abroad where rates are much higher (Benelux, the Gulf, United States). As a developer platform it really makes you more productive. I was working with .NET before and I think I became 10 times more productive (of course this could mean that I sucked as a .NET developer). However licensing is expensive, so it's not for every customer and also not for every project. For enterprise business apps that need to change often I know nothing better.
- icebraining 10y ago
  The company I work for provides services (development, hosting, training, etc) for a (mostly) open source alternative to OutSystems, called Odoo: https://www.odoo.com/ https://www.odoo.com/ I'm probably biased, but I'd say it's nice for these kinds of enterprise apps. You get a bunch of core modules for free, which you can then adjust to your needs - saving you the time of building yet another stock management app or whatever - and even for new modules, the framework provides most mechanisms for regular CRUD, so you can literally define a class with just the data fields you need and a menu, and all the UI will be generated on-the-fly to let users create/edit/delete records. Then you can extend and override at will. It's not without its flaws, but for building the typical backoffice app, it's a pretty sweet spot between a regular framework that just provides the basic tools and a closed application which you're forced to "configure" with hacks and still only does half of what you need. EDIT: By the way, I don't know about OutSystems, but Odoo is all made and extended in Python (and JS for frontend, but I rarely need to use it).
Already__Taken 10y ago
If you look at anything in the technology stack it's all about redundancy, why would you not be leaping at the chance for your web page have a redundancy for its very connection? Power (backup batteries, generators) Servers (multiple power supplies, storage, memory, NICs) Datacenters (multiple servers, internet connections, power suppliers) All this to serve an app site, why stop at the first connection hiccup.
- firasd 10y ago
  The thing is that batteries are usually stateless (is there power or not?) whereas if you're handling offline vs online mode you are going to have to sync changes and that's a mind#!%$. You know the line about the two hard problems in CS being cache invalidation and naming things, well now you're dealing with cache invalidation squared. (I did make a demo of how using React & Redux can help sync UI state from offline to online but it's not a comprehensive solution https://medium.com/@firasd/interface-from-data-using-react-to-sync-updates-and-offline-activity-across-devices-f672b213701c https://medium.com/@firasd/interface-from-data-using-react-t...)
anexprogrammer 10y ago
What the heck is with the implication that offline is for Middle East, Africa etc? I'm in the UK, have usually lived and worked in urban locations, but I am yet to live or work somewhere that hasn't had some degree of signal issue. Does the whole of SV and California have perfect signal? Like phone works only in a certain part of one room, or works but sensitive to movement, or works fine, but you'll have multiple outages between home and work. Leads to missed calls, texts, and plays havoc with apps that mostly assume perfect connection. My attempt to adopt Google Play music was over in a week or two. I wouldn't mind if I was in the wilds, I'd expect it, but that's in towns of 100k+ - 1m+. Crap signal and breaks isn't some rare edge case, it's common. Facebook (and everyone else) need barely works and often doesn't Thursdays and Fridays to go with 2G Tuesdays!
- plorkyeran 10y ago
  The really bizarre thing is that during the time that the iPhone was AT&T-only, AT&T had terrible cellular coverage in SF. Somehow this did not stop developers in SF from writing apps which did not work on an unreliable connection.
- adiabatty 10y ago
  I think we all gravitate to the places with decent cell coverage and/or WiFi, whether in our own houses or out and about.
pinaceae 10y ago
"It was a considerable R&D investment, one that no company had ever tried, " Nope. That's just more ignorance of what is out there piled on (plus peddling your own stuff aka content marketing).
- treve 10y ago
  Yea it's a pretty poor excuse of an article. Sure the author was wrong, but it's really just a sales pitch wrapped in some false humility. This guy is still not a visionary, and still living in his own bubble of arrogance, demonstrated by that sentence.
woliveirajr 10y ago
There's the other side, as everything in life. Took part on a project that should be used nationwide (i.e., not costumers, but clients would have to use it). So much care was taken in consideration about some few users that didn't have reliable connection, could go offline for days, etc., that the project reached a dead end after some months. Lesson learnt (for me, at least): sometimes you have to take care of 95% of your users first, developing as fast as possible so that they benefit, and then take care of those last 5% afterwards, even knowing that they will cost a lot, perhaps as much as the 95% users costed. Trying to solve slightly different problems with just one solution might escalate until becomes unpractical.
- bachmeier 10y ago
  Perhaps a reasonable thing if your 95%/5% split is correct. It is possible that you are extrapolating from the group you hang out with to the population at large. It certainly doesn't apply to my group.
ComteDeLaFere 10y ago
And for you game devs (since we're on the subject), not providing an offline experience shuts down 5 mil+ NYC subway riders from your game every day. Not sure about other cities, but it's a significant use case.

78 points by tiago_simoes 10y ago

dfc 10y ago

> Developer Experience Is More Important Than UX — Wrong When would "developer experience" ever be more important than "customer experience"?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
napoleond 10y ago
I assume the author is referring to the developer experience of their customers (it looks like they sell a developer tool of sorts) rather than their employees. i.e. developer experience is customer experience in this case, and "UX" is referring to the customer's end-users.
- dfc 10y ago
  But "I wanted to spare developers from suffering...if we don’t allow developers to provide the experience users need, we’re not doing anyone any favors"
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
joemi 10y ago
Reading that made me not want to read the rest of the article. I'm glad that they realized it was wrong and admitted that, but still, how much stock can we really put in their judgement if that's a realization they had to make?
- blackrose 10y ago
  Seriously. And it goes for pretty much all of these. Has this guy never taken a subway? Flown on an airplane? Left the city?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

firasd 10y ago

Between this article, the recent front page article on contrast[1], and something I've written recently (about missing loading indicators) [2], it seems the common feature is that developers are losing empathy for end users. Our devices and connections are too good to understand real world scenarios. Facebook has (had?) a program to address this called '2G Tuesdays' [3] [1] https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6 https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781dd... [2] https://uxdesign.cc/show-your-work-dont-forget-loading-indicators-9f511af1743d https://uxdesign.cc/show-your-work-dont-forget-loading-indic... [3] https://code.facebook.com/posts/1556407321275493/building-for-emerging-markets-the-story-behind-2g-tuesdays/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/1556407321275493/building-fo...

dleslie 10y ago
I insist on using the minimum spec device for every product that I work on; it means that my job is often frustrating, but we build better products as a result.
- HerraBRE 10y ago
  Absolutely. "Programmers with fast computers write slow code" has been my justification for always buying a cheap shitty laptop, and my excuse for still not having a SSD... Similarly: "Programmers with reliable Internet connections write unreliable code."
  - falcolas 10y ago
    I gave in to the SSD craze because OSX became unusably laggy without one.
    - dleslie 10y ago
      Using a Mac is the first thing to stop doing, if you're at all interested in targeting the median case. Silicon Valley's obsession with high-powered boutique notebooks and the high-frequency replacement cycle of Apple products is in part why so much software that comes from the region is inaccessibly slow.

inthewoods 10y ago

Vaguely related: curious what people here think of OutSystems as a developer platform. More generally, what do people think of ever using a system like this - I would be petrified of the company going out of business and being trapped. OutSystems looks very cool.

zmoreira 10y ago
I have been a Outsystems developer for the last 10 years. I feel quite comfortable about my future prospects, but I live in Portugal where Outsystems has 100% penetration in large companies. I think there is no chance of the company going out of business since so many big customers depend on it. The platform is expanding fast and lately it's getting harder to find developers for my teams. Many of the most experienced developers are working on project abroad where rates are much higher (Benelux, the Gulf, United States). As a developer platform it really makes you more productive. I was working with .NET before and I think I became 10 times more productive (of course this could mean that I sucked as a .NET developer). However licensing is expensive, so it's not for every customer and also not for every project. For enterprise business apps that need to change often I know nothing better.
icebraining 10y ago
The company I work for provides services (development, hosting, training, etc) for a (mostly) open source alternative to OutSystems, called Odoo: https://www.odoo.com/ https://www.odoo.com/ I'm probably biased, but I'd say it's nice for these kinds of enterprise apps. You get a bunch of core modules for free, which you can then adjust to your needs - saving you the time of building yet another stock management app or whatever - and even for new modules, the framework provides most mechanisms for regular CRUD, so you can literally define a class with just the data fields you need and a menu, and all the UI will be generated on-the-fly to let users create/edit/delete records. Then you can extend and override at will. It's not without its flaws, but for building the typical backoffice app, it's a pretty sweet spot between a regular framework that just provides the basic tools and a closed application which you're forced to "configure" with hacks and still only does half of what you need. EDIT: By the way, I don't know about OutSystems, but Odoo is all made and extended in Python (and JS for frontend, but I rarely need to use it).

Already__Taken 10y ago

If you look at anything in the technology stack it's all about redundancy, why would you not be leaping at the chance for your web page have a redundancy for its very connection? Power (backup batteries, generators) Servers (multiple power supplies, storage, memory, NICs) Datacenters (multiple servers, internet connections, power suppliers) All this to serve an app site, why stop at the first connection hiccup.

firasd 10y ago
The thing is that batteries are usually stateless (is there power or not?) whereas if you're handling offline vs online mode you are going to have to sync changes and that's a mind#!%$. You know the line about the two hard problems in CS being cache invalidation and naming things, well now you're dealing with cache invalidation squared. (I did make a demo of how using React & Redux can help sync UI state from offline to online but it's not a comprehensive solution https://medium.com/@firasd/interface-from-data-using-react-to-sync-updates-and-offline-activity-across-devices-f672b213701c https://medium.com/@firasd/interface-from-data-using-react-t...)

anexprogrammer 10y ago

What the heck is with the implication that offline is for Middle East, Africa etc? I'm in the UK, have usually lived and worked in urban locations, but I am yet to live or work somewhere that hasn't had some degree of signal issue. Does the whole of SV and California have perfect signal? Like phone works only in a certain part of one room, or works but sensitive to movement, or works fine, but you'll have multiple outages between home and work. Leads to missed calls, texts, and plays havoc with apps that mostly assume perfect connection. My attempt to adopt Google Play music was over in a week or two. I wouldn't mind if I was in the wilds, I'd expect it, but that's in towns of 100k+ - 1m+. Crap signal and breaks isn't some rare edge case, it's common. Facebook (and everyone else) need barely works and often doesn't Thursdays and Fridays to go with 2G Tuesdays!

plorkyeran 10y ago
The really bizarre thing is that during the time that the iPhone was AT&T-only, AT&T had terrible cellular coverage in SF. Somehow this did not stop developers in SF from writing apps which did not work on an unreliable connection.
adiabatty 10y ago
I think we all gravitate to the places with decent cell coverage and/or WiFi, whether in our own houses or out and about.

pinaceae 10y ago

"It was a considerable R&D investment, one that no company had ever tried, " Nope. That's just more ignorance of what is out there piled on (plus peddling your own stuff aka content marketing).

treve 10y ago
Yea it's a pretty poor excuse of an article. Sure the author was wrong, but it's really just a sales pitch wrapped in some false humility. This guy is still not a visionary, and still living in his own bubble of arrogance, demonstrated by that sentence.

woliveirajr 10y ago

There's the other side, as everything in life. Took part on a project that should be used nationwide (i.e., not costumers, but clients would have to use it). So much care was taken in consideration about some few users that didn't have reliable connection, could go offline for days, etc., that the project reached a dead end after some months. Lesson learnt (for me, at least): sometimes you have to take care of 95% of your users first, developing as fast as possible so that they benefit, and then take care of those last 5% afterwards, even knowing that they will cost a lot, perhaps as much as the 95% users costed. Trying to solve slightly different problems with just one solution might escalate until becomes unpractical.

bachmeier 10y ago
Perhaps a reasonable thing if your 95%/5% split is correct. It is possible that you are extrapolating from the group you hang out with to the population at large. It certainly doesn't apply to my group.

ComteDeLaFere 10y ago

And for you game devs (since we're on the subject), not providing an offline experience shuts down 5 mil+ NYC subway riders from your game every day. Not sure about other cities, but it's a significant use case.