4 ms·

> "It makes code more readable and intuitive" is NOT the end goal. Making your job easier or more convenient is not the end goal. Making a good product for the

by hazz99 6y ago

> "It makes code more readable and intuitive" is NOT the end goal. Making your job easier or more convenient is not the end goal. Making a good product for the user is! I think the end goal is more about balancing the value you can create with the budget you have. It's an optimization problem. If I can deliver 80% of the value for 20% of the price, I will do that.

foepys 6y ago
Until somebody comes around and sells the 100% product for a 50% markup and enough people value completeness and UX more than their money. See Apple's MacBook Pro and iPhone. Another example: I absolutely hate Amazon Prime Video for its UX and bugs they didn't fix for years (like asynchronous audio). So even though Prime is significantly cheaper in Germany, I rather pay for the more expensive Netflix instead.
- hazz99 6y ago
  Yes, but low end notebooks would still exist. Different customer segments.
bananaface 6y ago
Slack has a budget of multiple millions, RipCord has a budget of zero, and one programmer who works on it in his spare time. Which is faster? Polishing RipCord so it looked indistinguishable from the Slack client wouldn't be that expensive. I would argue its much more "they don't know how" than "they are making a business decision not to."
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  That should only remind you that people care about a lot more than just performance.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    Why would I assume this particular failure is a choice?
simion314 6y ago
I agree with you that it makes sense from a dev point of view but what about the users? Imagine all restaurants and cooks in the city decide that from tomorrow they want to make their job easier so they will drop ingredients, hygiene and processing quality with 80% so they will work less and make more profits. The ones that won't follow the new way will be put out of business because they will have more expenses and the lazy ones can put some of the new profits evangelizing the new ways making it look cool.
- hazz99 6y ago
  No, they will serve different customer segments and the market will split into the various strategic positions it can support. It’s just a different business model. Less value, less expensive, higher volume. More value, more expensive, lower volume. In your example, one of the restaurants become McDonalds and another becomes a gourmet restaurant. They compete differently.
  - simion314 6y ago
    Right, so a native fast application would have a niche of users that care where the apps made with electron will have a larger user base because it will be cheaper to create for the developers but users will pay with lectricity and frustration. My issue is that you can market some cheap food like "our food is cheap but good enough, come here to save money" where with software is "our software is slow,buggy,eats your battery - use it because we are lazy and we want to use latest coolest language to put on our CV". Sure when I do a proof of concept toy project I will be lazy and use whatever I like, if I share it it will be free = I have a problem with big projects say a news site that has millions of users and your laziness(or using latest cool stuff) affects such a giant number of people.
    - hazz99 6y ago
      There’s no moral obligation to make incredibly efficient and streamlined software. Solving the problem and proving sufficient value is usually enough. Sure, they might get displaced by a competitor in the future - but by then they’ve probably got a large user base and a warchest to compete with. Slack is a great example of this. If it’s software that’s life critical, then maybe, but that’s a small minority. Markets and buyer preferences are always changing - I think it’s better to be agile (ie high developer velocity with talented product managers) to be able to detect and capture these shifts.

by hazz99 6y ago

foepys 6y ago

Until somebody comes around and sells the 100% product for a 50% markup and enough people value completeness and UX more than their money. See Apple's MacBook Pro and iPhone. Another example: I absolutely hate Amazon Prime Video for its UX and bugs they didn't fix for years (like asynchronous audio). So even though Prime is significantly cheaper in Germany, I rather pay for the more expensive Netflix instead.

hazz99 6y ago
Yes, but low end notebooks would still exist. Different customer segments.

bananaface 6y ago

Slack has a budget of multiple millions, RipCord has a budget of zero, and one programmer who works on it in his spare time. Which is faster? Polishing RipCord so it looked indistinguishable from the Slack client wouldn't be that expensive. I would argue its much more "they don't know how" than "they are making a business decision not to."

hombre_fatal 6y ago
That should only remind you that people care about a lot more than just performance.
- bananaface 6y ago
  Why would I assume this particular failure is a choice?

simion314 6y ago

I agree with you that it makes sense from a dev point of view but what about the users? Imagine all restaurants and cooks in the city decide that from tomorrow they want to make their job easier so they will drop ingredients, hygiene and processing quality with 80% so they will work less and make more profits. The ones that won't follow the new way will be put out of business because they will have more expenses and the lazy ones can put some of the new profits evangelizing the new ways making it look cool.

hazz99 6y ago
No, they will serve different customer segments and the market will split into the various strategic positions it can support. It’s just a different business model. Less value, less expensive, higher volume. More value, more expensive, lower volume. In your example, one of the restaurants become McDonalds and another becomes a gourmet restaurant. They compete differently.
- simion314 6y ago
  Right, so a native fast application would have a niche of users that care where the apps made with electron will have a larger user base because it will be cheaper to create for the developers but users will pay with lectricity and frustration. My issue is that you can market some cheap food like "our food is cheap but good enough, come here to save money" where with software is "our software is slow,buggy,eats your battery - use it because we are lazy and we want to use latest coolest language to put on our CV". Sure when I do a proof of concept toy project I will be lazy and use whatever I like, if I share it it will be free = I have a problem with big projects say a news site that has millions of users and your laziness(or using latest cool stuff) affects such a giant number of people.
  - hazz99 6y ago
    There’s no moral obligation to make incredibly efficient and streamlined software. Solving the problem and proving sufficient value is usually enough. Sure, they might get displaced by a competitor in the future - but by then they’ve probably got a large user base and a warchest to compete with. Slack is a great example of this. If it’s software that’s life critical, then maybe, but that’s a small minority. Markets and buyer preferences are always changing - I think it’s better to be agile (ie high developer velocity with talented product managers) to be able to detect and capture these shifts.