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And let's tie one hand behind their backs and cover one eye as well while we are at it. I think the idea of giving devs trash hardware because "it's what our us

And let's tie one hand behind their backs and cover one eye as well while we are at it. I think the idea of giving devs trash hardware because "it's what our users use" is the worst solution possible to solving that problem. Have the devs or another team test on lower-end hardware before pushing a version, don't hobble them while they are creating.

cormacrelf 5y ago
Well, that would help with making technology more accessible. Developers, especially highly paid ones, are as selfish as anyone else on the planet. If you have a strategy to make them care about literally a single other person, I suggest you go for it.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Making software and using software are different
- joshstrange 5y ago
  A little voice in the back of my head knew accessibility might be brought up with that comment. Accessibility falls into the same category for me as users with slow machines, yes we should be doing it and the right way to do it isn't to hobble developers. Lack of accessibility (and low-end testing) is often due to management refusing the extra time to do, not because developers are just selfish. I can't tell you how many times I've been promised more time or more devices to test on and then we get close to a deadline and no one cares anymore and questions about said promises are met with "just ship it, we can do that later" or similar.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  According to your argument, I should be blindfolded and use a screen reader while I'm developing. That's just absurd.
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    My argument was that it is a rational business decision to sometimes constrain your developers by making them use what the users will.As the upper comment said people at Google often propose. If you do not, then they get utterly out of touch. I didn’t say you have to do it all the time.
dekhn 5y ago
here's the argument that Brad Fitzpatrick (who espoused this idea) gave: at the time, he was creating livejournal and had a bunch of russian hackers building the site. He noticed that every time they made pages load faster or work better, more people used the site (and site growth is the simple most important metric), and that more and more people were coming from countries with poor internet infra. So, he made his workers use crappy computers and a dodgy network he set up. He claimed it made them make better applicaitons, but I can easily say that if the job hadn't been critically important for me, I'd give my opinion and move on. I build software for Aristocrats and I expect my tools to be first class. That said, I've reached a level of trust where my l eadership trusts me to manage millions of dollars worth of cloud inventory and much of my messaging to my users is: "please do not attept to save $400 by using $1000 of your time"
- ferrumfist 5y ago
  A better approach is to simply buy your devs 2 computers: 1 fast PC for speedy development and 1 slow laptop for testing. It makes no sense to give developers a slower computer simply to make them develop better. It's like saying that post office workers must now use bicycles instead of motor vehicles in order to encourage them to find shortcuts. I'm not a successful CEO, though, so maybe I'm just talking out my ass.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    yes, as the chromeos person mentioned upthread, you have a dev infra that is fat, and a user testing environment that represents the user experience. Devs don't need to hobble their machines. I argued with Brad about this many times...

cormacrelf 5y ago

Well, that would help with making technology more accessible. Developers, especially highly paid ones, are as selfish as anyone else on the planet. If you have a strategy to make them care about literally a single other person, I suggest you go for it.

imwillofficial 5y ago
Making software and using software are different
joshstrange 5y ago
A little voice in the back of my head knew accessibility might be brought up with that comment. Accessibility falls into the same category for me as users with slow machines, yes we should be doing it and the right way to do it isn't to hobble developers. Lack of accessibility (and low-end testing) is often due to management refusing the extra time to do, not because developers are just selfish. I can't tell you how many times I've been promised more time or more devices to test on and then we get close to a deadline and no one cares anymore and questions about said promises are met with "just ship it, we can do that later" or similar.
jaywalk 5y ago
According to your argument, I should be blindfolded and use a screen reader while I'm developing. That's just absurd.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  My argument was that it is a rational business decision to sometimes constrain your developers by making them use what the users will.As the upper comment said people at Google often propose. If you do not, then they get utterly out of touch. I didn’t say you have to do it all the time.

dekhn 5y ago

here's the argument that Brad Fitzpatrick (who espoused this idea) gave: at the time, he was creating livejournal and had a bunch of russian hackers building the site. He noticed that every time they made pages load faster or work better, more people used the site (and site growth is the simple most important metric), and that more and more people were coming from countries with poor internet infra. So, he made his workers use crappy computers and a dodgy network he set up. He claimed it made them make better applicaitons, but I can easily say that if the job hadn't been critically important for me, I'd give my opinion and move on. I build software for Aristocrats and I expect my tools to be first class. That said, I've reached a level of trust where my l eadership trusts me to manage millions of dollars worth of cloud inventory and much of my messaging to my users is: "please do not attept to save $400 by using $1000 of your time"

ferrumfist 5y ago
A better approach is to simply buy your devs 2 computers: 1 fast PC for speedy development and 1 slow laptop for testing. It makes no sense to give developers a slower computer simply to make them develop better. It's like saying that post office workers must now use bicycles instead of motor vehicles in order to encourage them to find shortcuts. I'm not a successful CEO, though, so maybe I'm just talking out my ass.
- dekhn 5y ago
  yes, as the chromeos person mentioned upthread, you have a dev infra that is fat, and a user testing environment that represents the user experience. Devs don't need to hobble their machines. I argued with Brad about this many times...