12 ms·

I think it's less about aesthetics and more about cognitive load. Nonstandard UIs aren't end of the world, but if possible I don't want the extra cognitive loa

I think it's less about aesthetics and more about cognitive load. Nonstandard UIs aren't end of the world, but if possible I don't want the extra cognitive load of interacting with 5, 6, 7, whatever slightly different GUI paradigms. Like most developers I'm using multiple applications at once. Typically I'm using a terminal, text editor, browser, Slack, email, and maybe a database GUI. A developer's cognition and cognitive load are limiting factors. Increase my cognitive load by X% and there is going to be a Y% increase in how long it takes me to do something and/or a Z% decrease in the quality of the work. Even if X% is small, it adds up pretty quickly. After all if we are employed full time that is 2,000+ hours per year of work. Again, not just aesthetics. It's little things like, "does this software support the standard keyboard shortcuts for my system?" If CMD+W closes a window in every app except one that's kind of a pain. Etc.

TheRoque 3y ago
To be honest i find dbeaver well designed. Even though the interface is cluttered with a ton of functionalities, it has everything I need where I expect it to be! I don't recall googling "who to do X with dbeaver ?".
- Onawa 3y ago
  Counterpoint, I love DBeaver and have used it frequently. Did go through a scare with the schema viewer though where I thought that I had somehow deleted the entire table schema, after doing a backup of course. But it took some googling to find out that I had not committed the changes to the database, and also that there was an option to "lock" interactions with the database to prevent the kind of scare I had. So as an novice/intermediate SQL user, the clunky interface can be a detriment.
- lf-non 3y ago
  I'd generally agree with you. DBeaver interface is quite discoverable. I reach out for it whenever I need something more visual than pgcli - esp. things like ERD, inline editing, easy cross table navigation etc. However, I'd also agree with the GP comment. Its use of SWT ui results in some rather weird oddities. The biggest one is that if we configure gnome to use dark mode in linux, we get this absolutely unusable UI with barely visible text in many places. It becomes very obvious in that case which of the widgets are coming from gtk and which are custom rendered - and the distinction between them is stark. And there doesn't appear to be a clear way to fix it without actually disabling the dark mode at OS level. I'd be perfectly fine if it used some framework that rendered its own widgets that looked a bit different or even if it ignored the dark mode completely and stayed usable.

TheRoque 3y ago

To be honest i find dbeaver well designed. Even though the interface is cluttered with a ton of functionalities, it has everything I need where I expect it to be! I don't recall googling "who to do X with dbeaver ?".

Onawa 3y ago
Counterpoint, I love DBeaver and have used it frequently. Did go through a scare with the schema viewer though where I thought that I had somehow deleted the entire table schema, after doing a backup of course. But it took some googling to find out that I had not committed the changes to the database, and also that there was an option to "lock" interactions with the database to prevent the kind of scare I had. So as an novice/intermediate SQL user, the clunky interface can be a detriment.
lf-non 3y ago
I'd generally agree with you. DBeaver interface is quite discoverable. I reach out for it whenever I need something more visual than pgcli - esp. things like ERD, inline editing, easy cross table navigation etc. However, I'd also agree with the GP comment. Its use of SWT ui results in some rather weird oddities. The biggest one is that if we configure gnome to use dark mode in linux, we get this absolutely unusable UI with barely visible text in many places. It becomes very obvious in that case which of the widgets are coming from gtk and which are custom rendered - and the distinction between them is stark. And there doesn't appear to be a clear way to fix it without actually disabling the dark mode at OS level. I'd be perfectly fine if it used some framework that rendered its own widgets that looked a bit different or even if it ignored the dark mode completely and stayed usable.