6 ms·

Care

269 points by herbertl 3y ago

kfox2010 3y ago
This is so spot on.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I try to be positive. People still choose to interpret my writing as negative, but that’s very much on them. I’m not a negative person, despite the circus that is Life in the Twenty-First Century. I was a troll. A fairly nasty one, and I feel the need to atone. No excuses. I just don’t do that, anymore. My formula tends to be specific, in praise (and as much of that, as possible), and vague, in criticism (and as little of that, as possible). It does earn me some sneers, from this crowd, but I’m really too long in the tooth, to be ruled by personal insecurities. I continue to do it, and the occasional insult won’t stop me, or provoke me into retaliating. I’m a pretty good coder. I write code every day, and just about everything I write, ships. I open a significant part of it[0]. I feel that I do it well, and would rather lead by example, than complain about others. Just feels better, to me. Kindness and empathy almost seem like lost arts, these days, and that really is a shame. I know that I played a small part in establishing that culture, and hope to play a small part in reversing it. Personally, I hold myself to excruciatingly high standards, but I really only worry about others, if I use their work. Life’s too short, to be obsessed with the motes in the eyes. [0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#browse-away https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#browse-away
- stavros 3y ago
  I debated internally whether I should leave this comment or not, but I have a principle to always try to give constructive criticism where I can, so here it is: I don't know if it's that people interpret your writing as negative per se, I tried to realize what your writing makes me feel and why, and I realized that your comments always have a very high percentage of "I" and "me". I can see how that might rub a few people the wrong way, but obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    That’s deliberate. I have spent most of my adult life in a community that is extremely sensitive to dictatorial language, and I have learned to keep it to “me,” or (preferably), to “we.” A big part of my editorial review, is replacing instances of “you,” with “we.” I state stuff as it applies to me, my opinions as personal points of view, as opposed to absolutes, etc. In fact, when I diverge from this, it tends to immediately draw (often justified) criticism. I am also quite prepared to back up what I say, but it has been my experience that folks refuse to follow up on it; instead, insisting on continuing to state easily disproven opinions. They don’t want facts to interfere with the narrative.
BadHumans 3y ago
Honestly urge most people, especially in tech to read something like Nonviolent Communication. There is a way to communicate your care that doesn't have you come off as an angry asshole. I'm guilty of it, I'm an asshole even when I don't mean to be and even when I mean to be I probably shouldn't. But everyone can do better.
cat-snatcher 3y ago
Everyone can see that today's UX experience is needlessly slow and buggy. I don't think that's a surprise to people who care about UX. And most people (your average joe) don't care about UX. This article is only being read by people who care about UX, and they already know how bad everything is. It reads just a bit like a rant and it's a bit like doomscrolling news. What would be interesting is a take on fixing this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
TehShrike 3y ago
One of the top things that I want in a job is coworkers who care obsessively.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  That’s such a great observation
- roenxi 3y ago
  Well, y'know. You're likely to be better off if you put that desire to one side and focus within. Consider a soup kitchen vs a supermarket checkout. The people working at the soup kitchen arguably care a lot more. The person at the supermarket checkout can be as glassy eyed as they feel and still be part of feeding more people in absolute terms. Humans seem to have some sort of emotional heuristic to focus on care (really, focus on motivation of others I think). That works in small groups but it is highly misleading in large ones. In large groups, the only factors that matter are incentives and competence. If the incentives are good and the people are competent, good results will happen. If the reverse, corruption. The motivation heuristic actually does a lot of harm because it causes a huge amount of noise in the discourse where people whinge about this person or that having bad character to no avail. It is often true that people have impure motivations, but at scale that is true of effectively everyone. There are the devils you know and the devils waiting to become known. We can get great outcomes regardless; our politicians are cut from the same cloth as the Nazi and Communist parties but look at the difference in outcomes. One of the most peaceful insights I ever stumbled across was that of the people in the workplace who cared less than me, there were a significant and productive subset who were just doing more good than me through competence and being thoughtful about what work to pick up.
  - ozr 3y ago
    I've been on large and small teams of people that cared and didn't care. It feels noble and reasonable and right to tie it to a greater purpose; like your soup kitchen vs supermarket example. It's not that type of care the OP is getting at. It's closer to a craftmanship kind of care. Being proud of what you're putting into the world. Caring that it works well, not because the purpose is important, but because it's something you're doing and you want to do it well.
throwaway74432 3y ago
This is everywhere, with everything. I watch a house inspector youtube channel, and there's a ton of horrible hacks and stuff that doesn't work in house construction. If you're not the person to invent a new technology to make it better, then it's better to just not complain publicly about it, because you're just adding to the noise.
chime 3y ago
Web and modern tech can be fantastic if you take away the dark patterns. The UX for booking a flight isn't complex because reserving a seat or taking your card is difficult. It's complex because low margin businesses like airlines can make more money up-selling extra legroom or travel insurance. Take away the dark patterns and incentive to eek every last dollar from the user and the entire web can be neal.fun.
- jachee 3y ago
  Take away enough dark patterns and you eventually kill Capitalism. :)
  - toastercat 3y ago
    Shh you can't say that on Hacker News.
  - _factor 3y ago
    I know you’re being mildly facetious, but profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?). If you spend $.30 to grow and ship bananas and charge $1, that $.70 difference is just a made up number by what you hope is a fair market. A dark pattern is just a way of maximizing that difference unethically. I’ll ignore the clustering and trust structures that form naturally, but those are long-term dark patterns as well.
    - smaudet 3y ago
      > profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?) It doesn't. Its supposed to come from your operating costs (cost of living + insurance costs). That is supposed to be where the prices come from, the problem is the insurance...if the cost of insurance approaches infinity due to infinite uncertainty, then "dark patterns" become "coping mechanisms". Not that I'm saying airline booking websites are in the moral right here, or anything - but someone thought they needed a raise, or to provide stock holders with a quarterly increase, because of rising cost(s) (or greed, but that's just another way insurance costs increase).
crooked-v 3y ago
I feel like a lot of the problems with web UX come from browsers never natively implementing even basic functionality needed for many web apps, like comboboxes, menus, tab panels, etc. Then there's the endless layers of fiddly work needed to make accessibility work cross-platform (check out all the work Adobe puts into the react-aria project for an example), and that there's still fundamentally no browser-native no-JS way to submit a form and use the response without loading the whole page again...
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  “And use the response” Right, because a description of the use of the response would constitute a DSL
- lkrubner 3y ago
  Agreed. I remember in 2012 we joked that if you used enough Javascript you could get the Web in 2012 up to the level that VisualBasic 1.0 offered back in 1991. But we were certain that in 10 years, by 2022, we'd up to the level offered by VisualBasic 6.0, which would have been amazing, because VisualBasic 6.0 had been amazing. I've been stunned by the lack of progress. The major browser companies/projects have largely stopped innovating. The period from 1993 to maybe 2010 or 2015 was very fluid, and HTML and CSS expanded quickly, but after a certain point the attitude seemed to be "We don't need to fix HTML because we can fix it with Javascript." Which is sort of true, but it is clunky. It would be much better to simply add more to HTML. At a minimum, every form element offered by VisualBasic should have eventually been added to HTML. What is the hold up? Why isn't this happening? It's shocking, but there are still no calendars in HTML. Every calendar has to be custom built with CSS and Javascript. You'd think in the year 2024 we'd have every possible time element added to HTML, with easy customization options. I'm baffled this hasn't happened yet. What will it take to get the major browser companies/projects to start adding more to HTML?
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    Input type=“date” was added and is supported in HTML5, no js required. Same with time!
jrm4 3y ago
Sure -- but lets be clear about what this is a function of; this is misplaced incentives. There's nothing (yet) incentivizing a clean, efficient, pleasant web, owing to the fact that scale of the stuff the web connects to/makes available doesn't have any meaningful "competition" whatsoever.
- ISL 3y ago
  Clean and efficient web (for consumers) isn't terribly profitable. Craigslist could make a lot more money, especially in the short-term, with different design and monetization choices.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Ugh, did y'all downvoters get triggered when I said "no competition?" Sorry, your downvotes don't make this not true. Look, why does google no longer have the title of "simple, no frills search?" It's very very difficult, pretty much impossible for any new competitor that provides a useful, good, quality web-related service, to not be crowded out by incumbents and anti-competitive behavior. It's technically trivially easy to make a new/better Uber, Doordash, Google, whatever. But they're going to throw everything at you to make you not happen.
myth2018 3y ago
> My father called me in exasperation last night after trying and failing to book a plane ticket I've been going through really infuriating experiences with airlines' software too. Web apps, totems for luggage dispatching, everything. I know it's hard to pinpoint a single cause, but I believe that the current trend of overemphasizing aesthetics plays a major role on the current deplorable state of affairs: applications get too hard to design and build and at the end of the day there's simply not enough time to properly test things and fix its bugs.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zackbrown 3y ago
Structure determines behavior. If a technology structurally encourages shooting oneself in the foot, people will shoot themselves in the feet. The author seems to be arguing the the core problem is behavior — if only developers would stop building flimsy things! But what about a structural view? Is there a certain structure that lends HTML, CSS, and JS to creating frustrating experiences? The structural heart of this problem is so big it's hard to see — it's the ground we stand on. The designed-by-committee dissonance between "the Web should be a simple document engine" and "the Web should be a game-engine-like interactive graphical runtime" leaves us with a bloated tech stack that doesn't excel at either. WebAssembly and WebGPU give us a way out. Fork HTML. Employ a better language for authoring documents; employ a better language for authoring apps & games. It is a matter of time.
- placebo 3y ago
  I think the fact that "structure determines behavior" is true is exactly what it is he is lamenting about. The fact that a tool enables you to shoot yourself in the foot is never an excuse to shoot yourself in the foot. Knowing how not to shoot yourself in the foot with a powerful tool is one thing that separates amateurs from professionals, and you get to be a professional by caring. That is not to say that work shouldn't be done on making tools which require less cognitive load to use professionally, but until that happens I feel there are too many opinions blaming the tools instead of taking on the responsibility required to use them correctly.
  - zackbrown 3y ago
    The problem is: you shouldn't have to be a professional to author Web software. Certainly I was not when I started tinkering with HTML & CSS in the 90s. The trend line is moving — in 10 years, it's likely that billions of people will be able to create apps & websites. Should we hold all of those billions to a high bar of professional diligence? Not practical. If a four-way stop intersection were missing one of its stop signs, a diligent driver would infer the missing stop sign and pass cautiously. We all agree that drivers should be diligent. In aggregate, anthropologically speaking, there would be accidents at that intersection. Rather than "scream into the wind" at every passing driver, a systemic solution is necessary. Not that I would call most people to action to create a solution themselves — this particular problem is hard tech and a tremendous amount of work — but I do challenge people to be open to a better future. With such future in mind, "screaming at passing cars" feels like a battle against the wrong enemy.
lmm 3y ago
> I feel like the web used to work better. Not in the sense of features or flagship sites—web-based email clients and word processors and image editors are all waaay better than they used to be and I would say the high-quality stuff is of higher quality than ever. I’m not pining for the HTML-only version of GMail, I promise. But if I were to estimate some rough median of “how well do websites work” I would also say that there’s an incredible amount of jank out there. Nah. I remember that era. It all sucked, except Flash, which was the only way to have interactive sites that weren't awful. The main reason websites work even less well now is that they got rid of Flash so you have to use an informally-specified bug-ridden implementation of half of Flash instead. > They expect the Back button to work, and they expect that the stuff they filled out on the previous page will be there when they click it. And it would! If you would just let the browser do what it wants to do! That's a very recent change, and only after a literal decade of people using javascript to do this put enough pressure on browser makers to fix such basic functionality. I'm not sure it's even implemented in all common browsers yet. > Every broken contact form or booking site is a truly spectacular own-goal. If your calendar was a bunch of progressively enhanced checkboxes and a submit button, you could be riding off into the sunset and counting money instead of taking support calls from frustrated octogenarians. Nah. If you did that progressive enhancement nonsense it would take 3x as long and would still work less well. Frankly the biggest thing holding back the web is the opposite, people keep trying to use the broken and awful browser widgets and technologies instead of declaring bankruptcy and just rendering their system via one big canvas element like you would if you were writing a program in a real programming language. We've been trying progressive enhancement for 30 years and it still sucks; how bad does it have to get before we start trying something different?
- WA 3y ago
  > and just rendering their system via one big canvas element Interesting perspective, but I'm not sure if this would really solve the problem. You'd have to implement so much functionality that we take for granted (selecting text, copy & paste, accessibility, keyboard shortcuts, etc.). If you don't want to do it yourself, you have to use a widget library or some kind of UI kit. Maybe like Flutter. The web-version of a Flutter app renders everything to canvas (with a lot of caveats). Since people bring their own UI libs for their JS-CSS-HTML web apps all the time, they will probably do the same with a pure canvas implementation and the result would be even shittier, because half of them will forget basic functionality.
ji_zai 3y ago
I agree with the author, but they don't seem to get into what we can do to get it back to a more delightful experience. I don't think the solution is to have more passionate builders in existing organizations that have overly short-term priorities (increase revenue this week vs. re-imagine a market). I only see things changing through better competing products. Similar to how LLMs have enabled products that completely circumvent crap in search results (e.g. low quality listicles), we will see the same happen for most products and services. Some products are going to be tough to displace, and it might take a new airplane startup that owns the entire ticket purchasing to inflight entertainment and last mile transportation (airport to destination) to show the world what an incredible flying experience could look like, that will force other airlines to at least try and catch up. I hope more people with these sort of frustrations (which I share!) try to re-imagine experiences from the ground up and not shy away from tackling problems in big ways. We need more of it.
d--b 3y ago
This is utter bullshit. Cgi forms have always been clunky AF. The back button used to work? Come on! Websites used to tell you not to click the back button! “Please do not refresh while we proceed with your payment”. Does that ring a bell? Oh and do you remember when your credit card was voided every 6 months because some website kept your info in clear text? You’d always have to update macromedia flash and Java for some reason. And then you’d see “this website is optimized for IE6”.
dankle 3y ago
Not a fan of the ”I care therefore I get to throw tantrums” rhetoric. But yes, I also care and expect my colleagues to do so as well. But being mad doesn't strike me as a good way of facilitating change.
wraptile 3y ago
One successful formula I've found is to generate only positive or dilligent content but freely contribute and reply to any content. For example, I'd refrain from complaining on Mastodon about some app update being broken but I'd reply to relevant news posts with criticism if required. This dichotomy allows to separate contribution and self expression more clearly for my own well being. I don't want to create more whining but if there's something already going on maybe there's something constructive I can add or empower a worthy voice.
RespectYourself 3y ago
[dead]
INTPenis 3y ago
I get very mad at UX issues because I know how easy they are to avoid.
yobbo 3y ago
> And it would! If you would just let the browser do what it wants to do! Ok, so it's an incentives/management problem. The people doing the work have no reason to care. Also, I suspect some of it might be caused by misuse of frameworks.
andsoitis 3y ago
> My father called me in exasperation last night after trying and failing to book a plane ticket. I find myself having to go over to their house and do things like switch browsers, open private windows, occasionally even open up the Web Inspector to fiddle with the markup, and I hate every second of it. What an unusual case! I have been booking plane tickets online for a very very long time and very often and I have never had to resort to these gymnastics.
orng 3y ago
I think part of the problem is that there seems to be a widespread sentiment among software developers to prioritize our time above the user's. Ease of development trumps ease of use and features are made to be easy, or rather fast, to build rather than easy to use and performant. As a young developer I was taught to take the extra time to make things better for the user. Even if it might mean spending two days on a feature rather than a few hours, the cumulative time saved would end up much more than the extra time I spent since users use your software more often than you write it and there are many users. Unfortunately this view is not widespread enough.
- ersamsa 3y ago
  „it‘s not economical to build good software“
  - BowBun 3y ago
    Physical products suffer the same fate. It makes no (capitalist) sense for a business to make a product that never needs to be replaced. In the US, it means we've seen brands like Levi's and L.L. Bean quality and guarantees decline greatly compared to the products that earned them their reputation.
    - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      "Of a quality too high for the market to rationally produce" Enjoy your Lamborghini made of plastic with the app screen that nags you to renew the bundled satellite radio subscription! :D
cxr 3y ago
> everyone is doing their best given the conditions they’re in Generous, but almost certainly untrue.
- ersamsa 3y ago
  Evaluating the conditions is very subjective
  - cxr 3y ago
    It's not difficult to just ask the persons involved. You aren't going to get a uniform set of responses arguing for the affirmative; many people (a) aren't doing their best, and (b) are comfortable saying so.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> I’m not pining for the HTML-only version of GMail, I promise. > If your calendar was a bunch of progressively enhanced checkboxes and a submit button, you could be riding off into the sunset and counting money instead of taking support calls from frustrated octogenarians.
tegiddrone 3y ago
There is probably a segment of devs who "care" but lack the perception to understand how what they are doing may be problematic or counter-productive. Software is complicated and it's hard to avoid all the pitfalls. Not everyone is a hacker-news 1%-er nerd. I have to practice empathy in this regard. That said, I do get fatigued with the insufferable apps out in the wild :)

269 points by herbertl 3y ago

kfox2010 3y ago

This is so spot on.

I try to be positive. People still choose to interpret my writing as negative, but that’s very much on them. I’m not a negative person, despite the circus that is Life in the Twenty-First Century. I was a troll. A fairly nasty one, and I feel the need to atone. No excuses. I just don’t do that, anymore. My formula tends to be specific, in praise (and as much of that, as possible), and vague, in criticism (and as little of that, as possible). It does earn me some sneers, from this crowd, but I’m really too long in the tooth, to be ruled by personal insecurities. I continue to do it, and the occasional insult won’t stop me, or provoke me into retaliating. I’m a pretty good coder. I write code every day, and just about everything I write, ships. I open a significant part of it[0]. I feel that I do it well, and would rather lead by example, than complain about others. Just feels better, to me. Kindness and empathy almost seem like lost arts, these days, and that really is a shame. I know that I played a small part in establishing that culture, and hope to play a small part in reversing it. Personally, I hold myself to excruciatingly high standards, but I really only worry about others, if I use their work. Life’s too short, to be obsessed with the motes in the eyes. [0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#browse-away https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#browse-away

stavros 3y ago
I debated internally whether I should leave this comment or not, but I have a principle to always try to give constructive criticism where I can, so here it is: I don't know if it's that people interpret your writing as negative per se, I tried to realize what your writing makes me feel and why, and I realized that your comments always have a very high percentage of "I" and "me". I can see how that might rub a few people the wrong way, but obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  That’s deliberate. I have spent most of my adult life in a community that is extremely sensitive to dictatorial language, and I have learned to keep it to “me,” or (preferably), to “we.” A big part of my editorial review, is replacing instances of “you,” with “we.” I state stuff as it applies to me, my opinions as personal points of view, as opposed to absolutes, etc. In fact, when I diverge from this, it tends to immediately draw (often justified) criticism. I am also quite prepared to back up what I say, but it has been my experience that folks refuse to follow up on it; instead, insisting on continuing to state easily disproven opinions. They don’t want facts to interfere with the narrative.

BadHumans 3y ago

Honestly urge most people, especially in tech to read something like Nonviolent Communication. There is a way to communicate your care that doesn't have you come off as an angry asshole. I'm guilty of it, I'm an asshole even when I don't mean to be and even when I mean to be I probably shouldn't. But everyone can do better.

cat-snatcher 3y ago

Everyone can see that today's UX experience is needlessly slow and buggy. I don't think that's a surprise to people who care about UX. And most people (your average joe) don't care about UX. This article is only being read by people who care about UX, and they already know how bad everything is. It reads just a bit like a rant and it's a bit like doomscrolling news. What would be interesting is a take on fixing this.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

TehShrike 3y ago

One of the top things that I want in a job is coworkers who care obsessively.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
That’s such a great observation
roenxi 3y ago
Well, y'know. You're likely to be better off if you put that desire to one side and focus within. Consider a soup kitchen vs a supermarket checkout. The people working at the soup kitchen arguably care a lot more. The person at the supermarket checkout can be as glassy eyed as they feel and still be part of feeding more people in absolute terms. Humans seem to have some sort of emotional heuristic to focus on care (really, focus on motivation of others I think). That works in small groups but it is highly misleading in large ones. In large groups, the only factors that matter are incentives and competence. If the incentives are good and the people are competent, good results will happen. If the reverse, corruption. The motivation heuristic actually does a lot of harm because it causes a huge amount of noise in the discourse where people whinge about this person or that having bad character to no avail. It is often true that people have impure motivations, but at scale that is true of effectively everyone. There are the devils you know and the devils waiting to become known. We can get great outcomes regardless; our politicians are cut from the same cloth as the Nazi and Communist parties but look at the difference in outcomes. One of the most peaceful insights I ever stumbled across was that of the people in the workplace who cared less than me, there were a significant and productive subset who were just doing more good than me through competence and being thoughtful about what work to pick up.
- ozr 3y ago
  I've been on large and small teams of people that cared and didn't care. It feels noble and reasonable and right to tie it to a greater purpose; like your soup kitchen vs supermarket example. It's not that type of care the OP is getting at. It's closer to a craftmanship kind of care. Being proud of what you're putting into the world. Caring that it works well, not because the purpose is important, but because it's something you're doing and you want to do it well.

throwaway74432 3y ago

This is everywhere, with everything. I watch a house inspector youtube channel, and there's a ton of horrible hacks and stuff that doesn't work in house construction. If you're not the person to invent a new technology to make it better, then it's better to just not complain publicly about it, because you're just adding to the noise.

chime 3y ago

Web and modern tech can be fantastic if you take away the dark patterns. The UX for booking a flight isn't complex because reserving a seat or taking your card is difficult. It's complex because low margin businesses like airlines can make more money up-selling extra legroom or travel insurance. Take away the dark patterns and incentive to eek every last dollar from the user and the entire web can be neal.fun.

jachee 3y ago
Take away enough dark patterns and you eventually kill Capitalism. :)
- toastercat 3y ago
  Shh you can't say that on Hacker News.
- _factor 3y ago
  I know you’re being mildly facetious, but profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?). If you spend $.30 to grow and ship bananas and charge $1, that $.70 difference is just a made up number by what you hope is a fair market. A dark pattern is just a way of maximizing that difference unethically. I’ll ignore the clustering and trust structures that form naturally, but those are long-term dark patterns as well.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    > profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?) It doesn't. Its supposed to come from your operating costs (cost of living + insurance costs). That is supposed to be where the prices come from, the problem is the insurance...if the cost of insurance approaches infinity due to infinite uncertainty, then "dark patterns" become "coping mechanisms". Not that I'm saying airline booking websites are in the moral right here, or anything - but someone thought they needed a raise, or to provide stock holders with a quarterly increase, because of rising cost(s) (or greed, but that's just another way insurance costs increase).

crooked-v 3y ago

I feel like a lot of the problems with web UX come from browsers never natively implementing even basic functionality needed for many web apps, like comboboxes, menus, tab panels, etc. Then there's the endless layers of fiddly work needed to make accessibility work cross-platform (check out all the work Adobe puts into the react-aria project for an example), and that there's still fundamentally no browser-native no-JS way to submit a form and use the response without loading the whole page again...

zarathustreal 3y ago
“And use the response” Right, because a description of the use of the response would constitute a DSL
lkrubner 3y ago
Agreed. I remember in 2012 we joked that if you used enough Javascript you could get the Web in 2012 up to the level that VisualBasic 1.0 offered back in 1991. But we were certain that in 10 years, by 2022, we'd up to the level offered by VisualBasic 6.0, which would have been amazing, because VisualBasic 6.0 had been amazing. I've been stunned by the lack of progress. The major browser companies/projects have largely stopped innovating. The period from 1993 to maybe 2010 or 2015 was very fluid, and HTML and CSS expanded quickly, but after a certain point the attitude seemed to be "We don't need to fix HTML because we can fix it with Javascript." Which is sort of true, but it is clunky. It would be much better to simply add more to HTML. At a minimum, every form element offered by VisualBasic should have eventually been added to HTML. What is the hold up? Why isn't this happening? It's shocking, but there are still no calendars in HTML. Every calendar has to be custom built with CSS and Javascript. You'd think in the year 2024 we'd have every possible time element added to HTML, with easy customization options. I'm baffled this hasn't happened yet. What will it take to get the major browser companies/projects to start adding more to HTML?
- freeone3000 3y ago
  Input type=“date” was added and is supported in HTML5, no js required. Same with time!

jrm4 3y ago

Sure -- but lets be clear about what this is a function of; this is misplaced incentives. There's nothing (yet) incentivizing a clean, efficient, pleasant web, owing to the fact that scale of the stuff the web connects to/makes available doesn't have any meaningful "competition" whatsoever.

ISL 3y ago
Clean and efficient web (for consumers) isn't terribly profitable. Craigslist could make a lot more money, especially in the short-term, with different design and monetization choices.
jrm4 3y ago
Ugh, did y'all downvoters get triggered when I said "no competition?" Sorry, your downvotes don't make this not true. Look, why does google no longer have the title of "simple, no frills search?" It's very very difficult, pretty much impossible for any new competitor that provides a useful, good, quality web-related service, to not be crowded out by incumbents and anti-competitive behavior. It's technically trivially easy to make a new/better Uber, Doordash, Google, whatever. But they're going to throw everything at you to make you not happen.

myth2018 3y ago

> My father called me in exasperation last night after trying and failing to book a plane ticket I've been going through really infuriating experiences with airlines' software too. Web apps, totems for luggage dispatching, everything. I know it's hard to pinpoint a single cause, but I believe that the current trend of overemphasizing aesthetics plays a major role on the current deplorable state of affairs: applications get too hard to design and build and at the end of the day there's simply not enough time to properly test things and fix its bugs.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zackbrown 3y ago

Structure determines behavior. If a technology structurally encourages shooting oneself in the foot, people will shoot themselves in the feet. The author seems to be arguing the the core problem is behavior — if only developers would stop building flimsy things! But what about a structural view? Is there a certain structure that lends HTML, CSS, and JS to creating frustrating experiences? The structural heart of this problem is so big it's hard to see — it's the ground we stand on. The designed-by-committee dissonance between "the Web should be a simple document engine" and "the Web should be a game-engine-like interactive graphical runtime" leaves us with a bloated tech stack that doesn't excel at either. WebAssembly and WebGPU give us a way out. Fork HTML. Employ a better language for authoring documents; employ a better language for authoring apps & games. It is a matter of time.

placebo 3y ago
I think the fact that "structure determines behavior" is true is exactly what it is he is lamenting about. The fact that a tool enables you to shoot yourself in the foot is never an excuse to shoot yourself in the foot. Knowing how not to shoot yourself in the foot with a powerful tool is one thing that separates amateurs from professionals, and you get to be a professional by caring. That is not to say that work shouldn't be done on making tools which require less cognitive load to use professionally, but until that happens I feel there are too many opinions blaming the tools instead of taking on the responsibility required to use them correctly.
- zackbrown 3y ago
  The problem is: you shouldn't have to be a professional to author Web software. Certainly I was not when I started tinkering with HTML & CSS in the 90s. The trend line is moving — in 10 years, it's likely that billions of people will be able to create apps & websites. Should we hold all of those billions to a high bar of professional diligence? Not practical. If a four-way stop intersection were missing one of its stop signs, a diligent driver would infer the missing stop sign and pass cautiously. We all agree that drivers should be diligent. In aggregate, anthropologically speaking, there would be accidents at that intersection. Rather than "scream into the wind" at every passing driver, a systemic solution is necessary. Not that I would call most people to action to create a solution themselves — this particular problem is hard tech and a tremendous amount of work — but I do challenge people to be open to a better future. With such future in mind, "screaming at passing cars" feels like a battle against the wrong enemy.

lmm 3y ago

> I feel like the web used to work better. Not in the sense of features or flagship sites—web-based email clients and word processors and image editors are all waaay better than they used to be and I would say the high-quality stuff is of higher quality than ever. I’m not pining for the HTML-only version of GMail, I promise. But if I were to estimate some rough median of “how well do websites work” I would also say that there’s an incredible amount of jank out there. Nah. I remember that era. It all sucked, except Flash, which was the only way to have interactive sites that weren't awful. The main reason websites work even less well now is that they got rid of Flash so you have to use an informally-specified bug-ridden implementation of half of Flash instead. > They expect the Back button to work, and they expect that the stuff they filled out on the previous page will be there when they click it. And it would! If you would just let the browser do what it wants to do! That's a very recent change, and only after a literal decade of people using javascript to do this put enough pressure on browser makers to fix such basic functionality. I'm not sure it's even implemented in all common browsers yet. > Every broken contact form or booking site is a truly spectacular own-goal. If your calendar was a bunch of progressively enhanced checkboxes and a submit button, you could be riding off into the sunset and counting money instead of taking support calls from frustrated octogenarians. Nah. If you did that progressive enhancement nonsense it would take 3x as long and would still work less well. Frankly the biggest thing holding back the web is the opposite, people keep trying to use the broken and awful browser widgets and technologies instead of declaring bankruptcy and just rendering their system via one big canvas element like you would if you were writing a program in a real programming language. We've been trying progressive enhancement for 30 years and it still sucks; how bad does it have to get before we start trying something different?

WA 3y ago
> and just rendering their system via one big canvas element Interesting perspective, but I'm not sure if this would really solve the problem. You'd have to implement so much functionality that we take for granted (selecting text, copy & paste, accessibility, keyboard shortcuts, etc.). If you don't want to do it yourself, you have to use a widget library or some kind of UI kit. Maybe like Flutter. The web-version of a Flutter app renders everything to canvas (with a lot of caveats). Since people bring their own UI libs for their JS-CSS-HTML web apps all the time, they will probably do the same with a pure canvas implementation and the result would be even shittier, because half of them will forget basic functionality.

ji_zai 3y ago

I agree with the author, but they don't seem to get into what we can do to get it back to a more delightful experience. I don't think the solution is to have more passionate builders in existing organizations that have overly short-term priorities (increase revenue this week vs. re-imagine a market). I only see things changing through better competing products. Similar to how LLMs have enabled products that completely circumvent crap in search results (e.g. low quality listicles), we will see the same happen for most products and services. Some products are going to be tough to displace, and it might take a new airplane startup that owns the entire ticket purchasing to inflight entertainment and last mile transportation (airport to destination) to show the world what an incredible flying experience could look like, that will force other airlines to at least try and catch up. I hope more people with these sort of frustrations (which I share!) try to re-imagine experiences from the ground up and not shy away from tackling problems in big ways. We need more of it.

d--b 3y ago

This is utter bullshit. Cgi forms have always been clunky AF. The back button used to work? Come on! Websites used to tell you not to click the back button! “Please do not refresh while we proceed with your payment”. Does that ring a bell? Oh and do you remember when your credit card was voided every 6 months because some website kept your info in clear text? You’d always have to update macromedia flash and Java for some reason. And then you’d see “this website is optimized for IE6”.

dankle 3y ago

Not a fan of the ”I care therefore I get to throw tantrums” rhetoric. But yes, I also care and expect my colleagues to do so as well. But being mad doesn't strike me as a good way of facilitating change.

wraptile 3y ago

One successful formula I've found is to generate only positive or dilligent content but freely contribute and reply to any content. For example, I'd refrain from complaining on Mastodon about some app update being broken but I'd reply to relevant news posts with criticism if required. This dichotomy allows to separate contribution and self expression more clearly for my own well being. I don't want to create more whining but if there's something already going on maybe there's something constructive I can add or empower a worthy voice.

RespectYourself 3y ago

[dead]

INTPenis 3y ago

I get very mad at UX issues because I know how easy they are to avoid.

yobbo 3y ago

> And it would! If you would just let the browser do what it wants to do! Ok, so it's an incentives/management problem. The people doing the work have no reason to care. Also, I suspect some of it might be caused by misuse of frameworks.

andsoitis 3y ago

> My father called me in exasperation last night after trying and failing to book a plane ticket. I find myself having to go over to their house and do things like switch browsers, open private windows, occasionally even open up the Web Inspector to fiddle with the markup, and I hate every second of it. What an unusual case! I have been booking plane tickets online for a very very long time and very often and I have never had to resort to these gymnastics.

orng 3y ago

I think part of the problem is that there seems to be a widespread sentiment among software developers to prioritize our time above the user's. Ease of development trumps ease of use and features are made to be easy, or rather fast, to build rather than easy to use and performant. As a young developer I was taught to take the extra time to make things better for the user. Even if it might mean spending two days on a feature rather than a few hours, the cumulative time saved would end up much more than the extra time I spent since users use your software more often than you write it and there are many users. Unfortunately this view is not widespread enough.

ersamsa 3y ago
„it‘s not economical to build good software“
- BowBun 3y ago
  Physical products suffer the same fate. It makes no (capitalist) sense for a business to make a product that never needs to be replaced. In the US, it means we've seen brands like Levi's and L.L. Bean quality and guarantees decline greatly compared to the products that earned them their reputation.
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    "Of a quality too high for the market to rationally produce" Enjoy your Lamborghini made of plastic with the app screen that nags you to renew the bundled satellite radio subscription! :D

cxr 3y ago

> everyone is doing their best given the conditions they’re in Generous, but almost certainly untrue.

ersamsa 3y ago
Evaluating the conditions is very subjective
- cxr 3y ago
  It's not difficult to just ask the persons involved. You aren't going to get a uniform set of responses arguing for the affirmative; many people (a) aren't doing their best, and (b) are comfortable saying so.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

> I’m not pining for the HTML-only version of GMail, I promise. > If your calendar was a bunch of progressively enhanced checkboxes and a submit button, you could be riding off into the sunset and counting money instead of taking support calls from frustrated octogenarians.

tegiddrone 3y ago

There is probably a segment of devs who "care" but lack the perception to understand how what they are doing may be problematic or counter-productive. Software is complicated and it's hard to avoid all the pitfalls. Not everyone is a hacker-news 1%-er nerd. I have to practice empathy in this regard. That said, I do get fatigued with the insufferable apps out in the wild :)