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> People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-th

> People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. Terry Pratchett.

a_c 3y ago
In my past experience building internal tools, the customer (colleagues) is one major source of feature requests. It rarely ends well. From their perspective, feature requests never get addressed. What was built is rarely what they perceived most helpful. What seemed most helpful was a forever moving target, there are always next most important thing to have. Without internal tool building, people bend their workflow to suit the tools, have second tier support if any, the tool has no empathy on your particular business context, close to or no involvement on roadmap. But hey, at least less complaint from the people, I mean the colleague
- boxed 3y ago
  I build internal tools and I regularly build things that, while not what they asked for, the users are glad to get in the end since it was a car and not a faster horse. My biggest problem has always been that users are used to software being "Stone Tablets from the Mountain" and so instinctively work around the tool instead of just asking me to fix it. Which is reasonable mostly since almost all the software they (and me!) have ever used is very much like this. This isn't only a discussion about software though, but about government. The citizens don't even report problems because they assume they will be ignored. So the government stops listening because there is nothing to listen to. Round and round it goes.
graemep 3y ago
True to an extent, but that does not always mean they are wrong. Being conservative in a Chesterton's fence way is a good thing. Being opposed to rapid change is more often (not always, but more often) right than wrong. Not being clever is offset by their knowledge of their own everyday problems and priorities.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
keybored 3y ago
Hatred of The People is an even longer and honored tradition in politics. Good point!

a_c 3y ago

In my past experience building internal tools, the customer (colleagues) is one major source of feature requests. It rarely ends well. From their perspective, feature requests never get addressed. What was built is rarely what they perceived most helpful. What seemed most helpful was a forever moving target, there are always next most important thing to have. Without internal tool building, people bend their workflow to suit the tools, have second tier support if any, the tool has no empathy on your particular business context, close to or no involvement on roadmap. But hey, at least less complaint from the people, I mean the colleague

boxed 3y ago
I build internal tools and I regularly build things that, while not what they asked for, the users are glad to get in the end since it was a car and not a faster horse. My biggest problem has always been that users are used to software being "Stone Tablets from the Mountain" and so instinctively work around the tool instead of just asking me to fix it. Which is reasonable mostly since almost all the software they (and me!) have ever used is very much like this. This isn't only a discussion about software though, but about government. The citizens don't even report problems because they assume they will be ignored. So the government stops listening because there is nothing to listen to. Round and round it goes.

graemep 3y ago

True to an extent, but that does not always mean they are wrong. Being conservative in a Chesterton's fence way is a good thing. Being opposed to rapid change is more often (not always, but more often) right than wrong. Not being clever is offset by their knowledge of their own everyday problems and priorities.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

keybored 3y ago

Hatred of The People is an even longer and honored tradition in politics. Good point!