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Sounds great, but this won't work out to the way the author imagines it. We have a very strong bias towards anything technical, but if you've ever worked outsid

Sounds great, but this won't work out to the way the author imagines it. We have a very strong bias towards anything technical, but if you've ever worked outside the SWE field, you'll see that half of the people simply aren't interested in "thinking". They don't like or enjoy their jobs. They sure as hell aren't going to sit there and think, "how do I take this problem and break it down into a dozen/hundreds of small steps to create a small app that solves my problem?" The majority of people are content with learning the bare minimum needed to get by and never having to learn anything new. Don't believe, the proof is self evident the moment you try to update a UI that requires users to do things differently than before. And this is all fine, I've accepted it by now. It's the way it's always been and always will be. Still, these new tools will empower a relatively small percentage of the population to create amazing open source apps that will be used by a lot of people. The tools also very much empower pro-developers to build a lot more apps with less efforts than before, which I'm looking forward to.

titanomachy 2y ago
> outside of the SWE field... half of the people simply aren't interested in "thinking" This is probably true of SWEs as well (although in some places it's hard to get away without thinking at least a bit.)
intelVISA 2y ago
> outside the SWE field, you'll see that half of the people simply aren't interested in "thinking" Whereas inside it's closer to 90% :/
mangamadaiyan 2y ago
A tangential nitpick: Scientists, Engineers who are not of the Software persuasion, Accountants, and Lawyers, to name just a few, also make up people who work "outside the SWE field". Almost all of these people are interested in thinking; a few of them will probably not be, just as one finds a few people working in the SWE field being reluctant to think. There is a very good reason why people -- even technically minded people -- have trouble with changing UIs, and it is not about them not wanting to think. Consider that the UI could be part of a workflow that is more of a side annoyance than their main job, and that they would rather conserve their mental bandwidth for problems that are more important to them. A doctor shouldn't have to get used to a new timesheet UI just because a designer woke up one fine morning with a new thought.
- analog31 2y ago
  I've noticed that even the SWE's are annoyed by the UI's of typical enterprise software and websites, and by gratuitous UI churn.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - okwhateverdude 2y ago
    Only because I, as a SWE, know how that sausage is made. Either it is some misguided desire to show a customer that you're working on the product ("See, we're still alive, please keep paying us money!"), some PM or UI designer stuffing their promo packet ("Look at how much increased engagement we have!" by making users now click twice as much), or to satisfy the whim of some c-level sponsor. Rarely is the UI actually improved or made more efficient or actual user research conducted. Prime example is the last Slack UI update from last year that introduced a ton of dead space and other annoyances. Like, the tool is for reading and writing text. I want to see the text. Why did you shrink the text area for that stupid dead space on the left? Guarantee they are measuring useless metrics like clicking on those stupid buttons on the left now and patting themselves on the back on how awesome and useful their change was.
    - m0llusk 2y ago
      That's great, but can you make the Buy button bigger?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
john61 2y ago
I do not think it is reluctance of thinking when pianists would complain about Steinway changing the order of piano keys every few years, because a new Steinway engineer thinks his order is better.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
This bleak-ass sorry outlook & the fixed ness on looking at the bleaker parts of it, to me, isn't actually about the sad bleak people. Its about the sorry ass conditions & technosocialcultural bankrupcy that let so many people down, that didn't give them good hooks to start digging in & try enjoying their own powers. It's also about being overwhelmed and emotionally unserwater by unrewarding crappy rentier-capitalism. The belief system of humanity in itself needs nutrients, needs to seed and grow positively people. Open source is by far one of the strongest currents about for that. Right now open source is a mess & bogglingly complicated. Technology in general has gotten vastly less accessible year after year, the on-ramps to understanding detoured into ever more appliance-ized experiences & neofuedal cloud empires happening in other people's computers. Far fewer are primed for the esoterics of software, know the basics, or have positive rewarding experiences tinkering and tweaking. Humanity has been shoved into superficial & coopted/dishonest experiences. Heck yes, a lot of things are against the possibility of the good. But we unlike almost all other relationships with the material world, we can directly improve things, can keep enhancing things practically without material constraint, limited chiefly by imagination & will (ML excepted I guess). We can grow the pot, open up computing & it's softer side progressively, create better on ramps & more learnable, observable, experience able authentic experiences. Over time I hope the barriers to being interested might be less severe. The other material conditions dragging people down & shutting them off from engagement might persist. But I think there can be a very tangible source of hope here, a demonstration that people, when they are doing their thing, creating as they might, when they are empowered, are cool. Are good. Are a role model. And that - with hope - will keep us iterating & improving, will hopefully lead to more efforts to keep redefining & expanding general purpose computing & soft systems in less deeply technical terms. I have a really strong reaction against projecting the users of today & their sorry chained-to-the-cave-wall state to what people might be if there were some honest shakes out there. Open source is far from a perfect liberator today, 100%, but this is part of the journey, is part of why we need to be practicing & trying, so we can create & iterate towards alive interesting systems that welcome people in.
CM30 2y ago
> Don't believe, the proof is self evident the moment you try to update a UI that requires users to do things differently than before. Is this because they don't like learning something new, or because they've been burned so many times by badly done redesigns that make things harder to use for pretty much everyone? I'm sure half of Hacker News despises how Windows has been redesigned from Vista onwards, or at the very least since 11. Perhaps many people don't like change as much because a lot of changes come less from user needs/insight into what would actually improve the program and more from the need to give designers something to do (or provide another way to add ads/track users/appeal to shareholders). Having an interest in making your own job easier/more efficient is very different from being interested in accepting every redesign under the sun.
maccard 2y ago
I think you’re right that the majority of people do not want to learn, but in my experience there are a large number of engineers were who fit into that category, just as there are pockets of other professions that are willing to learn explore and improve. But

titanomachy 2y ago

> outside of the SWE field... half of the people simply aren't interested in "thinking" This is probably true of SWEs as well (although in some places it's hard to get away without thinking at least a bit.)

intelVISA 2y ago

> outside the SWE field, you'll see that half of the people simply aren't interested in "thinking" Whereas inside it's closer to 90% :/

mangamadaiyan 2y ago

A tangential nitpick: Scientists, Engineers who are not of the Software persuasion, Accountants, and Lawyers, to name just a few, also make up people who work "outside the SWE field". Almost all of these people are interested in thinking; a few of them will probably not be, just as one finds a few people working in the SWE field being reluctant to think. There is a very good reason why people -- even technically minded people -- have trouble with changing UIs, and it is not about them not wanting to think. Consider that the UI could be part of a workflow that is more of a side annoyance than their main job, and that they would rather conserve their mental bandwidth for problems that are more important to them. A doctor shouldn't have to get used to a new timesheet UI just because a designer woke up one fine morning with a new thought.

analog31 2y ago
I've noticed that even the SWE's are annoyed by the UI's of typical enterprise software and websites, and by gratuitous UI churn.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- okwhateverdude 2y ago
  Only because I, as a SWE, know how that sausage is made. Either it is some misguided desire to show a customer that you're working on the product ("See, we're still alive, please keep paying us money!"), some PM or UI designer stuffing their promo packet ("Look at how much increased engagement we have!" by making users now click twice as much), or to satisfy the whim of some c-level sponsor. Rarely is the UI actually improved or made more efficient or actual user research conducted. Prime example is the last Slack UI update from last year that introduced a ton of dead space and other annoyances. Like, the tool is for reading and writing text. I want to see the text. Why did you shrink the text area for that stupid dead space on the left? Guarantee they are measuring useless metrics like clicking on those stupid buttons on the left now and patting themselves on the back on how awesome and useful their change was.
  - m0llusk 2y ago
    That's great, but can you make the Buy button bigger?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

john61 2y ago

I do not think it is reluctance of thinking when pianists would complain about Steinway changing the order of piano keys every few years, because a new Steinway engineer thinks his order is better.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

This bleak-ass sorry outlook & the fixed ness on looking at the bleaker parts of it, to me, isn't actually about the sad bleak people. Its about the sorry ass conditions & technosocialcultural bankrupcy that let so many people down, that didn't give them good hooks to start digging in & try enjoying their own powers. It's also about being overwhelmed and emotionally unserwater by unrewarding crappy rentier-capitalism. The belief system of humanity in itself needs nutrients, needs to seed and grow positively people. Open source is by far one of the strongest currents about for that. Right now open source is a mess & bogglingly complicated. Technology in general has gotten vastly less accessible year after year, the on-ramps to understanding detoured into ever more appliance-ized experiences & neofuedal cloud empires happening in other people's computers. Far fewer are primed for the esoterics of software, know the basics, or have positive rewarding experiences tinkering and tweaking. Humanity has been shoved into superficial & coopted/dishonest experiences. Heck yes, a lot of things are against the possibility of the good. But we unlike almost all other relationships with the material world, we can directly improve things, can keep enhancing things practically without material constraint, limited chiefly by imagination & will (ML excepted I guess). We can grow the pot, open up computing & it's softer side progressively, create better on ramps & more learnable, observable, experience able authentic experiences. Over time I hope the barriers to being interested might be less severe. The other material conditions dragging people down & shutting them off from engagement might persist. But I think there can be a very tangible source of hope here, a demonstration that people, when they are doing their thing, creating as they might, when they are empowered, are cool. Are good. Are a role model. And that - with hope - will keep us iterating & improving, will hopefully lead to more efforts to keep redefining & expanding general purpose computing & soft systems in less deeply technical terms. I have a really strong reaction against projecting the users of today & their sorry chained-to-the-cave-wall state to what people might be if there were some honest shakes out there. Open source is far from a perfect liberator today, 100%, but this is part of the journey, is part of why we need to be practicing & trying, so we can create & iterate towards alive interesting systems that welcome people in.

CM30 2y ago

> Don't believe, the proof is self evident the moment you try to update a UI that requires users to do things differently than before. Is this because they don't like learning something new, or because they've been burned so many times by badly done redesigns that make things harder to use for pretty much everyone? I'm sure half of Hacker News despises how Windows has been redesigned from Vista onwards, or at the very least since 11. Perhaps many people don't like change as much because a lot of changes come less from user needs/insight into what would actually improve the program and more from the need to give designers something to do (or provide another way to add ads/track users/appeal to shareholders). Having an interest in making your own job easier/more efficient is very different from being interested in accepting every redesign under the sun.

maccard 2y ago

I think you’re right that the majority of people do not want to learn, but in my experience there are a large number of engineers were who fit into that category, just as there are pockets of other professions that are willing to learn explore and improve. But