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So much software guidance can be subsumed by a simple rule: Use the software that you make, in the same conditions that your users will use it in. Most mobile
by wat10000 1y ago
So much software guidance can be subsumed by a simple rule:
Use the software that you make, in the same conditions that your users will use it in.
Most mobile apps are developed by people in offices with massive connections, or home offices with symmetric gigabit fiber or similar. The developers make sure the stuff works and then they're on to the next thing. The first time someone tries to use it on a spotty cellular connection is probably when the first user installs the update.
You don't have to work on a connection like that all the time, but you need to experience your app on that sort of connection, on a regular basis, if you care about your users' experience.
Of course, it's that last part that's the critical missing piece from most app development.
- DamonHD 1y ago"eat your own dogfood" or "dogfooding"
- genewitch 1y agoi'd argue that op specifically talked about developers that dogfood their own software, but they don't do it as a customer would. i am unsure if there is a different word for the idea, but dogfooding is not it. In my opinion.
- wat10000 1y agoDogfooding certainly goes a long, long way and is a big part of this. But I agree, it doesn’t quite cover cases where your users are in different circumstances than your own. If you make a networked app and your developers spend all their time in a city with great cellular connectivity, you’ll want to deliberately use the app with poor connectivity to replicate the conditions of that subset of your users.
- DamonHD 1y agoI don't think it's dogfooding if you don't test your stuff as a customer would experience it. For example, do dogs eat it cold but you only heat it hot and smothered in spices? I attempt as I did way back in the '90s to ensure that a page will load in a bearable time over a nominal 9600 baud modem (~1kBps), and that the first packet window over TCP will contain some useful readable information. (All complicated by TLS handshakes and so on.) And I try not to rely for anything important on any very new features (eg CSS, HTML) so older cheaper hardware will still work. My main site's home page works reasonably well on the emulator for the very first (CERN) browser, though the <img> tag had not yet been invented, so no images showed!