6 ms·
Stop developing for the 90% use case
- chacham15 14y agoWheres the pgbot when you need him? Oh well, I'll take his place: "It’s better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy."
- ksherlock 14y ago"A little bit for everybody is a lot for nobody"
- mirkules 14y agoThere is a certain irony in requiring Javascript to view a post about not ignoring the 10% of the use cases.
- zdw 14y agoMore like you're in a different 10% than what gist.io is focusing on.
- mirkules 14y agoConsidering that the gist.io post is (edit: was -- it seems to be deleted) about not neglecting the 10%, doing one thing and doing it well, and that gist.io focuses on delivering medium-sized content blurbs (between a tweet and a blog post), I feel my criticism is appropriate.
- rodion_89 14y agoAccording to Yahoo 99% of visitors have JavaScript enabled. http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users-javascript-disabled-14121.html http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users-javascript-d...
- vacri 14y agoYahoo's audience: general public This article's audience: software developers Given that the article is in English as well, and English countries have higher levels of disabled javascript than other countries from that report, and that the target audience is a very specific type of technical focus rather than the general public, I'd hazard that the original point stands. Not to mention that if some crawlers don't access javascript, you'll serve up nothing to the relevant search index.
- gfodor 14y agoYou'll hazard that 1 out of 10 people accessing this webpage have Javascript disabled?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kd0amg 14y agoOr use something like NoScript
- yareally 14y agoI disable it for sites that abuse javascript. I'm guessing I am not the only one that does. Probably quite a few people would do that outside of us developers if they knew they could (or knew the a site's major problem was derived from it). Not inferring anything about this particular site, just that there's good reasons to turn it off at times. I normally browse with it on by default though, but I'll blacklist it for sites that cause my browser to slow down or do other things that are detrimental to the user experience.
- jabbernotty 14y agoI totally agree. Though I haven't read the article yet :) I can't even get anything to show after enabling it for that page. I'm not sure if it's gone or if I'm failing at something :)
- nwh 14y agoDon't know about you, but I can't even view the page, JavaScript or no JavaScript. "Quite flummoxed. Terribly sorry."
- tingletech 14y agohttps://gist.github.com/tyre/5561992 https://gist.github.com/tyre/5561992
- msutherl 14y agoIt seems there's a bit of a fad of people using humanist serifs on minimal websites about technical topics. I find this an interesting and somewhat strange thing to do. The style of these typefaces dates to the early Renaissance and emulates the script used in illuminated manuscripts. These faces were also revived around the time of the Bauhaus and used in a similar sort of minimal layout by people like Jan Tschichold, but in the context of books and literature, which benefit from the association to the early history of the printed word and the authoritative aesthetic of early Christianity. Using such a typeface on such a technical website is for one totally anachronistic, but also without any logic that I can discern. Moreover, that particular font is somewhat hard to read and looks like it's wiggling its serifs around as you eyes pass over the letters. Try something like Sabon if you're going for that aesthetic.
- Surio 14y agoI had two minds about typing a reply to you, as it would be the beginning of a tangential discussion on something else rather than the article in question... but, (edit: this seems to be the topmost comment on the page, as I write, so I felt impelled to add my voice as well) Opinions on fonts are very hard to quantify. The font in question, used here is Alegreya, and I've found that it is both aesthetic and pleasing to the eyes. I use it as default font in MS-word/Libreoffice and also as a font replacement (using Stylish - FF, font replace table - Opera addons) in my browsers. So, as a regular user of the font in question precisely because of its (in my view,) readability and aesthetics, I respectfully disagree with some of the opinions you make about the font, regardless of how learned your opinion appears to be. :-)
- ChrisClark 14y agoThat's a nice description, wiggling its serifs around. While reading it I couldn't help but feel like something was about to move, like some sort of tension, everything was about to tip over. :) I think that could be a nice effect if you were writing something suspenseful, at least for me, depends on how everyone else sees it too. Edit: And I see another reply from someone who loves it. So maybe it's just you and me that see it moving. Maybe we should get that checked out. :)
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- richoffrails 14y agoSTOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!
- michaelbuddy 14y agoSome real wisdom in this article. Not really.
- vxNsr 14y agoWell said. I'd also like to add that often developing for the 99% will end up benefiting the 90% also in ways that weren't immediately apparent when you were only going for that 90%.
- andrelaszlo 14y agoWorking link: https://gist.github.com/tyre/5561992 https://gist.github.com/tyre/5561992
- drivingmenuts 14y agoIs it just me or does it seem like half this article is missing? Maybe I'm just having a stupid day.
- hasenj 14y agoI don't quite get his message, it contains things which I see as contradictions. He uses "Square" as an example of doing it right. I have no idea what square is, but quoting the article: > Square processes payments. They don't handle group payments, they won't auto pay your bills, and they have no presence online to compete with PayPal. A payment service that doesn't handle all the use cases of payment? Isn't this exactly what he's saying you shouldn't do? Yet he quotes it as an example of doing things right? I don't get it.
- eclipxe 14y agoAgree. This is a poor article
- platz 14y agoPoor is a bit strong, but yes the message was mixed.
- jimminy 14y agoSquare nails their use case of "allowing people to pay in person with a credit card." That's Square's problem. They aren't focused on being the generic omnipresent payment processor, just making physical transactions possible without cash or checks. Edit: I do agree that the author really sould have made the problem statement more clear.
- hasenj 14y agoWell, that's still pretty vague. It seems like what you did there is just reformulate the problem statement to make it look like a stand-alone problem instead of as a use case (or subset) of a large problem.
- Volpe 14y agoHandling credit card payments in person is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT problem to being an online payment processor. Other than paypal, no one offers BOTH services... Paypal seems to have done it, purely as a response to square. Banks I guess do it, but they don't do any of it well. So which problem are you refering to that groups In person payment with online payment? Because it feels much harder to frame them together than apart...
- bwang29 14y agoThings initially developed for a particular small group of people usually have the potential to affect non-targeted users. The dilemma here seems to be whether you want such group of people to give you financial incentives for building something.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bcoates 14y agoHe TLDRed when he should have BLUFed: "As a user, I complain about things that don't exist (sorry), but I almost never leave a service that is solving one of my needs – no matter how small – well." In other words, customers don't want features, they have problems, and a product that wholly solves more than zero problems gets sales.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoAgree - came to post that last paragraph too. Succinct and clear - unlike the rest if the article which I guess he had to write before understanding enough to write the last para
- kaze 14y agoI agree with the central message in this article. Think of the pleasure and certainty associated with the small, well written UNIX tools. Apply that to products.
- chas 13y agoCorollary: think of the pain of looking up all of the flags get some UNIX tools to do what you want. Apply that to products too.
- dbenhur 13y agoThe article in a twitter size synopsis: 0.90 ** 4 => 0.6561