Humane software and the role of developer advocacy | Hacker News Reader

Humane software and the role of developer advocacy

makeartwithpython.com

15 pointsburningion5 comments

"The experience of using software used to be actively hostile.

But over the past decade, the software industry has moved closer to thinking about the end user’s experience when using software as a key part of a software’s functionality."

I'm observing the opposite in all areas from web applications to Desktop software.

Man I agree tho not just on desktop and web. Cut and Paste on Android is my goto example of just such an absurd experience. One day the paste button disappears and a huge ass clipboard shows up no one asked for. I have to close the damn clipboard as extra step everytime. If I hit back space to reduce what I am copying the whole string gets deleted. What sort of development process approves all these useless changes just boggles the mind.

Hey at least your keyboard works /s

On my Google Android phone, the keyboard randomly stops working.

Or this other thing. Plug/unplug or or go below the threshold of the battery saver. While you have the keyboard active. It will reset the keyboard as the visual styling changes. This deletes the current input for me.

I have the impression that it's at least true if we change it to "about controlling the end user's experience". It can't be denied that the experiences are more crafted, and the users are more guided to do things now than before.

But there's also the shift where the developer makes the user be drawn towards fulfilling the developer's needs instead of their own. Dark patterns are all about the user experience, as are ads, loot boxes and microtransactions.

I'm also seeing a more benign shift from letting the user focus on the activity towards focusing on the brand. Multi-messengers place contacts front and center, and BlackBerry used to be this way I'm told. Maemo gave each user their own window. Today, each window belongs to a differently branded messenger, each with all the contacts. Similarly, desktop applications often don't integrate into the system's visual language, placing their brand recognition over user's sense of familiarity.

Finally, the growing prevalence of permissive licenses, where nothing is owed to the user, compared to copyleft with GPL as the prime example is just an example of the user's experience being simply considered less important than before.

This is something that motivates my programming as well. Programming multiplies. Any tiny joy or tiny nuisiance your program creates multiplies with the number of users and the time they use it.

Yet I see many developers treating it like a game, even in fields where it impacts peoples lives directly (by having some makeshift machine learning thing decise over their lives).

I totally understand that you wouldn't go the extra mile for some ad-hoc script you wrote for yourself and that you put on github just in case someone else has the same issue, but anything beyond that needs more planing and clearer communication. E.g. writing a bad backup tool and selling it as the best thing since sliced bread is unethical in my eyes.

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