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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

This is why specifications are important, and why design is important.

The reality is that we have certain conventions that are immediately understandable, and that too much visual complexity results in confusion rather than clarity.

If the sky is hazy white when I expect it to be blue, I'm confused as to whether it's the sky or if the map is still loading. It's adding cognitive complexity for no reason. Stars similarly serve no functional purpose at night.

What you built sounds great for an actual planetary view like Google Earth. And it sounds fun to build. But it's an anti-feature for a navigation view. When you're navigating, simplicity and clarity are paramount. Not realism.

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> This is why specifications are important, and why design is important.

Also the phrase "know your audience". No sense in casting pearls before the swine.

Though sometimes the higher ups might not be the same as (or understand) the actual audience.

In this case the higher ups may have been confused due to, say, looking at the app while indoors (and from the perspective of "let's judge this developer's work"), while the actual users would see it in a vehicle alongside the real sky (and from the perspective of "let's see how easy this is to match up with reality").

Ah, I see the confusion. You think the users are the dev's audience! /s

I suppose this is the lesson OP learned!

I wish more people knew it. So many times frustration of the system is directed at devs. They couldn't figure out X? Why is Z feature so shit? Etc.

That's a management thumbprint on the deliverable.

This is a valid hypothesis, and had this software been something you could update in the background, a valid experiment to run and see whether users like it.

But when it's embedded software on physical devices where the business will have to incur cost in order to ship and hit those users, I can absolutely see why management would do the same thing as what all of the competitors are doing.

Also, any fanciness you add in your product is something you need to then maintain. Even after the developer that built it leaves the company.

It takes thousands of years for the stars to have changed positions in a noticeable way, and my best guess is that the customers will not use their car GPS for so long that this will bother them.

Very funny, but in case you're serious, it's not the stars changing...

...it's the software frameworks. A new screen size. A different color depth. A bug when the graphics library is upgraded for antialiasing. Etc.

That's not going to be an issue with devices already sold. And if developers of future devices can't handle it they should probably be fired from their job.

It's not a question of whether future developers can "handle" it. It's a question of whether the additional time required to maintain it is worth the cost. Maintenance isn't free. It takes time, and every little bit adds up.

Also, devices already sold often get updates, so it's not even just about future devices.

Oh come now. You are being no fun.

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