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How to Design Software Good

haiku-os.org

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Re: How to Design Software Good

#51

Post by pooppaint »

waddlesplash wrote: post #33
oralty wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Haiku is an OS that basically no one uses for any purpose. > By your logic, since macOS has ~1/10 the install base of Windows, Does not follow. MacOS use relative to Windows is not at all a fair comparison. Firstly "everybody" uses Windows, so 1/10 of huge number is still a huge number. Second, except for gaming and some particular areas like EDA, MacOS has a general software library with a broad-base of technical…

> MacOS has a general software library with a broad-base of technical and non-technical users throughout the world. Haiku OS cannot claim to have anything like that. That was the second half of my comment. Please re-read the first half. My point in that part, though, was that macOS has ~1/10 the users of Windows, but Windows' UI/UX was/is widely regarded as absolutely atrocious, and macOS' as being pretty good to gre…

I reread and it didn’t make any difference. MacOS may have 1/10 the Windows base but that is not having “very low userbase”, while I think it is quite reasonable to say that about Haiku. Reread what I said, the MacOS base is large and it is a general base of highly technical and non-technical users alike that are not all hobbyists. This does not describe Haiku in the slightest.

There is a valid point to be made about verifying usability and the need for a large and diverse userbase.

How much you want to bet that the Haiku userbase is overwhelmingly male? And this is not to make some concerned sexism argument but to illustrate that the community is more representative of the IT crowd rather than the general population.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#52

Post by waddlesplash »

pooppaint wrote: post #51
waddlesplash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MacOS has a general software library with a broad-base of technical and non-technical users throughout the world. Haiku OS cannot claim to have anything like that. That was the second half of my comment. Please re-read the first half. My point in that part, though, was that macOS has ~1/10 the users of Windows, but Windows' UI/UX was/is widely regarded as absolutely atrocious, and macOS' as being pretty good to gre…

I reread and it didn’t make any difference. MacOS may have 1/10 the Windows base but that is not having “very low userbase”, while I think it is quite reasonable to say that about Haiku. Reread what I said, the MacOS base is large and it is a general base of highly technical and non-technical users alike that are not all hobbyists. This does not describe Haiku in the slightest. There is a valid point to be made about…

> There is a valid point to be made about verifying usability and the need for a large and diverse userbase.

OK, that is indeed a valid point, but not one I got from the first comments.

I think Haiku has a diverse enough following that we are past most of these concerns, and a lot of our major paradigms which differ from other OSes were validated in the BeOS days. There are some areas where we still have work to do -- e.g. interfaces for the blind -- but overall we are doing quite well.

> How much you want to bet that the Haiku userbase is overwhelmingly male? And this is not to make some concerned sexism argument but to illustrate that the community is more representative of the IT crowd rather than the general population.

Oh, I know it's true of Haiku, but I practically can guarantee the same is true of Linux/BSD/etc. So then, can only "mainstream" operating systems have anything to say here?

Re: How to Design Software Good

#54

Post by anonytrary »

waddlesplash wrote: post #23
GuiA wrote: post #11

...You can also make Tracker show a window for a particular folder in order to show the user where a particular file has been stored and give him access to it directly.... ...By removing unneeded items from the file navigation window, you are reducing the number of choices the user must pick from and also preventing him from opening the wrong kinds of files... ...Good feedback just means making sure that the user kno…

This document was mostly written almost a decade ago, and by someone who I think went to a prestigious institution. So the "rules of style" back then aren't what they are today. You're right, we should update it, though.

> You're right, we should update it, though.

No, you really shouldn't, it's not a real problem. The only people who keep tallies of gender pronouns in documents are internet trolls; don't indulge the trolls. Anyway, switching up pronouns every other time breaks continuity and makes documents harder and painful to read.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#56

Post by lemming »

nayuki wrote: post #48

I saw a quick flash of unstyled content (in Firefox) where all the text was jammed into one paragraph with no breaks. And then the page rendered normally. So I glanced at the source code, and it surprised me to see that it was not a typical HTML document, but instead an XML document with a stylesheet. It is very rare to see a non-HTML page on the web, whether it is the XHTML serialization of HTML, or fully custom XML…

I agree this is very unusual. It's also somewhat annoying, for example I can't just send this to my Kindle to read it, and I can imagine other tools failing on this as well.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#57

Post by mafro »

nayuki wrote: post #48

I saw a quick flash of unstyled content (in Firefox) where all the text was jammed into one paragraph with no breaks. And then the page rendered normally. So I glanced at the source code, and it surprised me to see that it was not a typical HTML document, but instead an XML document with a stylesheet. It is very rare to see a non-HTML page on the web, whether it is the XHTML serialization of HTML, or fully custom XML…

Once upon a time, the whole internet was going to be built this way!

Re: How to Design Software Good

#58

Post by GuiA »

anonytrary wrote: post #54
waddlesplash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This document was mostly written almost a decade ago, and by someone who I think went to a prestigious institution. So the "rules of style" back then aren't what they are today. You're right, we should update it, though.

> You're right, we should update it, though. No, you really shouldn't, it's not a real problem. The only people who keep tallies of gender pronouns in documents are internet trolls; don't indulge the trolls. Anyway, switching up pronouns every other time breaks continuity and makes documents harder and painful to read.

No need to keep a tally; in 2018, any document that exclusively uses masculine pronouns for genderless subjects reads as outdated.

When writing on technical topics, the chief concern is to be clear, accurate, and straightforward. Anything that might distract your reader is undesirable. By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership (if you’re writing the documentation for a Do It Yourself Vasectomy Kit, perhaps you get a pass).

Switching up pronouns every other time is a strategy, but it is indeed one that can hurt the readability of a document. This article covers various strategies nicely:

https://www.herodios.com/pronouns.html

(Note that this document was written over 20 years ago, so the “rules of style” when this document was written were roughly the same as they are now)

Re: How to Design Software Good

#59

Post by telaport »

nayuki wrote: post #48

I saw a quick flash of unstyled content (in Firefox) where all the text was jammed into one paragraph with no breaks. And then the page rendered normally. So I glanced at the source code, and it surprised me to see that it was not a typical HTML document, but instead an XML document with a stylesheet. It is very rare to see a non-HTML page on the web, whether it is the XHTML serialization of HTML, or fully custom XML…

ya and here I am trying to save this to instapaper and wondering wtf is wrong with this guy.

Re: How to Design Software Good

#60

Post by anonytrary »

GuiA wrote: post #58
anonytrary wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're right, we should update it, though. No, you really shouldn't, it's not a real problem. The only people who keep tallies of gender pronouns in documents are internet trolls; don't indulge the trolls. Anyway, switching up pronouns every other time breaks continuity and makes documents harder and painful to read.

No need to keep a tally; in 2018, any document that exclusively uses masculine pronouns for genderless subjects reads as outdated. When writing on technical topics, the chief concern is to be clear, accurate, and straightforward. Anything that might distract your reader is undesirable. By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership (if you’re writing the docume…

> By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership (if you’re writing the documentation for a Do It Yourself Vasectomy Kit, perhaps you get a pass).

Do you have any research/data to back this up? I'm a male and I am not distracted when people use "she" (or "he" for that matter). I have never heard anyone in person complain about not being able to focus on an article because they used "he" instead of "she".

> Anything that might distract your reader is undesirable.

Concision is of utmost importance in any language. Many of the examples in your link sacrifice readability and concision for the purpose of avoiding pronouns. What really distracts me is when people use "(s)he", "s/he", "he or she" (oh no -- which one should be first?), or periodically switch between "he" and "she" absolutely everywhere -- all for the purpose of filling a contrived equality quota.

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