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Good software knows when to stop

ogirardot.writizzy.com

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Re: Good software knows when to stop

#41

Post by jayd16 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #12

> Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game). for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you thin…

I think a large part of that is that Classic Wow is possibly not in the business interests of the bean counters. If it's classic, you can't sell new expansions, new MTX etc. I don't know how honest Ion was about the actual reasons Classic didn't happen sooner.

Still, by volume, there are thousands of examples of bad ideas and feature requests on the wow forum too.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#42

Post by dgxyz »

deafpolygon wrote: post #26
muppetman wrote: post #21

This is why I love Sublime Text. It's so fast, it works so well. It isn't trying to be AI, it isn't trying to evolve until it can read email or issue SSL certs via ACME. It's focused on one thing and it does it extremely, extremely well.

this is why i am still on vim

Yeah that. Same here.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#43

Post by muppetman »

deafpolygon wrote: post #26
muppetman wrote: post #21

This is why I love Sublime Text. It's so fast, it works so well. It isn't trying to be AI, it isn't trying to evolve until it can read email or issue SSL certs via ACME. It's focused on one thing and it does it extremely, extremely well.

this is why i am still on vim

Ha yes, learning vim was one of the best things I ever did. I can SSH onto a Juniper router and fix up config using vi. I still try to instill in juniors these days "Learn vim!" but everyone just wants to use nano (which I understand but nano isn't preinstalled on many network devices)

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#44

Post by HoldOnAMinute »

deafpolygon wrote: post #26
muppetman wrote: post #21

This is why I love Sublime Text. It's so fast, it works so well. It isn't trying to be AI, it isn't trying to evolve until it can read email or issue SSL certs via ACME. It's focused on one thing and it does it extremely, extremely well.

this is why i am still on vim

I am still on "vi"

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#45

Post by jayd16 »

ssaboum wrote: post #3
theorchid wrote: post #2

Oracle Database has now been renamed Oracle AI Database. But I think that in time, they will rename it back to Oracle Database. The hype will pass, but the AI will remain, and the name will no longer need to include the AI prefix. AI will just become the norm.

not exactly what we're asking of database, don't you think ?

Ironically, yeah kinda. In so far as fuzzy text search goes, vectorization works great.

The generative part of the AI hype is getting in the way.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#46

Post by john_strinlai »

treetalker wrote: post #20
john_strinlai wrote: post #12

> Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game). for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you thin…

I'm not a WoW player, so perhaps speaking out of turn — but doesn't that example show that users know what extra features they don't want, not extra features they do?

that distinction sort of misses the point i was trying to make.

sometimes users want something. that something might be a feature request, or it might be a feature removal. it doesnt really matter for the sake of my point(s):

a) ignoring your users requests can sometimes be a bad choice.

b) you might not necessarily understand every underlying problem that every user has. worse, you might think you understand the problem when you dont.

expanding on b: blizzard thought they understood their player base and the underlying problems of retail WoW. on multiple occasions, ion explicitly said stuff like "you think you want this, but you dont". they kept making changes to retail WoW to try and stop the hemorrhaging of players.

eventually they said "fuck it, we dont know why you want this, but here" (not a verbatim quote). it ended up being very profitable.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#47

Post by wenbin »

We should normalize "finished" software products that stop feature creep and focus strictly on bug fixes and security updates.

It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand.

Evernote and Dropbox were perfect in 2012. Adding more features just to chase new user growth often comes at the expense of confusing the existing user base. Not good

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#49

Post by [deleted] »

jayd16 wrote: post #41
john_strinlai wrote: post #12

> Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game). for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you thin…

I think a large part of that is that Classic Wow is possibly not in the business interests of the bean counters. If it's classic, you can't sell new expansions, new MTX etc. I don't know how honest Ion was about the actual reasons Classic didn't happen sooner. Still, by volume, there are thousands of examples of bad ideas and feature requests on the wow forum too.

[deleted]

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#50

Post by adampunk »

thewebguyd wrote: post #23
john_strinlai wrote: post #12

> Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game). for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you thin…

To be fair on the Blizzard example, I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by, doing as your quote said, understanding the underlying problem. It wasn't only a "we want WoW classic bug for bug," it was "the modern game has become so unrecognizable that it's basically WoW 2.0, you ruined it with the modern systems" Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back…

They knew exactly what they wanted and they knew exactly how to ask for it. That’s the point.

engineers love announcing that nobody but engineers knows what’s important in software; that’s complete and total bollocks. wow classic is a perfect example because it is exactly the sort of thing that the business unit and the engineers and the designers would not want to do. We don’t need to assume that because we have hundreds of Internet posts indicating exactly that. Not only did they not want to do it, but they argued that users didn’t know what they wanted for the sheer fact that making it was not something that was desired by either the business unit or the engineers.

Also, the point is not that classic saves them from making new content. It’s probably the case that the more content they make the more of a value proposition classic appears to be. Is there some new race in the new expansion that’s stupid? OK hop on over to classic.

Kill the part of your brain that makes you assume users are stupid.

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