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Being Slow to Criticise

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Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#51

Post by dhbradshaw »

It's easy to criticize and hard to understand.

Similarly, it's hard to see the cost of criticizing and it can be hard to judge the benefit of understanding.

Because of this, we'll see patterns of ignorant criticism playing out again and again. Some of the people in the pattern will never know any better. Others know better but don't care. Others know better but can't pay the price to understand because it's too high.

So when you find someone who actually defaults to understanding rather than criticizing you've found someone of rare value.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#52

Post by hughrr »

buttocks wrote: post #27

I recently had a small rant on Twitter about a certain web technology; I used the word "crap." One of the main authors of the tech spotted my post and replied saying my rant was offensive and that they had worked hard and done the best they could. It had been a long time since I felt that much shame in myself. It could have been me pouring myself into something and then the other guy calls it crap.

I triggered Poettering once doing that. I have absolutely no guilt

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#53

Post by skybrian »

afterburner wrote: post #37
skybrian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you described how you saw some users struggle, that would be useful observation. Saying "it sucks" is a judgement call that adds no useful information. There are always people who dislike things, so one more stranger saying they dislike it doesn't add anything.

Sometimes people come to the correct conclusion without knowing how. And sometimes people come to the wrong conclusion with a painfully detailed process that really just led them astray. So maybe gut-level reactions shouldn't always be dismissed, and detailed reactions shouldn't always be held above gut level ones.

Okay, but why trust a stranger's gut reaction over your own?

When you post your gut reaction, you are the stranger on the Internet. It doesn't matter who you are in real life.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#54

Post by bigwig8702 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #50
bigwig8702 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's two important aspects of this article: 1) Assume the people who wrote the code aren't stupid. 2) Be nice to developers Point #1 is valid, because yes a lot of times intention is difficult to suss out and the guy who wrote it might have known something you didn't, or maybe the circumstances were different when it was written. Point #2 is just wrong, it goes against the entire principle of Egoless Progr…

#2 does not contradict egoless programming. If you think it does, well, I'll take a page from your book: You're an idiot who has no clue what egoless programming is. But, more seriously, "egoless programming" requires effort on the part of both the criticizer and criticized. The criticizer cannot act rudely and then exclaim, "You shouldn't be offended, it's just that you're a crap programmer and write sucky code!" Th…

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Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#55

Post by [deleted] »

bigwig8702 wrote: post #54
Jtsummers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 does not contradict egoless programming. If you think it does, well, I'll take a page from your book: You're an idiot who has no clue what egoless programming is. But, more seriously, "egoless programming" requires effort on the part of both the criticizer and criticized. The criticizer cannot act rudely and then exclaim, "You shouldn't be offended, it's just that you're a crap programmer and write sucky code!" Th…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#56

Post by Jtsummers »

bigwig8702 wrote: post #54
Jtsummers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 does not contradict egoless programming. If you think it does, well, I'll take a page from your book: You're an idiot who has no clue what egoless programming is. But, more seriously, "egoless programming" requires effort on the part of both the criticizer and criticized. The criticizer cannot act rudely and then exclaim, "You shouldn't be offended, it's just that you're a crap programmer and write sucky code!" Th…

[flagged]

> Oh look, a big angry reaction to a simple assertion that you should try to look at code and criticisms about code objectively.

Oh look, an emotional (childishly sarcastic, in this case) reaction demonstrating that offense is, well, an emotional, not logical, reaction. Which was my point. Thank you for playing along.

In case you still don't get it, there's a distinction between honest-but-rude and honest-but-nice. My original comment was deliberately constructed to be rude, not nice, as an illustration of that. Your response is very helpful because that's the response people have when you provide unfriendly, non-collegial criticism. Even from people (like you, I'd presume, since you advocated for it) who want to practice egoless programming.

Hell, you can even be nice and still get an offended reaction from people, and have to backtrack (if you want to avoid unnecessary drama) a bit and work back to the point. Because egoless programming isn't just a declared mode of working, it's a process that all participants work toward. The one who is speaking and criticizing should take a "nice" approach if they want to be well-received, even if it's less straightforward than they want to be.

TL;DR: Egoless programming isn't an excuse to be unfriendly or rude.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#57

Post by [deleted] »

quanticle wrote: post #29

There's a difference between being slow to criticize and completely withholding criticism. I agree that software is written by smart people, working under constraints. But so what? If it sucks, it sucks, and we should call it out as such! How will we ever improve anything if we can't highlight what's wrong with the current solution? My go-to example in this regard is the Microsoft Office ribbon. I remember, when the…

[deleted]

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#58

Post by bigwig8702 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #56
bigwig8702 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Oh look, a big angry reaction to a simple assertion that you should try to look at code and criticisms about code objectively. Oh look, an emotional (childishly sarcastic, in this case) reaction demonstrating that offense is, well, an emotional, not logical, reaction. Which was my point. Thank you for playing along. In case you still don't get it, there's a distinction between honest-but-rude and honest-but-nice. M…

No post body was provided.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#59

Post by louwrentius »

thekiptxt wrote: post #44
quanticle wrote: post #29

There's a difference between being slow to criticize and completely withholding criticism. I agree that software is written by smart people, working under constraints. But so what? If it sucks, it sucks, and we should call it out as such! How will we ever improve anything if we can't highlight what's wrong with the current solution? My go-to example in this regard is the Microsoft Office ribbon. I remember, when the…

Sure, but criticism comes in different flavors. “This software is difficult for me to use because of X” is a valid and fair take. “This software/development team sucks” is uninformed criticism if someone doesn’t know the full context. For all I know, the developer may very well be aware of my situation, but there’s some reason that X must exist. I worked for a very large financial services company, and when I told pe…

Sorry for not adding anything to the discussion but I really resonated with this comment, thanks!

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#60

Post by quanticle »

lstamour wrote: post #41
quanticle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon didn't replace rows and rows of small icons without labels. It replaced a hierarchical menu. Now, did the hierarchical menu have flaws? It did, insofar as it was rather forbidding to explore, and as a result, new users had trouble finding functionality by clicking around. That was the use case that the Ribbon sought to address. What the designers of the ribbon did not understand was that users have other w…

On macOS, you get both the ribbon and the hierarchical menu. Heaven help you if trying to navigate the "ribbon" on an iPhone though. That said, I actually do like the simplified ribbon on Office for the web - once you figure out that it too is different. I do kind of have a bone to pick about complaining about change for its own sake though. You could say the same -- all the earlier resources are useless - about the…

Why not complain that your Active Desktop is missing, the desktop sidebar from Vista was a poor imitation and gone in just one release, Netscape Suite doesn't load webpages due to SSL errors and you can't publish webpages from your web browser like you used to, and you have to double-click folders to open them instead of single-clicking them like back in the old days of Windows ME?

I can and I do!

Sometimes change is just change and you have to adapt to the times.

That is exactly the kind of fatalistic attitude Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, et. al. want you to have. "Oh there's nothing that can be done." "Change is inevitable." "I just need to go along and accept whatever scraps my corporate overlords deign to throw in my direction."

Corporations aren't natural phenomenona. They're not the sun, nor are they moon, nor are they the wind. They are composed of people, and those people can be persuaded to make different decisions if there is a sufficient outcry. Just look at Apple's proposal to enable client-side scanning for objectionable content. There was a huge outcry and Apple walked back its plans as a result.

In the case of the Ribbon, I think one of the factors leading to the success of Google Docs is the fact that it has the old-school hierarchical menu system that Office 2003 had, but which Microsoft refactored into the Ribbon with Office 2007. In a way, Google Docs was more familiar to Word users than Word itself, making it easy to switch.

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