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Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

gabrielpickard.com

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Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#81

Post by cosmojg »

vsareto wrote: post #62
rolleiflex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a designer [0] and an engineer — you'll take my shell from my cold, dead hands. There are two issues here: a) Designers trying to simplify everything beyond usefulness is a good instinct gone haywire. Simplification helps, but without an understanding of accidental complexity versus essential complexity, one is bound to end up painted into a corner with no flexibility left in the app. Few designers understand thi…

>An engineer's operating environment, OS, IDE, shell, terminal, is a reflection of the inside of his or her mind writ large. Shout out to the people that don't really bother because they're good enough to adapt to any setup. :)

Shout out to the people that use the best tools for the job because they're good enough to optimize their setup. :)

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#82

Post by addicted44 »

kurnikas wrote: post #4

> We've simply gotten used to them: Dealing with the idiosyncracies of bash, vi, or the JavaScript type system This stuck out to me, there seems to be a trend in UX/UI where any move away from the "simplest path" is seen as a huge negative. Could it be the case that we use these tools (especially UI patterns like vi) because after the learning curve the give a huge amount of value? It seems like we are assuming that…

Listing vi in there shows that the OP, even if they may have good points in general, is limiting what good UX is to certain specific attributes, whereas developers want to optimize for additional attributes.

And this isn't just me saying that because I like vim. It's because of the objective fact that nearly every developer tool that is created will include a vim mode. And if included as an extension it will often be one of the most popular extensions. What that objectively indicates is that there is a large contingent of developers who genuinely find the vim modal editing UX excellent, to the point they seek it in other tools as well (including browsers, mail clients, RSS readers, etc).

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#83

Post by alxlaz »

meddlepal wrote: post #75
alxlaz wrote: post #19

Far from me to defend every UI of every development tool out there but I think statements like these, and their illustration, could benefit from some explanation for those of us who are not designers: > We coders still put up with horrid UX/UI when programming. which is illustrated with a screenshot from Visual Studio... .NET 2002, I think, judging by the application icon? Setting aside the relevance of a 20-year old…

I think of most UX designers as children: they want everything to conform to the latest trends and are always in search of the new shiny thing to play with.

Having worked with designers since back when Visual Studio .NET 2002 was pretty fresh, I think this is a very over-simplified assessment and I don't think it's fair.

There are definitely cargo cult designers, just like there are cargo cult programmers out there. But I don't think that's true of most designers, just like I don't think it's true of most programmers.

Chasing the latest trend isn't always a decision you make by yourself, and isn't always a decision you can oppose on your own terms.

Virtually every designer who was in the industry ten years ago or so can come up with a good design that's 100% against the latest trends -- contrasting, non-flat, compact, whatever.

But it'll get shot down within minutes in any product design meeting. Sometimes by people who have zero design experience, so they can't judge a design except by how well it conforms to the latest trends. Sometimes by people who lack the "political" capital to argue for an original design with their bosses, too. There are a lot of factors here, and most of the time the people who do the designs have the least amount of influence.

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#84

Post by meagain3 »

meagain3 wrote: post #59
azhenley wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between being an engineer and holding a license (e.g., PE) from some organization.

So just anybody can call themselves engineer?, don't you realize this is a disservice to the actual engineers?

Addendum: can someone tell me what's wrong with using software developer as a description of what we do?, why do we need to borrow other professions titles?, it's because we want more respect?

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#85

Post by thaumasiotes »

ailideex wrote: post #9
kurnikas wrote: post #4

> We've simply gotten used to them: Dealing with the idiosyncracies of bash, vi, or the JavaScript type system This stuck out to me, there seems to be a trend in UX/UI where any move away from the "simplest path" is seen as a huge negative. Could it be the case that we use these tools (especially UI patterns like vi) because after the learning curve the give a huge amount of value? It seems like we are assuming that…

Maybe a bit unrelated, I got used to Windows 2000, then window XP, then Gnome 2, then Gnome 3 came. So I stuck with Gnome 2, then moved to XFCE, and now with RHEL 8 I had to use Gnome 3 because there were no other options. Gnome 3 is an absolute horror show. I don't know who made it, for who, and what the theory behind it is but I don't see how it would be easier to use for someone non technical, my parents both unde…

> then moved to XFCE, and now with RHEL 8 I had to use Gnome 3 because there were no other options.

Wait, what happened to XFCE? I use it right now.

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#86

Post by werg »

lallysingh wrote: post #42
_pmf_ wrote: post #24

You think it is harder because you are not familiar with the depth of non-developer workflows. Developer hubris.

Indeed! Compare to CAD or Photoshop for deep, complex workflows.

I was wondering about this -- but how would CAD or Photoshop be more than a Context Free language? In particular, consider Feature Structure Grammars which are equivalent to CFGs and can really capture a lot of inter-context agreement without needing to be Context-Sensitive.

I certainly may be wrong though, all sorts of stuff ends up being Turing-Complete.

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#87

Post by chrisseaton »

ghaff wrote: post #78
chrisseaton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your engineering state association decides. Why should they get to do that? What do they know that I don’t? I have a Master of Engineering degree but I’m not chartered - I’m still going to call myself an engineer no matter what anyone else thinks about it. > You don't call yourself admiral right? Because I’m not commanding a fleet. If I ever came to command a fleet I’d start calling myself admiral and as long as I’…

It's not about titles. It's about what you're allowed to do/practice. I can certainly call myself doctor without an MD or other medical degree for which the title is customarily used. I might even do so if I had a PhD. I suppose I could do so in any case although people would think it strange if I didn't actually have a degree the same way they'd think it quite odd if I insisted on being called Your Highness. However…

> please do not call yourself an engineer

> just anybody can call themselves engineer?

> It's not about titles.

It was about titles!

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#89

Post by werg »

Glench wrote: post #36

To make some of the ideas in this article a little more concrete, here are some research demos I’ve made: * Legible Mathematics, an essay about the UI design of understandable arithmetic: http://glench.com/LegibleMathematics/ * FuzzySet: interactive documentation of a JS library, which has helped fix real bugs: http://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/ * Flowsheets V2: a prototype programming environment where you see…

This looks fantastic! What a treasure trove.

Re: Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

#90

Post by dehrmann »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
kurnikas wrote: post #4

> We've simply gotten used to them: Dealing with the idiosyncracies of bash, vi, or the JavaScript type system This stuck out to me, there seems to be a trend in UX/UI where any move away from the "simplest path" is seen as a huge negative. Could it be the case that we use these tools (especially UI patterns like vi) because after the learning curve the give a huge amount of value? It seems like we are assuming that…

For things like vi, I'm developing the "left handed mouse" analogy: Many mice are ambidextrous (e.g. the Apple puck). Most are weakly right-handed with a slightly assymetrical shape. Some are very strongly right-handed (e.g. vertical mice) and can't be used sensibly in the left hand. So left-handed mice also exist. Some people are naturally left-handed. We (as a civilisation) used to treat this as aberrant but have n…

> aberrant

Pretty sinister, if you ask me.

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