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Normalization of Deviance (2015)
91–100 of 228 posts
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Been told that before. When I spoke up, I was told that I was new and shouldn't talk about things I know nothing about.
There's often a wise tradeoff between criticizing systems you've just seen after being at the company 5 minutes and actually spending some time at the company to learn the historical context of why the thing you think is insane/shit is insane/shit before telling everyone who built it how insane/shit it is. People generally don't wake up in the morning and go into work motivated to make insane/shit things - context, t…
I get what you're saying, but this is exactly how deviances are normalized. When you've been with the company for a long time and are familiar with the history, it's easy to rationalize why things are the way they are and that they can't be improved. You can explain something that's crazy with context and historical pressure.
Dan's point is that sometimes the new person's judgement is correct, and there actually is a real problem that's invisible to people who have been with the project a long time. But the new person's judgment is basically always ignored, and that's a mistake - it ought to be weighted heavily because they legitimately have a perspective that insiders no longer have.
If instead you spend six months trying to understand the context:
"new person joins
new person: WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF
old hands: yeah we know we're concerned about it
new person: WTF WTF wTF wtf wtf w...
new person gets used to it
new person #2 joins
new person #2: WTF WTF WTF WTF
new person: yeah we know. we're concerned about it."
I'm sympathetic because my first company was a mid-stage startup with huge structural problems in the engineering org structure and processes. When I joined I had frequent "WTF" moments and had a similar experience where experienced people would explain to me why things are the way they are. So I trusted them, and put my head down, but eventually got frustrated and left. A few months later the company went bankrupt because they couldn't build product fast enough, investors lost patience, and they couldn't raise another round.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#93This guy needs to organize & format his writing better, since he does have really interesting things to say.
that site is better than most, imho.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dan Luu talks a bit about this here: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1115707741102727168
One of the more hilarious takes I've seen. "There are no papers for this, and I choose to disregard the countless number of people who say it is much easier for them to read if the line lengths are constrained as they are in a book or scroll or every other form of human writing ever put on this earth, so I will not make my site easier to read. F you."
I really don't think that's what he's saying. You are assuming a great deal of malice, rather than positive intent. What he's saying is that there isn't hard evidence that shorter lines are more readable, so he made the style choice of longer lines. You're claiming that most people prefer shorter line widths, but again present no evidence that most people actually have that preference, other than vague references to "countless people". I actually think you're probably right, and if you had data Dan might update his stylesheet. But in the absence of evidence, you're just presenting your opinion as fact, and assuming malice.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#95These stories ring so, so true. Once worked at a company whose infrastructure issues were so deep and festering that after fighting a fire, my boss told me, "If you go to the press about this, the client will sue us and everyone who works here will lose their jobs."
That's what I never understood about this story; did you guys have any suspicion it would dump radiation into the patient all at once, or was this like a concurrency bug
Huh? Are you assuming that the parent comment is about someone programming a medical device?
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#96Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the more hilarious takes I've seen. "There are no papers for this, and I choose to disregard the countless number of people who say it is much easier for them to read if the line lengths are constrained as they are in a book or scroll or every other form of human writing ever put on this earth, so I will not make my site easier to read. F you."
I really don't think that's what he's saying. You are assuming a great deal of malice, rather than positive intent. What he's saying is that there isn't hard evidence that shorter lines are more readable, so he made the style choice of longer lines. You're claiming that most people prefer shorter line widths, but again present no evidence that most people actually have that preference, other than vague references to…
Yeah, that's probably true. He also at least allows people to set their own reading width by adjusting browser.
My frustration stems from the fact that I find the argument "there are no papers with sufficient evidence" to be pedantic bullshit. Like yeah, sure, you aren't even wrong, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I've never seen anyone claim to like 180 char lines, whereas I've seen hordes of people who say it is very difficult for them to read that line length, and prefer something book-sized (lengthed?).
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the more hilarious takes I've seen. "There are no papers for this, and I choose to disregard the countless number of people who say it is much easier for them to read if the line lengths are constrained as they are in a book or scroll or every other form of human writing ever put on this earth, so I will not make my site easier to read. F you."
I really don't think that's what he's saying. You are assuming a great deal of malice, rather than positive intent. What he's saying is that there isn't hard evidence that shorter lines are more readable, so he made the style choice of longer lines. You're claiming that most people prefer shorter line widths, but again present no evidence that most people actually have that preference, other than vague references to…
This is why it's nice to get people's preferences vs thoughts about preferences. Preferences aggregate, thoughts about preferences do not. If one designer says "Readers like narrow columns more, everyone knows that." and another says "I like reading narrow columns.", I'd give the person speaking about readers in general more weight (even with them going the same direction). But, if 100 designers spoke for all readers and 100 designers spoke for themselves, I'm giving more weight to the second group. Hearing 100 preferences is more valuable than hearing one idea, 100 times.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't have a reader view in your browser, just paste this into your global CSS: p { line-height: 1.7; max-width: 60em; font-size: 1.2em; margin-left: 5em; } It pretty much fixes the default readability which is essentially zero on this site otherwise.
Dan Luu talks a bit about this here: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1115707741102727168
yes, if you ignore a millennium's worth of publishing wisdom and think the world of text began anew in 1995, then maybe you can claim that "the science is not settled."
He has every right to make his choice. As do we, in deciding whether to read it.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#100[flagged]