Post #2597318

2025-11-05 18:37 UTC

And... not to put too fine a point on this, but I have been computering for a very, very long time. I have Seen Some Shit And I have Fixed More Than My Share Of That Shit. I am Quite A Bit Better Than OK at solving the problems that live near computers. And it's been a long, long time since I've sat down in front of any computer of any kind and felt that helpless. Like I didn't even know where to start. Decades. And making people feel helpless is the cardinal sin of UX design.

Replies (2)

@mhoye@mastodon.social 2025-11-05 18:57

Anyway, I think there's been a generational shift in developer's perceptions of their obligations to that social contract and that it's made this industry substantially worse. The belief that "everyone knows" how to use the computers that are everywhere now has meant that nobody believes they need to, so nobody bothers, keeping training materials and docs up to date. So developers think the costs of change are zero, because it's only the operators that bear those costs fully and invisibly.

Open ##2597319
@richpuchalsky@mastodon.social 2025-11-05 18:41

@mhoye@mastodon.social This is me in front of any neoliberal means testing form: "How do they expect anyone to fill this in? I have a degree in astrophysics and decades of work in data analysis and I can't fill this in." (Then I realized that most people could fill it in because they didn't take it seriously and just wrote in anything, which is what I now do.)

Open ##2597338