Post #2597319

2025-11-05 18:57 UTC

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.

Replies (3)

@mhoye@mastodon.social 2025-11-05 19:01

Like, Windows documentation once upon a time was world-class, it was on-device, available at any moment and excellent. Today "Help" is a hyperlink to trash. On a modern Mac, you can ask a question and get a few 'maybe' bullet points for your trouble. On System7 - the _stone_ age - the _OS would walk you through each step_ of solving your problem. It would say, click this thing and then draw a little circle around the thing. Apple's reputation comes from this period, when nobody was ever afraid.

Open ##2597320
@dmarti@federate.social 2025-11-05 19:03

@mhoye@mastodon.social There has also been a shift in incentives. With the boxed or pay per upgrade model, the incentive is to get users to develop their skills so they want to buy (or ask their employer to buy) the next version With rolling upgrades and freemium models, the incentive is to make users bad at the software so they click more of the deceptive upsells Users who learn and do the productivity tips have lower LTV... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/what-i-do-to-clean-up-a-clean-install-of-windows-11-23h2-and-edge/?utm_social-type=owned

Open ##2597374
@billseitz@toolsforthought.social 2025-11-05 22:48

@mhoye@mastodon.social I suspect that as the number of computer users 100x, the number of manual readers stayed flat.

Open ##2597375