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TheresaJayne posted:Talking about recruitment, what i find laughable is i went for a job that offered to be cutting edge TDD/Agile gently caress yeah, Scrummerfall
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Jun 9, 2014 13:18
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See also: the enterprise agile manifesto (this definitely was the exact philosophy of doing things at the ERP firm I once worked for). http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/
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Jun 9, 2014 13:48
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kitten smoothie posted:See also: the enterprise agile manifesto (this definitely was the exact philosophy of doing things at the ERP firm I once worked for). Jesus, that sounds familiar. I need to get out of this place.
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Jun 9, 2014 15:34
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kitten smoothie posted:See also: the enterprise agile manifesto (this definitely was the exact philosophy of doing things at the ERP firm I once worked for). I found this a while back. It really describes everything I do here. Thanks for reminding me why I'm definitely considering getting out of here once I get my match for retirement.
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Jun 9, 2014 16:37
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kitten smoothie posted:See also: the enterprise agile manifesto (this definitely was the exact philosophy of doing things at the ERP firm I once worked for). Heh, that sounds like some of the older guys here when they gripe about how there's a contract and you can just import the WSDL and whatnot. Thankfully, they mostly deal with an actually big company that actually does behave that way.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:34
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According to our sales people, a button containing a red X in the corner of a form (which, when hovered over displays the tool tip 'close form') is too intimidating to our target market of 'Adults Who Use The Internet to Shop for Things' and needs to be changed to the actual word 'Close'. I think this is appropriate for this thread.
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Jun 10, 2014 20:37
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Munkeymon posted:According to our sales people, a button containing a red X in the corner of a form (which, when hovered over displays the tool tip 'close form') is too intimidating to our target market of 'Adults Who Use The Internet to Shop for Things' and needs to be changed to the actual word 'Close'. I think this is appropriate for this thread. I think your sales people are probably right. Hover-text as documentation only helps relatively advanced people; you have to know to think about the element in the first place to hover there and learn. More explicit is better unless you are in a position with a high-usage site to teach them your patterns. The stories our photos team can tell about escape/click-X/click-outside/etc. behaviour for the FB photo zoom...
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Jun 10, 2014 20:51
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Also my phone autocorrected github to virgin. Working as intended.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:34
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Subjunctive posted:I think your sales people are probably right. Hover-text as documentation only helps relatively advanced people; you have to know to think about the element in the first place to hover there and learn. More explicit is better unless you are in a position with a high-usage site to teach them your patterns. The stories our photos team can tell about escape/click-X/click-outside/etc. behaviour for the FB photo zoom... Users have every reason to be confused about the X in Facebook because (at least for a while) it meant different things in different contexts. In some contexts it meant "I have finished with this now thank you, dismiss it" and in others it meant "this is spam/abuse/needs attention and I am reporting it"! I don't know if it's still that way but it was really poorly thought out.
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Jun 10, 2014 23:06
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Yeah. If anything working on varieties of web apps in the last year has taught, its that iconography is unreliable for accurate communication to the user, especially when it comes to subtle differences (close, close and save, close and cancel action, close and lose changes, close and keep changes). The way to reduce hesitation to act is to have readable calls to action that don't leave any doubt as to their function, and that usually means language possibly supported by iconography.
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Jun 10, 2014 23:18
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Hammerite posted:Users have every reason to be confused about the X in Facebook because (at least for a while) it meant different things in different contexts. In some contexts it meant "I have finished with this now thank you, dismiss it" and in others it meant "this is spam/abuse/needs attention and I am reporting it"! I don't know if it's still that way but it was really poorly thought out. It has meant at least as many things as that! A very bad aspect of the UI. I think we've mostly sorted those out with the latest visual updates, but I'm sure some linger in the corners.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:17
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Coding horror - dealing with the memory limitations of a Java 5 application running on 32 bit Windows XP in the year 2014.
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Jun 11, 2014 02:18
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Contra Duck posted:Coding horror - dealing with the memory limitations of a Java 5 application running on 32 bit Windows XP in the year 2014. Oh yeah? I had to fix an issue with a VB3 program crashing when running a query on an Access 97 database. It ran in to a general protection fault when it did something stupid like 8 left joins in one query.
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Jun 11, 2014 02:25
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What the hell do you need a database for when you have Access? Translation: Why the hell is Access a thing? My new job is for a "lean startup." It sounded OK on paper, but from what I can tell, it means "stack poo poo on top of poo poo on top of poo poo." Is the poo poo supposed to turn into gold at some point? Why are my "models" just collections of functions that have nothing to do with accessing data, and barely help with manipulating it? Why do they all start with "global $db;"? Why am I getting in trouble for implementing a real ORM? If I put something in production, and I'm expected to support it, I'd rather it not be complete poo poo.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:32
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Mogomra posted:What the hell do you need a database for when you have Access? Single-file database with a slick Office UI and excellent integration with
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Jun 11, 2014 09:41
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Subjunctive posted:I think your sales people are probably right. Hover-text as documentation only helps relatively advanced people; you have to know to think about the element in the first place to hover there and learn. More explicit is better unless you are in a position with a high-usage site to teach them your patterns. The stories our photos team can tell about escape/click-X/click-outside/etc. behaviour for the FB photo zoom... I just can't fathom how it's not clear to anyone who's used a computer with a UI how a button with an X on it in the upper corner of a modal dialog isn't a 'close this thing' button and I guess I can't really muster up any sympathy for anyone who gets confused by that.
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Jun 11, 2014 21:21
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Munkeymon posted:I just can't fathom how it's not clear to anyone who's used a computer with a UI how a button with an X on it in the upper corner of a modal dialog isn't a 'close this thing' button and I guess I can't really muster up any sympathy for anyone who gets confused by that. I cannot fathom how non-knowing-their-poo poo-computer-users get confused by the things they do. I've come to accept that they do get confused by things that seem like they should be goddamn obvious, and you've just got to test things out on them if you want to use your products effectively. Just spend an hour watching over the shoulder of some person who doesn't care about computers while they're using one. It's just...amazing.
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Jun 11, 2014 21:51
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Munkeymon posted:I just can't fathom how it's not clear to anyone who's used a computer with a UI how a button with an X on it in the upper corner of a modal dialog isn't a 'close this thing' button and I guess I can't really muster up any sympathy for anyone who gets confused by that. My mom took three years to learn how to use a text input box (god, it hurts to even remember). The simple *idea* of what "closing" actually means is foreign to some people.
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Jun 11, 2014 21:56
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My dad still asks me which button should he press to start the computer - the big one, or the small one. He also asks about how to turn the computer off. Strangely enough he doesn't have any problems with using the browser. I, on the other hand, felt uneasy using macs. "So, you don't close your applications? Like, at all?". On the subject of coding horrors: code:
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Jun 11, 2014 22:16
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Thermopyle posted:I've come to accept that they do get confused by things that seem like they should be goddamn obvious, There is no "why"; it's a billion monkeys slapping at keyboards. They not only do not understand, they don't care. Your carefully crafted affordances are slapped aside. Security prompts and error messages are as the buzzing of flies to them: some minor annoyance to be quickly dismissed. Learn it, accept it, love it. When you can ponder the consequences of that, you can start making truly great things.
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Jun 11, 2014 23:34
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People shouldn't have to expend a great effort to learn computers. The fact that smartphones, even though they are just computers, are more understandable and approachable by laymen, should be a testament to that. Error messages are loving incomprehensible and I don't blame users for getting scared when they appear. Just today when trying to log into my bank, I got this:  COMPUTER_ We need to stop shaming "idiots" who don't immediately grasp difficult and confusing concepts that they shouldn't need to, and instead ask "why aren't they learning this quicker? What can I do to help them?"
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Jun 12, 2014 00:08
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In my experience, I think there's plenty of concepts that "idiot" users have a difficult time with. One is the infinite recursion of "nested folders". There's no real-world equivalent to an infinitely recursing data structure, and when you sit down and think about it, the concept of folders inside folders inside folders is a freaky, sort of supernatural concept. This is something that phones have gone away with, with great success. Instead of requiring the user to choose a place to store something and remember where they put it, they replace it with immediate preview, sophisticated search, and better organization strategies so that recall is easy. So, instead of saying "oh yeah, I saved this picture I snapped with the camera in the Sister's Birthday Party folder", they can go "oh hey, the pic from my sister's birthday? *Pull-down Date selection, select April 2014*, browse until they see the picture". Phones, of course, still have a filesystem data structure underneath for system internals and for actual storage, but that's not the UI that's exposed to the user. A majority of the users I find that "are idiots" are simply just losing their files because the forced folder organization scheme doesn't work for them. They don't pay attention to where they are in the system, and simply hit "Save" when prompted, even if it's in a location they probably won't expect it to be in again later. They were just working on the birthday photos, so when they started fixing up the Christmas photos, that was the default selection, and so all the files now go in there. The inconsistency between your user folder, your "My Documents" folder, your "My Photos" folder, and any "hey look at me I'm a cool app that deserves my own folder" folders also compound to the problem.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:17
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Suspicious Dish posted:The fact that smartphones, even though they are just computers, are more understandable and approachable by laymen, should be a testament to that. Tell that to my girlfriend's mother. The woman was an executive at a pharmaceutical company for 20 years and by all accounts is a reasonably intelligent person. She cannot operate her iPhone -- she needs step-by-step instructions for doing anything, even taking a picture. I can't see it as anything but willful ignorance. On the other hand, I successfully taught my mother to solve the bulk of her own computer problems. I'm not debating that computers are generally unintuitive to a layperson -- they are. Some people just come better-equipped for dealing with the unintuitive parts.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:31
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Suspicious Dish posted:In my experience, I think there's plenty of concepts that "idiot" users have a difficult time with. One is the infinite recursion of "nested folders". There's no real-world equivalent to an infinitely recursing data structure, and when you sit down and think about it, the concept of folders inside folders inside folders is a freaky, sort of supernatural concept. Phones do better IMO because their input system is much better at offering immediate feedback and clues as to how to use it, and the constrained screen space imposes a sort of simplicity. Folders have little to do with that, I think.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:35
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:Phones do better IMO because their input system is much better at offering immediate feedback and clues as to how to use it, and the constrained screen space imposes a sort of simplicity. Folders have little to do with that, I think. I think the key thing about most of the popular smart phones like the iPhone is that there's a prominent Home button that's available at all times. This lets users that get in over their head return to a screen they're familiar with, and lets them try again. The phones also insulate the user pretty well from accidental deletion of data. This makes the penalty for failure with the device not damaging or time consuming. If you're not computer savvy and have a bunch of applications/windows popping up on your screen on a full PC then it can be difficult to know how to escape from that situation. On the phone it's very easy. Just hit the Home button. This ability to reset allows for more repetition and faster mastery. People who are not familiar with computers often spend a lot of time knowing for sure that they've hosed up, but not knowing how to fix it or return to a familiar state. That sucks.
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Jun 12, 2014 02:30
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Yeah, I wasn't trying to say that simply folders is the confusing. It was just one example why "idiots" are just users having trouble adapting to complex mental models, and that trying to eliminate those pain points is a lot better of an idea than educating and shaming. The home button, input systems are all as important.
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Jun 12, 2014 02:53
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eithedog posted:
Thats not a coding horror, thats basic web design 
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Jun 12, 2014 03:28
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Suspicious Dish posted:We need to stop shaming "idiots" who don't immediately grasp difficult and confusing concepts that they shouldn't need to, and instead ask "why aren't they learning this quicker? What can I do to help them?" I'm not sure if this was clear from my post or not, but you brought up the term idiots. I certainly don't think regular users are idiots. You could say we're the idiots for confusing them with our products that we understand because we've been immersed in them or just because of the way we think. Or even if they are idiots, if we want them to use what we make we need to do what it takes to make it understandable.
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Jun 12, 2014 03:56
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Even if it wasn't the term "idiot" directly, it was this that really set me off.Ender.uNF posted:There is no "why"; it's a billion monkeys slapping at keyboards.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:00
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I'm so tired of nerds having a superiority complex because they have a bit more than usual of the lowest form of intelligence. News flash, those "normal users" you poo poo on so often are 10 times the person a nerd can ever be. While you sneer and call them stupid, they're out actually making the world a better place.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:11
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No, you're full of poo poo, users are idiots. Long before I was a programmer or some "computer person" it wasn't hard to figure out how to use a computer and have it do things -- it just takes some exploration and mostly first and second guesses of "where would I put this feature [that I don't even know the program to have yet]". Lots of people can't do that, and it's because they're idiots. They can't even search Google for things without being an embarrassment to mankind. carry on them posted:News flash, those "normal users" you poo poo on so often are 10 times the person a nerd can ever be.  Try making an utterance that has a chance of making sense.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:17
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You all are misunderstanding me; I agree with you. quote:There is no "why"; it's a billion monkeys slapping at keyboards. They not only do not understand, they don't care. Your carefully crafted affordances are slapped aside. Security prompts and error messages are as the buzzing of flies to them: some minor annoyance to be quickly dismissed. When I say "learn it, accept it, love it" and "ponder the consequences", I'm talking to my past self from years ago, back when I did the "nerd superiority complex" thing and happily tossed up dialog boxes with inscrutable questions. I'm a monkey and so are you. That's the point... I'm not better than my users. I don't read dialog boxes half the time, because I'm busy and they get in my way, and I'm a freakin expert. Watching other people (even brain surgeons) We should take care to design software that is usable for everyone. If the user can "get it wrong", remove that avenue so they can't make a mistake. If that isn't possible, make it trivially easy to recover from the mistake. One of the greatest failures ever is the fact that 'rm -rf' doesn't allow for undo. How many thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions of man-years of human effort have been wiped out due to simple mistakes with no way to recover? If answering incorrectly to a security prompt didn't root your machine, but instead could be rolled back to a known-good state with a simple filesystem snapshot then your average Windows PC wouldn't have the plague of viruses and malware it currently has. One of the greatest user-friendly features ever invented is Undo/Redo, and that's something most of us as developers use every day. Apologies for being unclear in my previous post.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:28
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Everyone jumping out to defend users and yet not a single person (until shrughes) attacked them!
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Jun 12, 2014 04:30
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carry on then posted:News flash, those "normal users" you poo poo on so often are 10 times the person a nerd can ever be. While you sneer and call them stupid, they're out actually making the world a better place. Oh come on with your noble savage bullshit. Nobody is making the world a better place, not even those fortunate souls uncorrupted by programmer aspergers or whatever.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:32
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Kirk Johnson is making the world a better place.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:34
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Deus Rex posted:Oh come on with your noble savage bullshit. Nobody is making the world a better place, not even those fortunate souls uncorrupted by programmer aspergers or whatever. Wowie, emo attitudes and cynicism on the internet!
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Jun 12, 2014 04:40
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carry on then posted:I'm so tired of nerds having a superiority complex because they have a bit more than usual of the lowest form of intelligence. News flash, those "normal users" you poo poo on so often are 10 times the person a nerd can ever be. While you sneer and call them stupid, they're out actually making the world a better place. No, people are extremely stupid on average and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out
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Jun 12, 2014 04:47
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QuarkJets posted:No, people are extremely stupid on average and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out Wowie, emo attitudes and cynicism on the internet! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 12, 2014 04:51
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You haven't seen the true face of bewildering ineptitude until you've written and supported a data entry application for minimum wage temp workers.
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Jun 12, 2014 05:34
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Suspicious Dish posted:Wowie, emo attitudes and cynicism on the internet! I'm actually pretty optimistic in general, but you're kidding yourself if you believe that the average person is a hidden trove of intelligence that just needs to be revealed or whatever the gently caress. People are stupid. This isn't a bad thing, either Would you be this fake-bewildered if I said that most people aren't that pretty, too?
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Jun 12, 2014 05:45
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