Bunch of self serving crap.

Post #202,724 by broomberg 4/10/05 5:12:11 PM Reply	Bunch of self serving crap. I got about 1/2 way through when I decided he wasn't worth the read. He's well educated, well read, and an asshole. Here is a favorite quote of his: [link\|http://mpt.phrasewise.com/\|http://mpt.phrasewise.com/] \nWell, nothing new there either. From me three years ago:\n\n It\ufffds certainly possible for a good programmer \ufffd to also be a \n\t strong UI designer; but that\ufffds no more likely to be the case than \n\t that, say, a construction worker will also be a good architect.\n Note the use of MS specific characters as he shows a misunderstanding of programming. "construction worker"? Yet another person who confuses bricks with bits. Asshole. Maybe as an employee of Canonical his comments will make something better, since he IS right sometimes. But I doubt it, since people recieving a message from such an individual will often ignore the content. And unless I'm mistaken, much of his rants are against Gnome, and Canonical is not in charge of Gnome.
Post #202,761 by ubernostrum 4/10/05 10:55:32 PM Reply	Actually... Note the use of MS specific characters as he shows a misunderstanding of programming. \r\n\r\n Those aren't 'MS-specific characters'. If your browser is unable to correctly display them, then your browser is buggy. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #202,764 by broomberg 4/10/05 11:10:30 PM Reply	I was wrong on the MS character issue It showed fine on my browser but Cut & Pasted incorrectly. A dump of the web site to plain text shows perfectly valid HTML. I stand by my other comments. He has a core misunderstanding of what real programming is.
Post #202,763 by ubernostrum 4/10/05 11:04:43 PM Reply	Also. Frankly, he's right about UI design and programming being completely different disciplines, and he's absolutely right in saying that being a good programmer produces zero likelihood of being a good UI designer. \r\n\r\n Is the 'construction worker' analogy off? Yeah. I'd say the difference is more that of a structural engineer and an architect. But in the face of the dismissiveness most free software folks show toward usability and UI design, I don't blame him for being a little over-the-top in his characterization. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #202,766 by broomberg 4/10/05 11:26:03 PM Reply	No. Disagree. Programming is FAR more art then engineering. It is constructing in your mind ethereal bits and pieces of "code", which then translate into something in the real world that MIGHT munge data, interact with people, interact with other program, interact with hardware, etc. Reconfigure it, and it does something totally different. Make it command line driven, or control file driven, and it behaves differently every time it is invoked. This is NOTHING like real world contruction. While people would LIKE to have a toolbox approach, they quickly dead end. And then they find the toolbox "programmers" are just the contruction worker code monkeys, while real programmers use their imagination and experience to construct something no one else could envision, ie: ART! And yes, these people (myself included) will usually never be able to come up with a good user interface. Usable, possibly, but good, probably not.
Post #202,770 by Andrew Grygus 4/10/05 11:53:01 PM Reply	And the art goes way down into the hardware. Even most computer savey people are unaware that there are no such things as "digital devices". All are analog (over)driven in such a way they emulate digital devices, which makes design a lot less certain than many would suppose. Add that every silly nanometer of wire or board trace is a delay line and it becomes really fun. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #202,772 by ubernostrum 4/10/05 11:53:51 PM Reply	I never implied there was no 'art' And neither did mpt. Just that UI design is a completely different sort of art, much as good engineering and good architecture are two completely different sorts of arts. \r\n\r\n Which gets at the main problem with usability in Free/open source software: it's written by programmers, and so the interfaces tend to be the sorts of things only programmers find useful. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #202,777 by ben_tilly 4/11/05 12:14:19 AM Reply	He may be annoying, but he's right about that How many programmers do you know who are good at programming, but not at graphic design? Creating good end-user interfaces is a skill that is independent of both programming ability and graphic design, though it has some connections to both. And I've known plenty of programmers who lack it. I often like to say that when programmers attempt to communicate they tend to be precise and ineffective. Precise in that their words mean exactly what was said. Ineffective in that whoever they are talking to doesn't understand, and often the programmer has a hard time seeing how they couldn't. Our attempts to communicate through our user interfaces tend to be like our attempts to communicate in speech - precise and ineffective. What we say is correct and precise. But is not understood. As a random illustration of the problem, someone who creates good end-user interfaces has to have empathy with how a user who doesn't understand the filesystem will interact with their applications. (Most users do not understand the filesystem.) How easy is it for programmers who generally work with fairly complex filesystem layouts to do that and empathize with how those users will interact with our programs? Now there are many useful programs that do not need good end-user interfaces. For instance programs written for internal use do not - if things are unintuitive you can take the time to train people. And they are often willing to follow poorly understood instructions by rote. Likewise programs written for programmers often do not need good end-user interfaces - programmers are not normal end-users. But if you are building an application that normal people are expected to use in large numbers without instruction or the opportunity to ask for help, then you need a skillset that most programmers aren't very good at. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #202,912 by tuberculosis 4/11/05 7:44:59 PM Reply	Seemed sensible and well reasoned and I agree about design vs development. I personally make ugly websites that work. Designers generally make pretty websites that don't work. So we team up. I thought his items were all solid. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #202,916 by broomberg 4/11/05 8:04:51 PM Reply	As I said a couple of times he IS right sometimes. But his message gets lost in a blizzard of bullshit.

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