On 02/19/2006 01:08 PM, Bjorn Reese wrote:
Frank Wales wrote:
How designers are saving the world from programmers, since
we apparently don't know how to design things without them:
http://lostgarden.com/2006/02/software-developments-evolution.html
I've seen criticism like this many time. It usually has some good
points (like focusing on customer value), but is often based on some
false premises (like the 'programming is production' metaphor).
Well, the story the author tells starts from the odd
position that all non-poopy software was originally for
other programmers, a claim that is itself complete poop.
Nearly all critics make three fundamental mistakes.
First, they ignore the fact that software is already phenomenal success
despite all its inadequacies. It has become a fabric of everyday life
(to quote Mark Weiser) without adhering to the critic's favorite
solution.
Yeah, funny that. I wonder how the Designer Cavalry would
ever be able to ride to the rescue without all the technology
that they didn't have any part in designing, and that they only
vaguely understand anyway. Maybe they could bring pencils and
paper (assuming they know how to make them, and can agree on
what shape they should be).
Second, they fail to acknowledge that software development is about
balancing different constraints (e.g. economical, organizational, legal,
psychological, technical) not just the single constraint that they
are trying to promote. I usually tease them by pointing out that any
solution to a complex problem that assumes a single cause is called a
conspiracy theory.
I forgive people who think they know how software ought to
be designed when they don't have much experience of it, or of the
processes by which it comes about. But the more they learn
about those processes, and the technical and business constraints
behind them, the less patient I get when they still assert that things
would be *so* much better if only everyone else would listen to them.
Third, they start by basically labelling everybody else involved in
software development as incompetent, either to their face or behind
their backs. This is not the best foundation for the cooperation that
that they seek to establish.
I love working with people who have completely different
perspectives on things to my own, because I usually get to:
+ learn something new
+ teach someone something new
However, those who are happy to go around proclaiming that
their way of doing things is the solution to everyone else's
supposed problems tend neither to know stuff worth knowing,
nor to be willing to learn from others who disagree with them.
In general, the best way to work with such people is to make
sure they are promoted to a position of influence in your
closest competitor's management. Then, they'll help to push
smarter customers towards you, while attracting stupid customers
to themselves. Everybody wins! (Except the stupid customers,
obviously, but then, stupidity is its own reward, I say.)
Having said that, I acknowledge that there is much that we can and
should learn from others, so I try to evaluate and incorporate any
criticism into my work. Most of the time, however, it ends up quite
different from what the critics had anticipated, mainly because of
the abovementioned balance.
I found the original article on slashdot.org . One of the comments
there predicted that the customer in the final scenario would still
get poop, but it would be square and stackable, so at least it would
be easy to keep the piles of designer poop tidy.
Another of the slashdot replies pointed out that an alternative
interpretation of the pictures is that, as long as programmers get
to work with the customers, and no-one else barges into the relationship,
customers get what they want. It was therefore suggested that making
customers happy was as simple as throwing all the other people pictured
out of the nearest window.
The work Richard Bartlett cites might even offer actual
empirical support for this observation (programmers acting
as designers, not programmers acting as Judge Dredd):
At Coventry School of Art Design, we have made a study of software
authors - programmers who work largely alone -, and it seems that they also
work like product designers,as well as programmers.
I suggest that having to perform the task of product design
is blitheringly obvious to many journeymen programmers, who
regrettably don't yet have the legal authority to defenestrate
those who interfere with good software design. However, I
find the premiss of the piece, that programmers as a group
are just too clueless to produce good software for anyone but
other programmers, to be both insulting and self-servingly naive.
--
Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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