Day: June 3, 2022, 2:48 PM

Ten Developer Fallacies

Chill Uncategorized

Ten fallacies developers believe about design and user experience:

1) Telemetry accurately and without bias represents how your product is used.

2) Security necessarily means reduced functionality.

3) The product should be optimized for the least capable, newest users only.

4) Any advanced configuration options will confuse users so much that the product will fail.

5) There are no consequences to changing the interface every one or two product cycles.

6) People passionate about your product are irrelevant to its success, and it’s ok — even desirable — to piss these people off.

7) Developers know better than users how to use the product.

8) If users find some unexpected way to use your product, they are doing it wrong.

9) All users use the same set of features the same way.

10) Design is different than how the product works.

Worth Reading

Chill Regular-ass Post

Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine.

This is worth reading because it’s the only article I’ve seen so far that is critical of Ukraine’s military efforts that just isn’t a repetition of Russian propaganda. This person actually knows what he is talking about and understands both Russian doctrine, the American military’s drawbacks, the difference between peer wars and guerrilla wars, and the nature of modern combat.

Ian Welsh and people like him are useless because they just spout unexamined Russian propaganda* — many people seem to love that, but it’s not for me. Leftists and libs seem to particularly adore Russian disinformation for some reason.

Anyway, it’s a good analysis though I don’t agree with it all.

*It doesn’t matter if Welsh is right or wrong; propaganda isn’t actually thinking, which is what I care about. Being right because the propaganda you’re rebroadcasting is accidentally correct isn’t really useful to me.