This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Create UI (2006) | Hacker News Reader

This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Create UI (2006)

blog.codinghorror.com

9 pointsrobin_reala9 comments

What I find worse than the UI is that this has resulted in people harrassing the developer.

Quote from the wGetGUI page at http://www.jensroesner.de/wgetgui/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the Haters

At the end of 2006, one GUI expert used wGetGUI as an example for a bad GUI. Of course I felt honoured. Not. I think it was kinda suboptimal to do this without telling me, without giving me a chance to improve the GUI and without #whoa here's a thought# helping me. Well, he posted the GUI without saying which it is, but that was soon found out and I got some love mail. Not. The amount of bashing wGetGUI and me have received is a testament to the state of the internet "culture". There certainly were a few people who either liked the GUI or gave constructive criticism. But the rest was insultive bashing in mob mentality. And all this about a piece of free software that I have spent my time on - to bring it beyond what I need. To those who have supported me: Thanks, I really appreciate it. For the haters: Hate yourself, don't spread the hate. I like to hear what non-haters think of wGetGUI, so send in comments, wishes, critique. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Agreed. This is probably not the best place to discuss it, but I suspect the phenomenon of people latching on to a criticism by one person, and often ratcheting up the malice, is driven by individuals who are not socially adept attempting to compensate for their inadequacies, at least in their own minds, by putting someone else down - the social equivalent of picking a fight with an individual who has just taken a beating. It is an unfortunate human trait that is easily exploitable by demagogues.

Moreover, the article doesn't even propose a "good GUI".

The GUI seems to basically expose all the command line arguments in a simple UI, which is great for a developer tool, it would be nice to also see the corresponding command line generated by the tool.

"This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Write Blog With Clickbait Titles"

Now I feel guilty! Thanks for the link, it’s easy to laugh and much harder to create.

I know it was a younger time back in 2006, but there is always something disingenuous about referring to the entire class of software developers being unable to do good frontend UI/UX development. It's a different discipline to be sure, but it's not a lot different to me than saying knowing statistics to be a good data software developer or any other application development. Software doesn't get written for its own sake.

This is not a terrible design. I have seen designs, some by professionals (or at least by people who were paid), that are too clever by half. Some of the common errors are a) the visual representation does not match information structure or the workflow - e.g. common tasks are complicated to perform; b) it is not obvious whether an operation has succeeded and what the current state is; c) 'elegance' and cleverness displace clarity so the interface becomes a cryptic puzzle; d) the interface design implicitly assumes that the user has information and knowledge that he may well not have.

Best Comment: "If you've got UI problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, but design ain't one."

Better than a GUI which has no options like just about everything created by a designer today.

I used software where every page looked like those designs. Apparently the developers would get a request for feature 'X' and would just add a button for it. There was one screen with a button added for one very particular process unique to us that probably caused head scratching for every other user.

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