Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

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I agree that just shitting all over people's work is, well, shitty. But I disagree entirely that the anonymous critic behind Read the Fucking HIG (http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/) is out of line or that this kind of criticism is lacking in merit.

Firstly, it's clearly a bit tongue in cheek: "The evil doctor cackled as the thunder struck his lightning rod, giving life and sentience to his unholy creation, spliced together from iphone, ipad and mac ui." And the vulgarity is right in line with other satirical, single purpose sites like http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/ and others I can't think of right now.

Secondly, he's got a "legitimate" complaint. You don't have to agree with his point, but I think a lot of people who are passionate about design (and about design in the context of their Mac) really, really do experience visceral rage at the way Apple flouts the HIG. A site like this is really just capturing that zeitgeist and reflecting how heated people actually feel about the topic.

Anyhow, I really am a big proponent for civility in discourse (that's why I'm always reading HN), but everything has its place.

The key difference is that http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/ and the like aren't using vulgarity in the service of an attack on other people's hard work.

And I tend to agree with the article's argument that a criticism of the design without using the design is pointless nerdrage.

But there is this social element to designing an app on OS X that you don't get elsewhere. People will critcise you if your app 'feels wrong' or 'feels un-mac-like'.

This is why writing software for the mac is harder than the PC. On the PC (or especially Linux) you can just do whatever you like, whatever makes sense to you.

But here's the thing, the reason that the Mac feels so 'intuitive' is because - if you're doing it right - you have to implement six different ways to do anything. That means that the second or third way someone tries to do something will work, so it feels instant. On the PC if you try 20 ways to do something, and it doesn't work, you feel frustrated.

This is a lot more work. It is much easier on the PC because if you can't be arsed supporting say... drag and drop, no one is going to call you on it. On the Mac, you will be pilloried. Saying it's not fair on people because of their hard work is to commit two errors:

(1) to not understand Mac culture, where developers are expected to put in the extra effort

(2) to falsely label something as hard work when they clearly haven't done their homework, and have taken shortcuts to avoid putting in the real hard work

If I ask someone to cut my lawn, and they go over it with a roller in order to flatten it because they can't be arsed and it's just the same... I will not praise them for their ingenuity or hard work.

They haven't finished the task.

Also, there is a third point

(3) to commit the error of thinking that the software is finished and set in stone forever

Software is change. But how will they know to change if no one points out to them the error of their ways?

Just because work is hard and it was done doesn't mean it's above criticism.

There's a difference between criticism and vulgar flaming. I have no problem with the former when presented constructively and with some knowledge of the subject, but the blog is engaging in the latter.

A quick glance at Read the Fucking HIG and it's very clear what they're mocking deserve to be mocked; not a single one validates based on the HIG.

Vulgarity is immature and childish but it's a tonality the Internet has adopted. You can participate or choose not to, sermonize about decency or not, but this insistence--beyond the scope of this article and RTFHIG--that everyone does things on your pace, your schedule, your needs, your preferences, on you... is just so whiny.

Care less, it'll make you happier.

> this insistence ... that everyone does things on your pace, your schedule, your needs, your preferences, on you... is just so whiny.

We're talking about the "Everything that differs from the HIG is a fucking abomination" crowd here, right? </sarcasm>

I value civility, pragmatics, and constructivity, and you evidently don't. I think we've reached the point where it's clear we have two fundamentally different opinions and continuing to talk past one another is pointless.

>"rage at the way Apple flouts the HIG."

I don't see any of the rage at http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/ being directed at Apple. Somehow I suspect it would be hard for one who holds the guidelines in such reverence to do so.

The rage is directed at the people that put forth time and effort into releasing applications in the App Store, as well as at Apple for enabling these people to publish apps that offend their delicate sensibilities.

I can see where he's coming from, and I can agree that it's a little childish and or obscene, but looking through his examples, there are some really terrible apps in the store, and a lot of them are unnecessary (insofar as they duplicate functionality from existing OS X applications that ship with the os).

So.. let the consumer decide, no?

The people were free to publish applications anyway. The good ones will rise to the top, the bad ones will fail.

I see the rage directed at the app developers. I don't see any of the blog's rage directed at Apple. Please show me what I'm missing.

He may be right. But he's not adding any value for anyone the way he points it out. I think the biggest problem I have with it is that he's insulting and attacking the people who made these apps. There is no reason for that.

> "But he's not adding any value for anyone the way he points it out."

It's a curious community we have. Pointing out problems or reporting visceral reaction is considered not constructive. Yet speculative re-designs to illustrate what the critic might have done differently are also considered not constructive.

It seems to me that when nothing short of actually competing against a product is considered useful or valid, the real argument is that criticism shouldn't exist and isn't useful in and of itself.

If you think about it carefully the emphasis here is not on if he should complain or not, the emphasis is on the way he should complain.

So the people complaining about complaints over UI being about style instead of substance are themselves complaining about argumentative style instead of substance.

You still do not get the point here. His arguments may be valid, I don't know I never read the HIG nor am I a designer. But there is a way to do constructive criticism without belittling the efforts of other developers. He is acting like a "Chinese mom".

This line from HN guidelines illustrate my point:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I know that showing "attitude" and being cool is all the rage these days, but I still thinking politeness works like a charm.

But even 'constructive' criticism is frequently derided here. That's why I made the point about speculative redesigns. No matter how polite or constructive you try to get, it seems a large chunk of this site will wave it off as being only as useful as reporting your gut feeling on whether something 'works' or 'doesn't'. (As only the designer facing actual decisions knows why they made certain compromises and has to deal with all the real permutations, etc)

You can narrow your argument to just "can't we all just be polite" and have a nice, if naive, point. But I disagree that the core complaints in the article or this thread are restricted to, or even primarily about, the tone.

You're belittling RTFHIG like a "WASP mom" for belittling app authors like a "Chinese mom".

There's more than one way to show attitude, and politeness is one of them. It's an affectation, no different from RTFHIG's all-lowercase ironic outrage.

If the developers who made these apps were, instead, writing novels of similar quality, their work would have been coldly rejected by publisher after publisher after publisher after publisher.

1. If you're going to create, you need a thick skin for rejection and criticism, constructive or otherwise.

2. Everyone has a certain amount of shitty work that they need to work out of their system before they get good. If nobody tells them their crap work is crappy, they'll probably keep making it like that and won't improve.

3. Even successful novelists can get to a point where they stop being edited, and their work from that point tends to be flabby, overlong, and not well-regarded compared to earlier work that actually was edited.

Nowadays they'd self-publish and would only have to worry about reviews from people who bought the book from Amazon (and many of them stack their book reviews with friends and family).

Well, that would be an option, but they probably wouldn't make much money, they wouldn't get the marketing support, and they wouldn't get the prestige of having published.

But that's a good point. The hideous Apps in the App Store are like the terrible self-published things that shows up in the Kindle store.

> he's not adding any value

The point of the blog, from what I can tell, is to make people laugh. Let's lighten up.

Honestly, if I had an app in the store and it was featured here (with a handy backlink) I'd probably send him a thank you note for the free advertising and feedback.

First freelance job I did as a teenager (around 1996 maybe?) was for a sporting celebrity in my country. I got paid $90/hr which I was particularly excited about.

I spent so much time on this web interface, 'Shopping my brains out. The result was, for the time, amazing. People, who didn't have to use the site on a day-to-day basis, gushed.

Then I happened across an absolutely brutal, brutal review by some random on the net. At first I was crushed, but soon I realised that, though coarse, they had made good points and I became a better designer because of it.

Entertainment has value.

Not all time needs to be spent on productive endeavors. And maybe he just might increase the quality of these apps by shaming them into compliance. The devs might even read the HIG!

Maybe even Apple might read the HIG!

I think the bigger point here is that he's complaining about something which may not even be relevant any more. As John Gruber wrote recently, the HIG is dead and Apple is what killed it.

Consider the similar site Photoshop Disasters. That mocks the designers who make the images. But it's had value in pointing out the ludicrous editing that fashion ads and magazines are guilty of, twisting women's bodies into ridiculous impossible forms.

And, to some extent, has probably created some pressure on advertisers to not do that, because they'll be mocked.

there's at least one legitimate reason: it's getting him a ton of traffic!

I wouldn't accuse someone of adding no value when clearly the site would not exist if readers did not find it valuable enough to keep coming back. Or if the author didn't find it valuable to keep contributing.

Maybe you don't find it valuable for you. But clearly you found it interesting enough to stop and make a comment when so many other articles on "more valuable" subjects sit uncommented.

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