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Comment by professoretc | Hacker News Reader

I took a design course in grad school and one of the things they emphasized was that it's impossible for everyone to be wrong about something. If everyone is using something the wrong way, then its the design that's wrong, not the people.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

"Doors can have two states: open or closed. They should not require instruction."

I’m looking at the front door of my apartment as I type this, and I can see sixteen states for it quite easily. It’s got a lock on the doorknob, a deadbolt, and a big window with a blind. All of these can be open or closed independently of each other; add on the basic “is it open or closed” and that’s four binary choices for 16 states.

Also there is that fun state of “open but will lock behind you because the doorknob lock does not prevent you from closing the door, hope you have your keys on you or someone inside” though that’s maybe more a special case in the state transition table than an actual state?

Do those things have affordances or do you pull out your state table?

Another fun state: open the door, then turn the deadbolt. Now the door can't be closed! Attempt to close it hard enough and you can bend the deadbolt shaft. Now the deadbolt can't be retracted, and the door is entirely disabled! An arcane edge case, but something a clumsy child could do in less than a minute.

How could we tolerate such an awful design? Who is responsible for this catastrophe?

Except sliding glass doors, where the closed state can look very similar to the open state. People walk into closed glass doors all of the time.

The above excerpt is supposed to be the guidance for how to design a good door.

I don’t think a door people regularly walk into out of confusion is a good one.

My personal philosophy for design has always been "if one person used it wrong, maybe they're an idiot. If two people used it wrong, you're definitely the idiot."

A logic most developers* not apply to languages, like C, JS, etc.

Sadly.

* ie: Defend (with passion!) the flawed tools, and resist attempts to fix or change them by something better

Since properly learning a programming language is such a huge time investment for most people, once they do it the language becomes part of their identity. Many people will, in professional setting, introduce themselves as "Java/GoLang/Python Developer". When such developer hears a critique of their language they hear personal insult.

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