Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
What single piece of advice would you give a non-programmer who wants to get better at using technology?
Here's a little anecdote as an example. I was consulting on a job to increase efficiency, I noticed that there were changes that were being made by hand to PDF invoices generated by a system which could not be changed. I can't recall the exact changes, however it was trivial for me to chain together a PDF editing service with Zapier to automate bulk changes to invoices (the business was growing and the amount of invoices was increasing significantly each week). The entire process took less than an hour and saved hours worth of work each week for the admin staff. Hence the quote in the previous paragraph, a small script or automation did in fact replace a manual task for an admin person (in this case I didn't automate anyones job away thankfully ;-).
How to get better at technology is a very general question; but I'm assuming you mean technology as it applies to business - which apparently is supposed to be all about increasing efficiency. Technology for entertainment is a completely different game, etc. etc.
If you can do this, then the technology to solve each element is much easier to determine, and it'll also be easier to ask (Google, ChatGPT, coworkers) more specific questions that provide more specific answers.
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."
It is a database though, one that is very accessible to most savvy people (aka, your domain experts) and you should lean on that instead of pushing them out. At least at smaller scales.
I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process.
This means you end up inventing things that kinda work but you often don't use the tool the way it was intended.
This is literally all programming, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you keep learning and don't just keep doing the same cobbled together mess for years and years
Many of the people who write CSS or use Excel have never read a book about CSS or Excel.
One day I discovered "Record Macro". That was handy to automate some simple tasks. Then I discovered I could make a clickable button, that would activate one of my macros. That was great. Then I discovered I could double-click (iirc) the button and there, in front of my eyes, was the code. A whole world opened up to me.
I made gigantic programs. Thousands of lines of code. Horrific code. I didn't understand variables or arrays but I had cells and columns! Imagine that.
I became the automation guru at my job. God I hope those Excel files no longer exist. I would die of embarrassment. I built automation tools in my own time. In Excel, of course. Before long I was making enough to quit my day job. Thanks, Excel.
- design tools (Photoshop, Figma)
- media-editing programs (GarageBand, whatever is used for video-editing these days)
- unexpected places (e.g. Trello)
The mouse has only 3-6 degrees of freedom to interact with. Only two digits on one hand operate a mouse. A keyboard has 50+ degrees of freedom, with all ten fingers available for usage.
Anecdotally, companies that design software that can be exclusively used by a keyboard tend to think more highly of their customers.
1. Get it working.
Find a solution, any solution. Something is better than nothing. Once you have a solution, you know the space pretty well.
2. Get it working well.
Iterate and make it better. Refactor and fix bugs. At this point, the general logic should be sound, but there may be missing features, add them.
3. Get it working fast.
Find the slow parts and make it faster.
Life isn't a support-system for technology. It's the other way around. If there's no joy in it, it's just no good.
And my own thoughts:
"Get better at using technology" is a vast possibility space. You'll never be able to learn, use, or even appreciate all modern technology like a specialist. Be intentional and figure out what you want to get out of your technology use, and learn what you need (maybe from one or some of those specialists) to best achieve it.
You just have to convince one that your thing would be more fulfilling than writing their own malbolge compiler or whatever they currently do in their spare time.
Programmers rarely do that. A programmer sharing something means developing it enough to put in the App Store, or convincing you to run their scary shell script.
A non-programmer takes 3 existing things, uses 10% of the functionality from each one, sometimes using one step to undo unwanted stuff from the last step, and does the task reasonably fast without a single hard to explain step or unusual tool.
And these are real world problems, not just stuff coders made up as an excuse to code more.
It's the opposite of what programmers talk about all day, it's not first principles thinking, their basic building blocks are insanely high level million line apps, and yet it all works.
Maybe we could learn something from them.
Excel and some image editors do that, and people make pretty cool stuff with them.
Not sure what my advice would be before 2022 but this supercedes it.
2) recognize how this state of things is no different in software from the rest of what people create
3) deal with it the way you deal with it otherwise and apply your existing knowledge accordingly. software really isn't that brilliant most of the time.
Corollary: If your coworkers or employer say this is bad advice that's a massive red flag and you need to find a new employer, unless you work in medicine or nuclear power, in which case maybe it's ok.
It will pay off very quickly.
Everything is understandable and usually has a rather mundane explanation about why it is the way it is, so don't be scared.
If someone understood how it works, then you can too. You may be missing some information, but that's about it.
Learn how to write to different audiences. You communicate differently with programmers than you would executives.
Accept that not everything can be communicated with 2 sentences summary and you have to put effort into reading and understanding.
I am avid reader and hope not worst writer - but people don’t read or read but don’t understand and jump to conclusions. Which was causing me a lot of frustration because I thought everyone is able to read at my level and a lot of people are not - they can be dyslexic or bunch of other issues like even having a bad day or not sleeping well last night.
It's easier to remember when you only need to process text and data a few times a month... and average people will need to do that kind of thing even less.
If they insist, point out that all the tech in the world still leaves you with 51% human interaction. And that is the most pleasurable part.
If you want to get better at using technology, not just understanding it, I can give you a tip as a UI dev. Just ask yourself: "what would an overpaid designer named Ramona assume about the average user of this app". Unfortunately, most things have been enshittified, and no longer have manuals.
Any enshittification I see is strictly in non UI stuff, like vendor lockin and subscription models.