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1. Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:11:20 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

   Periodic reminder for those who've ever used "it's not user-friendly enough" when refusing to use software... back in the 80s and early 90s, secretaries (generally without any computing instruction) became wizards at using early text-based 'word processors' like WordStar with arcane markup, obtuse printing requirements, and only a command line interface. I'd say that nowadays people sell themselves short because they no longer feel the need to be craftspeople with the tools of their trade.

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:11:13 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Olivier Forget

     @teleclimber Sowing pervasive Learnt helplessness was perhaps Microsoft & Apple's greatest triumph. Almost no one knows enough now to criticise the digital slop foisted upon them. Not even those doing the foisting.

     2/2

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:11:16 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Olivier Forget

     @teleclimber in my experience, people, in fields where their role *depends on their digital capabilities* resolutely refuse to learn. It's both risky (short-sighted for people with those role responsibilities) and a pathetic abdication. They tend to lack pride in their skills and competence.No wonder people get such little job satisfaction because they're voluntarily disempowered. 1/2

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • Olivier Forget (teleclimber@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:11:19 JST Olivier Forget

     in reply to

     @lightweight I always think about how much people used to do to fiddle with WordPress: copying bits of code from forums and pasting in the theme editor, and trying until they got what they wanted.

     Unfortunately we've lost all of that. It would be nice to get some of it back, but I also think times have changed. People expect tech to work for them, not the other way around.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:19:59 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight I think there's a happy medium to strive for here: Software should strive to be userfriendly (meaning it is helpful, doesn't waste people's time, & is reasonable to learn), but often I hear "user friendly" used to mean "I don't want to learn something new". Which isn't a reasonable ask when trying something new.

     Ofcourse what is considered "userfriendly" is somewhat (but not entirely) subjective, & we need leeway to create something better than you're used to!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:26:16 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight Developers can be guilty of this too: Perceiving GitHub pull requests as being easier since it's the workflow they're familiar with.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:45:42 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • divVerent

     @divVerent @lightweight I'm not even talking about git send-email (though it should work in my setup)!

     I'll accept links to your fork elsewhere, or there's git format-patch!

   • divVerent (divverent@misskey.de)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 09:45:53 JST divVerent

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz@floss.social @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz Nah. Pull/merge requests are MUCH more user friendly as few even have the ability to use git send-email nowadays.
     
     Because it does not even integrate with email clients, even less so web mail, and most major providers stopped supporting standard SMTP long ago.
     
     (E.g. also because standard SMTP does not support 2FA which we recommend everyone to set up, don't we?)
     
     Now if git send-email could integrate with mailto handlers set up at browser or OS levels, that would be great...

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:03:05 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • divVerent

     @divVerent I can understand that certain projects have set a bad impression of email-based git. But listening to the objections I don't believe my system shares them, you are working on presumptions.

     I even have shortterm & longterm solutions for those who don't want to interact with it via email!

     @lightweight

   • divVerent (divverent@misskey.de)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:03:08 JST divVerent

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz@floss.social @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz But why, I can just use merge requests on gitlab and even get CI. I do not work on projects that are email only.
     
     Github's PRs have some major issues though, so if you don't like them, fine. If I worked on your project, I would probably just get an extra email and use send-email. Of course it would be less secure than my actual email, but given these are merge requests, you are supposed to review them anyway and thus the danger if someone impersonates me is low.
     
     Gerrit BTW is a nice approach to PRs - way more focused on the actual reviewing but in exchange less of a discussion forum than GitHub PRs. GitHub recently adopted some ideas for a more review focused workflow too, but it still has this huge general commit discussion thing in the main focus which probably should move into the background.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:16:22 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • divVerent

     @divVerent @lightweight And I'm using SourceHut Todo rather than SourceHut Lists for exactly this reason! I'm essentially using email as an authenticated comment box in an issue tracker, so contributors don't have to sign up for my codeforge.

   • divVerent (divverent@misskey.de)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:16:23 JST divVerent

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz@floss.social @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz I misunderstood, sorry. I had assumed "link to your fork" meant you expected me to add the necessary support into git, web browsers and webmail providers to support send-email.
     
     But still, I rather strongly believe that email based workflow is rather bad. Being able to anchor comments at specific lines of code, and being able to track that they actually get resolved, is so much better than "every few days, the author posts a new version of the patch to the ML and I have to read it all from scratch again and compare to previous comments to see if the did not get forgotten".
     
     Of course, this is my preference as project maintainer. If I need to send a patch to your project, I do not care about that, and to me it just matters that I can conveniently get the patch across. "Link to my fork" is quite certainly convenient enough to me.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:42:02 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight Yeah, I'd consider that a UI design failure. Albeit one which is easily weaponized by capitalists & get mistaken at the behest of marketters as good design!

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 10:42:04 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz as an engineer, I fully embrace the idea of designing everything I do to be 'as simple as possible, and no simpler'. The problem is, many times with software we give people power to do things for which they have *no valid mental model*. They have no insight into its use, no idea of implications of choices, no appreciation of alternative ways to do the same thing that could be better/safer/lower cost. I'd consider that situation to be pervasive in all fields adjacent to technology.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:11:35 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight There's a lot of nuance in UX, & I'm not entirely convinced that it's impossible to communicate these issues in a UI. And if we can do so, that helps people not forget.

     However I will say that the more people are planning to use a power-tool the happier they'll be to spend time learning it.

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:11:36 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz sometimes things we're trying to do with computers are quite complicated. They require a lot of conceptual scaffolding which our schools don't teach. There is no way to make a good interface to provide foundations in, e.g., what a network is and how it operates/fails, how privacy works/fails (e.g. CC vs BCC in emails), how online 'etiquette' works/fails, etc. We've got a course that's trying to teach it. https://oeru.org/learning-in-a-digital-age/ It's won int'l plaudits:: https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2021/open-infrastructure/oerfs-digital-learning-ecosystem/

   • dn (dn@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:12:11 JST dn

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz @lightweight During this week's gathering of trainees we conducted a walk-through.
     The feedback hardly touched the Python (the code (itself) worked happily), but almost exclusively related to the wording on the GUI elements, or the absence of conversation at important moments.
     Important lesson learned!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:14:32 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • dn

     @dn @lightweight Yup, UI is documentation! Documentation I find easier to write as an engineer, & documentation which is more likely to be paid attention to!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:17:55 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight I will also add that good UI design doesn't *necessarily* involve more code. It involves empathy & attention to detail.

     In fact excess code can suggest that you might be overcomplicating the UI!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:49:56 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight I guess what I'm arguing here is for nuance regarding objecting to people for not using certain software because it's "not user friendly enough". I'd rather ask for better UIs to be developed then risk demeaning people a lack of interest in computing. For wanting to spend their time learning other things.

     There are definitely things to critique here, but the topic can easily head into territory I strongly disagree with.

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:49:58 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane
     • dn

     @alcinnz I agree that interface can be an educational tool... but it depends largely on how much foundational knowledge is required to even understand *why* you're using the software. Sometimes, the user simply hasn't got that foundation... and there's not enough of the scaffolding (understanding of related/more basic concepts) available to achieve understanding. @dn

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Feb-2023 11:53:15 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight I suggest that what you're objecting is more mis-education rather than lack of education...

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 06:27:05 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight Yeah, & I believe the UX of the dominant taught them this helplessness. And I really don't like what these' over-sandboxedness taught people about how computers work!

     That did lead me to be overly cynical about sandboxing...

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 06:27:06 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz I think it's fair to be discontent with the idea that people, in large part, have responded to the learnt helplessness they feel with technology 'the system' has imposed upon them, by abdicating their inclination to be 'expert' in the tools of their trade. I'd say there's never been a time in history when so many people depend on tools that vanishingly few understand in any useful sense.