Execution Counts.
Nov. 24th, 2012 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mangosteenSo, let me just say that I love DropBox. It's a useful tool, it generally does the right thing, and it gets out of my way and lets me get my work done. That is to say, it does many things a well-engineered tool should do.
When I talk with a group of fellow geeks about DropBox or other cloud storage tools, there's always one person who says "I don't see the big deal. I can make that in a weekend with python and rsync. Files in any place I want, synced over, with some auth logic; done and done."
To them, and anyone like them, I have two words: "Execution counts." Raw functionality is never the whole story, and solving it for yourself in a complex but understandable-by-you way is not the same as making a general-purpose tool that can be used by everyone.
There are a couple of layers of bothersome in there.
First, I'm concerned that the person doesn't understand the problem domain.
Second, I'm really concerned that the person has just said "Usability can be ignored."
This is typically the same person who says "I don't know why you spent money on Adobe Lightroom. I built a few shell scripts to resize and upload things to my gallery." Very limited knowledge of the problem domain *and* ignores usability. Check and check.
Most unsettling of all, though, is that this is the person who thinks solving a problem for themselves simultaneously absolves them of solving it for anyone else and allows them to look down on those who have the same problem because it's so easy to solve. It's typically in the pattern "Why don't they just do X? It works for me."
Come to think of it, not understanding the problem domain and thinking that solving it for yourself is the same as solving it for everyone is inimical to a whole bunch of futile political discussions, too.
In fact, I think I like that litmus test quite a bit. To restate:
Eli's Litmus Test for Subject-Specific Futility: When discussing a specific subject, if the person is:
1. Displaying severely limited knowledge of the problem domain and considers any uncovered area to be a "small modification" to their solution.
2. Confident that their usable-to-them local solution means that it's a universally solved problem.
....then just walk away. Their brain is full, and there's no place for additional knowledge to soak in.
When I talk with a group of fellow geeks about DropBox or other cloud storage tools, there's always one person who says "I don't see the big deal. I can make that in a weekend with python and rsync. Files in any place I want, synced over, with some auth logic; done and done."
To them, and anyone like them, I have two words: "Execution counts." Raw functionality is never the whole story, and solving it for yourself in a complex but understandable-by-you way is not the same as making a general-purpose tool that can be used by everyone.
There are a couple of layers of bothersome in there.
First, I'm concerned that the person doesn't understand the problem domain.
Second, I'm really concerned that the person has just said "Usability can be ignored."
This is typically the same person who says "I don't know why you spent money on Adobe Lightroom. I built a few shell scripts to resize and upload things to my gallery." Very limited knowledge of the problem domain *and* ignores usability. Check and check.
Most unsettling of all, though, is that this is the person who thinks solving a problem for themselves simultaneously absolves them of solving it for anyone else and allows them to look down on those who have the same problem because it's so easy to solve. It's typically in the pattern "Why don't they just do X? It works for me."
Come to think of it, not understanding the problem domain and thinking that solving it for yourself is the same as solving it for everyone is inimical to a whole bunch of futile political discussions, too.
In fact, I think I like that litmus test quite a bit. To restate:
Eli's Litmus Test for Subject-Specific Futility: When discussing a specific subject, if the person is:
1. Displaying severely limited knowledge of the problem domain and considers any uncovered area to be a "small modification" to their solution.
2. Confident that their usable-to-them local solution means that it's a universally solved problem.
....then just walk away. Their brain is full, and there's no place for additional knowledge to soak in.
