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Why Users Hate IT Products and Developers
bfwebster writes "The Washington Post has a commentary by one of its regular columnists, Marc Fisher, on why computer users hate what he terms 'our techie masters.' One of his more pungent and, I suspect, on-the-money comments: 'Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace...each new system is more confounding than the last, and each new product strips away many of the advantages of the previous system.' Not a Luddite screed; more an angry outburst asking why commercial software systems are often so wretched. Worth reading and pondering."
The short answer would be:
RTFM
He must be new, and uninitiated by his bofh. My users would commit suicide before uttering such heresy. Almost.
Whereas Righteous Free Software programs like crontab and gnu make and grep always have intuitive, orthogonal systems that make sense at once!
Mind you, oddly enough I do find vi[m] extremely intuitive.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
They're on to us! Hide all the evidence that we've been deliberately writing confusing software and in an effort to become their techie masters!
Remember: You have no idea what they are talking about and we never had this conversation.
I can see it now:
Drone1: Were you here all night?
Drone2: Yeah, I just kept on filling out TPS reports, and before I knew it, the sun was coming up. I just need to fill out a couple more before I level up to Middle Management!
Drone1: Sweet!
Drone2: Yeah, I can't wait to use my new "Schedule Meeting" power.