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by jokoon 1632 days ago
Low supply of developers, users being too ignorant about how software works.

Personally, all I would let users have is spreadsheets and email.

Unless users can learn macro and python, I'm not going to interact with them.

People need to learn how to use a computer. Seriously.

1 comments

Unfortunately, users aren't always given a choice. They have to interact with software, because it's the only realistic way to do their jobs, engage in commerce, get medical care, etc. Virtually all of this stuff happens within their browser. What are you going to do, tell people that they can't use a browser unless they've passed a leetcode interview? And how would it help?

I've seen elite developers get just as frustrated with bad software as anybody else.

And thank you for writing software that can be controlled via Python, if that's what you're up to.

The problem is that there are too few developers, and most software is just moving data around and structuring that data with forms etc.

Most of those operations are often trivial, and can be done with software that manipulates data instead, like excel or specialized software. They're like "interface and UI brought on a silver platter".

> They have to interact with software, because it's the only realistic way to do their jobs

The world was running fine without software. I just think you don't developers constantly making new software that get tossed away. At some point, some software stay.

In my view there is a "software bubble", there is too much software. Either 3 things:

* Either users need to use excel and make good usage of macros

* Either users need to learn how to write python scripts that handle CSVs, make things dirty where each user is responsible for his own mess, but can send his data through structured formats (csv or else).

* Either we need some new kind of software that handles generic data, that is easier to use, with languages like scratch or something else.

Maybe there's a shortage and a surplus at the same time. A shortage, in the classical definition of rising wages. A surplus, in terms of the impact on society. The cynical explanation is that programmers get paid a lot to do things that are evil. A more mundane reason is Brooks' Law writ large, namely that adding more programmers the current landscape of bad software makes software worse.