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Programmers can no longer expect above average IQ from the average user today, let alone computer proficiency. Frankly, I think users today are bunch of mouse-clickers. Mainly because more and more people are forced to use computers, which is good. More opportunity for us!
As professionals and businessmen, why fret?
Cheers!
StormWind
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I agree as long thier are users we all have a JOB. i get a kick out of the USER by going to compusa or best buy and listen to the salesman pitch and all the ooo's and ahhh's from the cutomer, and thats all from just showing the mouse pad!;P
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My favourite game is to go into a computer store and pretend to be dumb and then watch the sales pukes squirm as my questions start to get more and more technical. A good way to pass a few minutes on an afternoon whilst the other half is looking at clothes 
Michael
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1) Users want more features, but they want the program to
A) Be easier to use.
B) Be more reliable (no bugs).
C) Be more robust (no crashes).
D) Be backward compatible to the point of being able to load/save data files from ALL previous versions.
3) Users want the software to cost
A) Nothing (or as close to nothing as possible).
B) Nothing for an upgrade, even if they're going from version 1 to version 10.
4) Users want free, unlimited, toll-free telephone support. The best possible case would be to have one support engineer for every customer so that they can get personalized service. You are also expected to be able to visit the customer's site to fix the problem immediately, and at no cost to the user.
5) Users expect new versions withing three-six months of the previous version, regardless of how many features they wanted you to add.
6) If you take the time to properly design, develop, document, and test a program, you'll lose users to competitors' products because it "took too long"
to come out with a new version.
7) If you rush the product out the door with "known issues" and insufficient testing, you'll lose users to competitors' products because your produict is "too damn buggy to use".
8) When you finally deliver a program along the lines of Microsoft Word, they're surprised to find out that it is comprised of more than one file, that file is largere than 64k, and memory requirements exceed 8k.
9) Users are assholes.
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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Whasamatta, John, not up to the challenge?
You should try using some low-quality shitware for a while to recalibrate your thinking.
I just spent an evening at a friends house, trying to restore his Win95 system after an Earthlink installation trashed it. Oooh, I can hear the contempt in everyone's mind right now. But he uses Win95 becasue it's adequate, and he signed onto Earthlink because that's where our mutual ISP slammed us when they went under. Anyway, among all the other things wrong on his system, Earthlink somehow managed to trash his Arial font, so all of his desktop icons and menus were filled with gibberish characters. Plus too many other headaches to list.
When I see systems like this, I'm embarrased to be a Windows programmer. When I see statements like your number 9, I understand why things are the way they are.
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No matter how hard you work, no matter what you do - Users are never happy. I agree with John - users are assholes. I should know, I'm a user too and I want everything that John listed.
Michael
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> Whasamatta, John, not up to the challenge?
I've been doing this for almost 20 years. I'm sure I've outlasted many end-users.
> You should try using some low-quality shitware for a while to recalibrate
> your thinking.
I have used low-quality shitware. There's no excuse for bad design or just plain sh*tty code.
> I just spent an evening at a friends house, trying to restore his Win95
> system after an Earthlink installation trashed it. Oooh, I can hear the
> contempt in everyone's mind right now. But he uses Win95 becasue it's
> adequate, and he signed onto Earthlink because that's where our mutual ISP
> slammed us when they went under. Anyway, among all the other things wrong
> on his system, Earthlink somehow managed to trash his Arial font, so all of
> his desktop icons and menus were filled with gibberish characters. Plus too
> many other headaches to list.
Why on earth are you using "Earthlink software"? Can't you just connect using the built-in Win95 DUN stuff? I've never used Eartyhlink, but I've also never used an ISP's software to connect to/use the internet either.
> When I see systems like this, I'm embarrased to be a Windows programmer.
Have you ever had people blame *you* for other sh*tty software that you didn't write?
> When I see statements like your number 9, I understand why things are the
> way they are.
I'm not trying to be vindictive, I'm being a realist. I've written software for the masses (okay, for a very select subset of the masses) for over 15 years. Our target niche was lawyers, and such. I got a real kick out of users who would actually threaten us with lawsuits (being lawyers, they're prone to use such tactics) to try and force us to implement features they wanted, or because the software didn't work the way they thought it should. I'd just laugh at them and direct them to the EULA which clearly stated that they were getting the software as-is and that generally the only thing we'd guarantee is that it would consume disk space (and very little of that considering the program's considerable capabilities).
End-users are assholes.
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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> Why on earth are you using "Earthlink software"? Can't you just connect using the built-in Win95 DUN stuff? I've never used Eartyhlink, but I've also never used an ISP's software to connect to/use the internet either.
Not me; my friend. He's a veterinarian, not a software engineer. He knows how to save an animal's life, not manage computer systems. When the ISP went under, they sent him a packet with the new Earthlink stuff, including the disk.
Now how was he supposed to know that he shouldn't use it?
Obviously this is not one to blame on the programmers, but it's a pretty sad state of affairs. And yes, I place the blame squarely at the feet of _anyone_ in the industry who thinks that "End-users are assholes". Because that means you treat them with contempt, are not concerned with their needs, and are therefore going to produce software that does not meet them.
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> Obviously this is not one to blame on the programmers, but it's a pretty
> sad state of affairs. And yes, I place the blame squarely at the feet of
> _anyone_ in the industry who thinks that "End-users are assholes". Because
> that means you treat them with contempt, are not concerned with their
> needs, and are therefore going to produce software that does not meet them.
And why shouldn't we feel a certain amount of anger? Users don't for a second stop to consider the ramifications of their demands, and it's always somebody else's fault when the program doesn't look like what they were envisioning. They want what they want, the want it now, and they want it for free. It pisses me off to no end to see clueless end-users rail a software manufacturer without any notion of the development process.
I'd be more concerned with their needs if they were more aware of my requirements as a programnmer trying to adhere to a timeline, not to mention the needs of *other users*.
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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10) Users pay your salary.
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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11) They're still assholes.
I should know - I'm a user too.
Generally, users have unrealistic demands, and they have unrealistic timelines for delivery. Waitaminit - we could say the same things about managers.
The primary problem is that most end-users are not developers, typically aren't what you would call propeller heads (or geeks), and haven't got a CLUE about the development process. I have encountered end-users that blame *me* for everything that's bad about Windows, Word, Excel, Outlook, any game that you might care to name, and the list goes on and on.
How many times have you seen cry-babies in game-oriented chat rooms complaining that it's takling too long to come up with a patch, or that the latest patch didn't include the features they wanted to see? They're about as aware of the mechanics of a development effort as a two-slice toaster.
As end-users, we're never satisfied.
As developers, we can't win when we're the ones programming, but we're a lot more tolerant of those that are.
As a general rule, though, users are assholes.
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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Like I always say. My job would be perfect if it wasn't for users.
Michael
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Your job wouldn't exist if it wasn't for users.
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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I dunno, I know a lot of companies that produce software that isn't used by "real users". Linux and Netscape to name just two 
Michael
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Netscape produce software that isn't used by anybody (unless they're trying to be comedic) .
--
Andrew.
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Users are assholes.
I think I found my next sig.
Christian
After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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It struck me that many of the demands made by users are also made by software managers - feature rich, bug-free, short development time, low cost - are managers assholes too?
N
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It depends. If they complain about the same things I do, then no, they aren't. If they're nothing more than kneepad-wearing brown-nosers only interested in putting up good numbers, then yeah, they're assholes too.
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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are managers assholes too?
Yes, a good majority of them is a big A**H***
  
Farhan Noor Qureshi
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Launch an enterprice application, and you'll surely get the question:
"Can I get that on the web? Secured/simple/etc .. I've read it's so easy, shouldn't take alot of time ..)"
Ohhhhhh..... the irony. The user interface you struggled to make as easy/fast as possible, down the drain.
The user get's it on the web, and voila... a simple user interface, where a mouse is a must (where did
the customers that demanded an application where you don't have to use a mouse?), if you don't want to
'tab' yourself to death  .
And the speed....
'just a thought'
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Users haven't changed much (most weren't brilliant to begin with), programmers haven't changed much (most pretty much sucked at UI programming, after all we’re programmers, not artists). What has changed is the demand upon the users to use a greater range of software. The biggest problem I’ve noticed is that most users have a hard time remembering the all the nuances (read: useless extra features) of each application. So it’s not that the world is full of stupid users (don’t get me wrong there are a few of them too ), its that the world is full of a billion different implementations of Cut & Paste commands – whether the shortcuts are different, choice of toolbar icon (or lack of), etc. Maybe some style of standards might be in order... ones that programmers would actually follow.
Just a thought...
Ben Burnett
"It's all absolutely devastatingly true -- except the bits that are lies"
- Douglas Adams
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>Maybe some style of standards might be in order... ones that programmers >would actually follow.
Never happen. Windows has a pretty good standard laid down and provides the controls and common dialogs to help developers use it.
Then along come Netscape and Oracle (To name just two) who much rather write their own versions of the same controls that work just differently enough to upset most users who come into contact with them.
Michael
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And Microsoft...
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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Microsoft is in the middle. On one hand microsoft is tring to penitrate the server market with WinXP Pro (the people that know more about computers), and on the other hand they are tring to get some of Mac's market, by making the OS easier to use. What annoys me is that the people that don't want to get something that they have to learn about, AOL or anything like that, and then they complain that they are getting targeted by "hackers".
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