
This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Create UI (2006) - robin_reala
https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-developers-create-ui/
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rekado
What I find worse than the UI is that this has resulted in people harrassing
the developer.

Quote from the wGetGUI page at
[http://www.jensroesner.de/wgetgui/](http://www.jensroesner.de/wgetgui/)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the Haters

At the end of 2006, one GUI expert used wGetGUI as an example for a bad GUI.
Of course I felt honoured. Not. I think it was kinda suboptimal to do this
without telling me, without giving me a chance to improve the GUI and without
#whoa here's a thought# helping me. Well, he posted the GUI without saying
which it is, but that was soon found out and I got some love mail. Not. The
amount of bashing wGetGUI and me have received is a testament to the state of
the internet "culture". There certainly were a few people who either liked the
GUI or gave constructive criticism. But the rest was insultive bashing in mob
mentality. And all this about a piece of free software that I have spent my
time on - to bring it beyond what I need. To those who have supported me:
Thanks, I really appreciate it. For the haters: Hate yourself, don't spread
the hate. I like to hear what non-haters think of wGetGUI, so send in
comments, wishes, critique. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~
smoothdeveloper
Moreover, the article doesn't even propose a "good GUI".

The GUI seems to basically expose all the command line arguments in a simple
UI, which is great for a developer tool, it would be nice to also see the
corresponding command line generated by the tool.

"This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Write Blog With Clickbait
Titles"

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jttam
I know it was a younger time back in 2006, but there is always something
disingenuous about referring to the entire class of software developers being
unable to do good frontend UI/UX development. It's a different discipline to
be sure, but it's not a lot different to me than saying knowing statistics to
be a good data software developer or any other application development.
Software doesn't get written for its own sake.

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mannykannot
This is not a terrible design. I have seen designs, some by professionals (or
at least by people who were paid), that are too clever by half. Some of the
common errors are a) the visual representation does not match information
structure or the workflow - e.g. common tasks are complicated to perform; b)
it is not obvious whether an operation has succeeded and what the current
state is; c) 'elegance' and cleverness displace clarity so the interface
becomes a cryptic puzzle; d) the interface design implicitly assumes that the
user has information and knowledge that he may well not have.

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stemuk
Best Comment: "If you've got UI problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99
problems, but design ain't one."

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J_Darnley
Better than a GUI which has no options like just about everything created by a
designer today.

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jtnews
I used software where every page looked like those designs. Apparently the
developers would get a request for feature 'X' and would just add a button for
it. There was one screen with a button added for one very particular process
unique to us that probably caused head scratching for every other user.

