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Sometimes it really can just be an email though. Just saying.
Of course they know human communication is important.
It’s the thing you get in the way of for monetization opportunities.
There’s a reason why usable security, project management, HCI are a thing
I took a class in my undergrad program titled Human Engineering and Ergonomics. It was an elective in comp sci but I really think it should have been a requirement. Going through how humans communicate and perceive interfaces/communication. Every developer should have to take it.
Similiar, I studied “media computer science” - it was just c.s. but with a focus multimedia and multimedia interaction.
People joke, that everything with “media” is just a light degree, but the focus was very much on how humans interact with computers ,how humans interact with humans via computers and how the average human engages their work goal via computers.
Not having your user be your sworn enemy and cosplaying as a user helps with creating less shut software in less iteration.
Not having your user be your sworn enemy
That gave me a good laugh, because every dev I’ve ever worked with sees users this way.
This trickles down into UX design aswell, so many programmers just do not understand it, which makes opensource software sometimes so annoying to use
Here’s a (very old) joke I like to tell on tech forums sometimes; it nicely encapsulates how they communicate. Most people get it, but there’s always a few who don’t think it’s funny:
A programer’s wife asks him to do some shopping: “Please buy a loaf of bread, and if they have eggs, buy a dozen.”
He comes back with 12 loaves of bread.
The wife asks: “Why on earth would you get 12 loaves of bread?”
“They had eggs.”im gonna do whats called a pro gramer move
Thing with this joke that his me wrong is that isn’t how if statements are written. The else does not come before the condition in any language I’ve ever used or seen.
At the very least. It should be that he comes back with 1 or 13 loaves.
Buy a loaf
If they have eggs
Buy a dozen loaves
Thanks for proving my point 😉
loaves = 1 if (eggs) loaves = 12I see that as requiring an instruction of replacement, like buy a dozen instead.
As an Autist, this is not funny. I mean, it is… But on closer analysis it shows what layers of meaning are between the lines and background that is required to participate socially.
It’s only logical, it’s only intuitive, they say… Heh
All of the worst programmers I have worked with do that exact thing and refuse to acknowledge that they might have misunderstood what was said.
The good ones ask for clarification when something sounds weird.
As a programmer working support. I often ask users for clarification on how they expect things to work, and they often make me imagine a dog going “no take only throw” by saying ‘i don’t know just fix it.’
Yeah, those people are annoying too.
Ugh.
Listen here, you little shits. I hired you because I don’t need robots. I can build robots, for crying out loud.
Early on in my career I’ve wasted time on projects implementing the wrong thing a few times so ever since I clarify to a fault even if it doesn’t sound weird. If something can be interpreted multiple ways I always ask for clarification even if one interpretation is “more popular”. I’d rather spend 5 minutes asking for clarification than waste a week of everyone’s time.
Since then I don’t think I’ve ever implemented something “wrong”. There might be miscommunications in other parts of the communication chain but never with me.
Error: Couldn't match type 'Int' with 'Item'
3: off by one errors.
Had to be said.
I’ve been in IT for 25 years.
The hardest, the absolute hardest part about my job is humans. Managers, CIOs, project managers, users, other IT workers…all humans.
The machines do whatever I tell them to do.
It’s the humans that ruin everything. I could do the entire technical part of my job in 4 hours a week. And I’m pretty sure most of the other IT workers could do the same.
Egos, bad communication, misunderstandings, disagreements, laziness, short attention spans, power trips, did I mention egos? That’s why I have to work a full work week.
Software Engineer checking in.
I’m fairly certain my senior position is paid as well as it is to compensate for the insane level of human bullshit I have to endure, rather than my ability to skills at programming.
Yeah, I still remember when I “became an adult” in terms of software engineering.
Our customer was fucking pissed, because a problem had taken multiple months to solve and there was no transparency why. Our senior was late for the meeting, so I had to explain what the problem was. I started out genuinely nervous and unsure how much I should dumb it down.Then our customer tells me “No simplifications. I want to understand the problem in full.”.
The nervosity was gone in an instant, because that was my home turf. Because I ultimately had the programming skills to explain the technological side with zero insecurity.Evidentally, I wasn’t yet as confident in customer communication in general, but yeah, that was certainly a huge milestone in my ability to deal with human bullshit.
And look, with AI you can do pair programming while avoiding any of that uncomfortable “team building.”
Yep — the hardest bug is always requirements. Clear writing + shared context saves more engineering hours than any new framework.
therefore - bully the fuck out of business analysts and pay them in peanuts and exposure and then complain about requirements being fucked up. if i had a dollar for every time some startup did that - i’ll have like two hundred bucks at least.
I never fuck with Unicode or time zones.
time zones
There’s only a few falsehoods about time to be aware of:
https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
Have you ever read the notes in the Iana timeline db?
Since I’d the stuff is insane
On the other hand you have people like the guy I’ve tech-assisted 30 minutes ago who refuse to read a single sentence of the information they are provided. “Click here right?”
On the other other hand there are error messages like “That didn’t work [Fuck you].” No info, no further steps no nothing.
Can’t just everyone involved in these processes get fucked?
Got fucked. That didn’t work [Fuck you]. No further info.
I’ve worked with developers like this. Guys who literally stare at an error message, and then ignore it and start clicking around. Fucking infuriating 😂
It doesn’t work
OK, what’s the error?
Missing semicolon.
… and what could be the issue, possibly?
A missing semicolon?
Good guess. Now where would you put it?
There?
No, why there? The correct line is even in the compiler error.
Oh, like this?
Yes.
I had this or a similar discussion with my trainee almost twice a day after one year of training. He was incapable of understanding the most basic messages, but his father was a friend of my boss 😑
By human communication you mean UI, right?
UX.
The most most most annoying thing for me in the workplace is when someone says “politics” god I want to explode. we are a business, We should do what makes sense for the business not what some random MBA feels will pad his resume. So infuriating.
Human interaction is all politics to varying degrees.
Unless you are an extreme outlier someone at some point will need to interact with someone outside of the business to get the things the business needs.
Unless you are a dictatorship of a business, coming to a consensus on what the business needs is going to require dealing with people.
I agree that politics for personal gain or CV juice is bullshit though.
Being competent should be enough, unfortunately that’s not generally how it works, which is also bullshit.
so you don’t like celebrating the legacy of the heritage of the diversity of the equanimity? HR meeting is at 12, don’t be late.
- job prospects.
